By Shereen Siewert
State officials on Wednesday announced a new PFAS-based consumption advisory for fish found in Lake Wausau.
The advisory, also impacting the Stevens Point Flowage, comes in the wake of a study published this month in Environmental Research which found that eating a single serving of freshwater fish each year could have the same effect as drinking water heavily polluted with PFAs for an entire month.
Researchers calculated that eating one fish in a year equated to ingesting water with PFOS at 48 parts per trillion, or ppt, for one month. The compound known as PFOS was responsible for about 74 percent of the contamination found.
The study, which evaluated hundreds of fish samples collected nationwide from 2013 to 2015, is the first to connect fish consumption to blood levels of PFAS, though fish consumption has been identified for years as a potential exposure path for PFAS. According to reporting from The Hill, researchers first identified such contamination in 1979 from fish in Tennessee.
Environmental Working Group scientists found the median amounts of PFAS in freshwater fish were 280 times greater than forever chemicals detected in some commercially caught and sold fish.
Scott Faber, EWG’s senior vice president for government affairs, called the results “breathtaking.”
“Eating one bass is equivalent to drinking PFOS-tainted water for a month,” said Faber, in a prepared statement.
Scientists say the findings of widespread contamination of fish in rivers and streams across the country further emphasizes the need to end industrial discharges of PFAS.
DNR officials released a statement Wednesday announcing that elevated levels of PFOS (perfluorooctane sulfonate), a type of PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), were found in several fish species sampled from both Lake Wausau and the Stevens Point Flowage. The following consumption guidelines are in effect for the Wausau Dam downstream to the Schofield Dam and Rothschild Dam, including the Big Rib River until it flows under Hwy 29.
