To the Editor:
The Department of Public Health and the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection have had an abysmal record of responding to my concerns, Re “Farmer Fights State Officials Over Unregulated PFAS From Nearby Waste Incinerators” (News, June 29).
I was the first person in the 80k Uncas Health District to PFAS test his or her blood and, nothing personal against the medical industrial complex, but if the departments are not familiar with your issue they tend to ignore you. I speak from a family experience with Lyme disease almost forty years ago that basically led us to ask for a Lyme disease test. PFAS is at the same stage of discovery as Lyme Disease was back in the 1980s.
I have to laugh at the DPH response to a physician recommendation (i.e. notify Yale School of Environmental Health). I did do that and received a response they had nobody to recommend. I ended going to Skowhegan, Maine to consult with a physician who has patients with PFAS blood levels in the multi-thousands from sewage sludge contamination of their water, soils, food and, important to this story, milk.
Why doesn’t someone answer the fact that polluted farm cow’s milk in Maine consists mainly of two PFAS forever chemicals. They happen to be PFOS and PFHxS which for some reason cows tend to bioaccumulate like fish also accumulate PFOS ( thus the widespread do-not-eat-freshwater-fish advisories in Connecticut).
Tell me it is just a coincidence that I drank my farm’s raw milk for all of the years the ReWorld incinerator has been in operation since 1991 and you guessed it PFOS and PFHxS are almost 90% of my total blood level.
Of course, the department instead says I have sent numerous emails, so many that I overwhelm them, instead of answering 90% of my questions. I can guarantee that my knowledge of PFAS exceeds the state people who are dealing with me. They have admitted they are afraid of giving me the wrong information. It took them about a month to answer my inquiries about a Environmental and Occupational Health Assessment that they admit was disbanded years before. Talk about something rotten in the state of Connecticut.
There is a three-year update coming in December to what I affectionately call the CT PFAS INACTION PLAN. I may only have three minutes but I can guarantee my testimony will be quite the show. Stay tuned.
Jerry Grabarek
Town of Preston
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Grabarek, a Democrat, serves as selectman for the town of Preston