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INSTAAR fellow Riley Mulhern is launching a new study to evaluate the efficacy of home treatment options for PFAS in a contaminated area outside of Spokane, Washington. (courtesy photo)

INSTAAR fellow and ���Ҵ�ý�ƽ������ professor��Riley Mulhern first visited Airway Heights, Washington in January of last year. After the trip, he summed up the emotional state of the community in a one-word title to��: “Incensed.”

Mulhern has spent his career fighting for people's access to clean water, through both research and advocacy, and this community was in the midst of a water crisis.

A filtration system guards an Airway Heights home from contaminants. (courtesy photo)

In 2017, the city of Airway Heights found PFAS, a toxic family of industrial compounds also known as forever chemicals, in their municipal water. The contamination stemmed from firefighting foam used in training exercises at a nearby airforce base over decades.�� subsequently found that many residents of Airway Heights had elevated levels of PFAS in their blood — up to 56 times the national average.��

Airway Heights municipal water has since been cleaned up, but many local residents own private wells. They are left to figure out how to test and filter the water that comes into their homes on their own, and many are concerned by a dearth of clear information about how to accomplish these tasks.

“One in seven Americans gets no protection from the federal Safe Drinking Water Act, we’re on our own,” said John Hancock, an Airway Heights local and president of��, a community action group formed around the PFAS issue.

This problem is at the center of a new investigation, funded by the�� and led by Mulhern. The study will evaluate commercially available water filtration systems’ efficacy against PFAS contamination.

“There’s a lot of confusing information online about what’s the best way to filter water, how well do these filters work, how are they certified, and so on,” Mulhern said. “So there’s a lot of value in providing third-party evidence of the real world performance of these products.”

First, Mulhern and his collaborators will test the water coming out of pre-existing home filtration systems in Airway Heights. Then, they will install filtration systems at the homes of a second cohort of participants, and monitor their water over two years.��

Many filters are already certified by third-party assessors for efficacy against specific PFAS chemicals, such as PFOS and PFOA, which are currently regulated by the EPA. Yet, many more PFAS compounds are unregulated by federal drinking water standards or have not yet been included in third-party certification testing and have unknown health consequences. With this in mind, the new study will test for a broad range of PFAS and other fluorinated organic compounds which make up the larger “class” of chemicals to which PFAS belong.��

“We are essentially trying to future-proof the public health recommendations we can make around household filter use,” Mulhern told the Water Quality Research Foundation. “Measuring the broader category of organic fluorine through household filters will provide increased confidence in these products for handling PFAS as a class, rather than just for specific types.”

When Mulhern first visited Airway Heights, he came as a volunteer. He spoke about water filtration options at a meeting organized by West Plains Water Coalition, drawing on his experiences working in North Carolina communities affected by PFAS. Now, he is happy to return with the necessary funding to offer more substantive support.

“We won the award because we have a strong foundation with the community already,” Mulhern said. “Even more important than that is that there is a community group that is so well organized and ready and willing to participate in research like this.”

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