by MICHAEL HAWTHORNE
Something as simple as drinking tap water is exposing millions of Illinoisans to toxic chemicals that build up in human blood, cause cancer and other diseases and take years to leave the body.
Scientists call the chemicals per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances or PFAS. They are commonly known as forever chemicals because they don’t break down in the environment.
Despite plenty of warning signs, the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency didn’t begin testing the state’s water utilities for PFAS until August 2020. Then state and local officials downplayed the results, burying notices filled with technical jargon on government websites.
Until now the scope of PFAS problems in Illinois remained unknown. More than 8 million people in the state — 6 out of every 10 Illinoisans — get their drinking water from a utility where at least one forever chemical has been detected, according to a Chicago Tribune investigation that included a computerized analysis of test results and a review of court documents, government records and scientific studies.
“It’s disgusting and overwhelming at the same time,” said Ellen Meeks Rendulich, co-director of a grassroots environmental group in Will County, where the state found PFAS in a dozen communities, including the Criswell Court mobile home park in Joliet.
Tracy Lehr remembered that state officials came twice last year to test a well on the property. Lehr, who has lived in Criswell Court for 21 years, said she and her neighbors were never warned their water is contaminated with PFAS at levels up to 1,800 times higher than the latest federal health advisory.
“I’ve never trusted the water here,” Lehr said as she pointed to shrink-wrapped packs of bottled water stacked throughout her trailer.
Farmers on the edges of suburbia are encouraged to spread sludge on their fields by local officials, farm bureaus, university extension agents — even the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
But despite assurances the practice is safe and legal, sewage sludge is contaminating thousands of acres of northeast Illinois farmland with toxic forever chemicals, a Chicago Tribune investigation has found.
During the past six years alone, federal records show, more than 615,000 tons of sludge from the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago has been plowed into 29,000 acres near the nation’s third largest city.
Only the Greater Los Angeles area distributed more sludge to farmers during the period.
Meanwhile, researchers have concluded there is ample evidence that PFAS end up in crops and livestock.
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