Woman grew up playing in creek near Scott AFB. Did chemical exposure cause her cancer?
Cathy Lantz was just 21 years old when she entered a lead-lined room to swallow a radioactive pill, the only hope in 1993 of killing any remaining cancer that had inexplicably formed in her thyroid.
Lantz, who grew up on Scott Air Force Base with her family, had discovered a lump in her neck the prior year. After testing for cancer, doctors swiftly brought her in for surgery to remove the tumor.
At age 50, Lantz is still cancer-free, but doctors never knew what caused her illness. Thyroid cancer is relatively rare to begin with, and even rarer in young people. Though it has become slightly more common since the 1990s, there was only about one case per 100,000 people under the age of 20 in the United States in 2019, according to data from the National Cancer Institute.
“The only thing the endocrinologist said was, ‘This is cancer of 40-year-old women, not 20-year-olds,’” said Lantz, who now lives in Belleville.
Lantz’s mother had her suspicions. After her daughter’s diagnosis, Lantz’s mother, Diane, told her she had received a letter from the military saying there were high levels of carcinogens in the water on base when they lived there from 1978 to 1986.
“She would always say, ‘I’ll bet you that’s what caused your cancer,’” said Lantz, who has no family history of cancer.
As a child, Lantz not only drank from the tap, but she played frequently in Ash Creek, the stream that runs alongside military housing on the west side of Scott AFB. Her father, a carpenter for the 375th Civil Engineer Squadron, was stationed there.
“I was a bit of a tomboy. I played in ditches, caught toads and crawdads in the creek and such,” Lantz said. “It was just everything I knew.”
In 2020, nearly 30 years after Lantz’ cancer diagnosis, the U.S. Department of Defense disclosed to the public that firefighting foam containing the harmful chemicals, known as PFAS, had been washing into the ground surrounding the base. The Air Force and firefighters in general use the foam on fires that can’t be put out with just water, such as jet fuel or oil fires.
The military has identified PFAS at hundreds of military installations, and the Department of Defense continues to pay for research into an alternative firefighting foam. But an effective alternative has yet to be developed, and the military still uses PFAS foam in actual aviation fires. In training, they now use a less effective PFAS-free alternative.
The bad news is that the foam has been in use by the military since the 1970s, and these chemicals don’t go anywhere.
PFAS are known as “forever chemicals” because they build up in the environment and in our bodies without breaking down. When they build up to high levels, they can be toxic and make people sick, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Lantz is one of countless Americans who may have been exposed to dangerous levels of PFAS but have no way of proving it caused an illness. The Air Force focused on wells surrounding Scott AFB after they disclosed contamination there.
Ash Creek isn’t used for drinking water and the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency wasn’t aware of any PFAS sampling done on the creek, a spokesperson for the agency said. But if it was contaminated when Lantz played there, it could have been a source of exposure.
Decades of academic and trade research links PFAS to thyroid disease, low birth weight, reduced responsiveness to vaccines, increased cholesterol, liver damage, kidney cancer and testicular cancer. Yet the chemicals are still mostly unregulated throughout the United States.
The Illinois EPA recently sampled drinking water at 1,017 community water systems statewide and detected PFAS in 12.4% of them. Of the 126 locations with detectable PFAS, 58 had amounts above a guidance level set by the state. In southwestern Illinois, PFAS was detected in eight systems at levels above the state threshold.
Just because PFAS wasn’t detected or is below the state safety level doesn’t mean the water doesn’t contain harmful PFAS chemicals, said Erik Olson, former general counsel for the U.S. Senate committee that reports on environment and pollution.
“I’ve seen sometimes states lead people to believe there’s no problem because the level of PFAS found in people’s drinking water is lower than state advisory level,” said Olson, who now directs health, food and drinking water protection policy for the Natural Resources Defense Council. “If the drinking water my family is drinking contains anywhere close to these advisory levels or above, I’m definitely worried about it.”
Illinois issued an advisory warning residents about the chemicals, but the environmental agency is still developing enforceable water standards, said John Kim, the agency’s director.
Even once the state does release guidelines, possibly by the fall, it won’t eliminate the threat. PFAS are present in numerous household goods and in food as well as water.
First developed in the 1940s, the chemicals are used widely in consumer goods for their water- and stain-resistant properties. They’re the reason waterproof shoes keep your feet dry, why Scotchgard-treated carpets don’t stain and why some nonstick pans should be thrown away when scratched.
PFAS travel easily through the environment and can seep into groundwater from products like fast food wrappers and cosmetics breaking down in landfills. They can be in the air from manufacturing releases. Infants can ingest the chemicals by touching products with PFAS and putting their hands in their mouths or from breastfeeding.
The companies that created and used these chemicals have known for decades they are harmful, said Jaime Honkawa, a member of the National PFAS Contamination Coalition. The organization is a grassroots coalition of people across the country whose communities have been impacted by PFAS pollution.
Over the past 80 years, increased levels have built up in the environment and in our bodies because of deceptive practices by manufacturers that allowed the chemicals to be used, Honkawa said.
“We’re talking tobacco-level wrong,” Honkawa said.
Until the state or federal government regulates PFAS or manufacturers stop using them, it’s up to individuals to take action.
What are PFAS and who’s at risk?
PFAS – or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances – is the collective term that refers to a group of more than 4,700 types of man-made chemicals.
The chemicals were first mass produced in the U.S. in the early 1950s by the manufacturing conglomerate 3M. Within the next few years, the chemical company DuPont began using it to make Teflon for nonstick pans. Within a decade, 3M launched its Scotchgard brand. Not long after, 3M helped the military develop firefighting foam containing PFAS.
By the 1970s and 1980s, 3M and the military discovered the chemicals were dangerous to human health and the environment. As early as 1963, 3M knew PFAS were toxic, according to a manual from the company. In 1966, the Food and Drug Administration rejected DuPont’s request to use PFAS as a food additive because of concerning effects of the chemicals on the liver.
The federal Environmental Protection Agency didn’t issue a warning and guidance levels on PFAS until 2016.
The two most common and researched kinds of PFAS – PFOA and PFOS – are no longer manufactured in the U.S, although companies abroad may still use them in making goods that could be imported into the U.S. American companies use alternative PFAS in their production, but those alternatives haven’t been proven safe.
Though the two common PFAS chemicals are out of use, they persist throughout the environment. Of the more than 1,000 water systems sampled in Illinois, 120 systems detected those PFOA and PFOS.
While PFAS are virtually everywhere, some people are exposed to higher levels compared to the average consumer, putting them at greater risk.
People who work around PFAS, such as industrial workers or firefighters, might be at greater risk of getting sick, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. It could be a municipal firefighter or someone who works at an airport or Air Force base. Fire-resistant gear worn by firefighters also contains PFAS.
Ayesha Khan is a Nantucket, Massachusetts-based member of the National PFAS Contamination Coalition. Her husband was diagnosed with testicular cancer at the age of 38 in 2019 after serving 15 years as a firefighter. Khan, a stay-at-home mom of two, started researching cancer in firefighters and came across information about PFAS. She’d never heard of it before.
“I thought I was crazy,” Khan said. “I thought I couldn’t be discovering this. Turns out I wasn’t discovering it. It’s just nobody had told me about it.”
Khan can’t prove PFAS caused her husband’s cancer. Testicular cancer is most common in men between the ages of 15 and 39, according to the National Cancer Institute. But she feels like consistent exposure to PFAS couldn’t have helped.
“I was like, there has to be a mistake somewhere because everything we buy is safe and has to go through really strict regulations because we live in America. I believed that,” Khan said. “The first six months I just kept waiting to be wrong, but the weight of the information was so much that it got very hard to dismiss it. It started to become clear that this was intentional for the reason of profit.”
“It was extremely disturbing because the people who are feeling those effects are people who are just regular people. It’s our firefighters. It’s our military officers. It’s our people who are our bravest, and it almost feels like we’ve let them down.”
PFAS containment efforts in the US, Illinois
Though the national Environmental Protection Agency has known that PFAS are carcinogens since the early 2000s, “they basically did nothing and took no regulatory action,” said Olson of the environmental advocacy group.
While some states, including Illinois, have taken steps to study and begin developing regulation, the federal government has yet to begin curbing the problem in a meaningful way. They’ve urged companies to stop producing and using PFAS and they’ve issued warnings to the public.
In 2016, the EPA issued an advisory suggesting the maximum amount of PFAS in drinking water a person can safely sustain over their lifetime. The advisory came after the agency sampled public water systems serving the U.S.’ biggest populations between 2013 and 2016. The EPA found high levels of PFAS across much of the country.
Though the sampling led the agency to issue an advisory, it’s not enforceable, and the agency left it up to states and water system operators to take action.
Two years later, the military detected PFAS at hundreds of installations. What had been swept under the rug for years was becoming a “five-alarm fire,” Olson said. The 2019 movie Dark Waters starring Mark Ruffalo raised further public awareness about PFAS.
The federal government is just starting to catch up.
Last fall, the EPA announced it would regulate PFOA and PFOS, the two chemicals no longer in production in the U.S. The agency’s research led it to recognize the amount it had said was safe in 2016 was thousands of times too high.
The EPA “has made final determinations” to regulate the two contaminants, and will be “moving forward to implement” a national drinking water regulation for PFAS in general, according to regulatory documents published online last fall.
A meeting scheduled for May 6 was canceled.
U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin visited Scott Air Force Base in 2020 when the Department of Defense disclosed PFAS contamination there. He has since pushed for federal funding to clean up pollution from the chemicals.
“The pervasiveness of PFAS is nothing short of a public health crisis,” Durbin said in an emailed statement to the BND. “Every Illinoisan deserves clean water coming from their taps, and that begins with mitigating PFAS contamination in our water systems.”
Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul filed suit against 3M in March, claiming the company improperly handled PFAS at its Cordova plant in northeastern Illinois on the Mississippi River. Testing there revealed groundwater contamination under the around the plant and in the river.
“For decades, 3M has been aware of the dangers of PFAS, or ‘forever chemicals.’ Despite scientific evidence generated by its own research, 3M downplayed or denied the health and environmental hazards connected to PFAS, and even promoted these toxic chemicals as being safe to manufacture,” Raoul said in a news release. “This lawsuit is an important step toward accountability and protecting the surrounding environment and public health.”
Yet unless the federal government issues enforceable regulations across the entire country, it’s up to the states. The guidance on safe PFAS values varies wildly thus far, said Katie Pelch, a professor of biostatistics and epidemiology at the University of North Texas. Pelch specializes in part on the intersection of policy and science in PFAS water drinking standards.
“Guidance values differ across the different states, and different states have different processes for how they are developed,” said Pelch, who also works as a contract scientist for the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Illinois did its review of water systems to “gain background data and get a good statewide assessment of what kind of PFAS contamination levels we would be seeing,” said Kim, director of the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency.
People shouldn’t panic about their water, he said. But the study will help the agency take next steps in developing a drinking water standard for PFAS.
“We don’t want people not to drink the water that is meeting all regulatory standards,” Kim said. “Be vigilant and be concerned about what you’re drinking but take faith that the system is in compliance with existing regulations. That’s the most we can do right now, but we’re always looking to improve and we’re always looking to add new measures whenever find the justification to do that.”
When a sample came back positive for PFAS, the IEPA went back for another sample to confirm. That would allow the agency to decide if “immediate steps needed to be taken.”
The state issued a health advisory in January 2021 setting the state’s initial recommended level of acceptable PFAS in drinking water. It’s not enforceable, but it “gives us a number to use as a guideline,” Kim said.
PFAS in southwestern Illinois
The agency provides an interactive map showing PFAS levels in locations sampled, but the numbers might not mean much to residents of communities with red flags on their towns because they’re not attached to any action either consumers or leaders need to take.
In southwestern Illinois, the following towns had detectable PFAS:
Collinsville – Customers were notified on the city website and the city began quarterly monitoring in the third quarter of 2021.
East St. Louis – Customer notification posted on the Illinois American Water website on March 17. Quarterly monitoring began the first quarter 2022.
East Alton – The system has not provided documentation of customer notification and has not begun quarterly monitoring.
Wood River – Customers were notified on the city’s website on March 23 and system monitoring will begin in the second quarter of 2022.
Eldred (Jersey County) – Customers were notified on March 24 with a village handout and a handout was posted at village hall. Quarterly monitoring has not begun.
Hardin (Calhoun County) – Customers were notified on June 8, 2021 and the system is monitoring quarterly.
Water systems in those communities had PFAS above the state’s guidance level, but they’re not required to do anything. For now, all the government can do is tell people PFAS is there.
Illinois’ standards are stricter than those set by the federal Environmental Protection Agency.
“It was too high a level of contamination than we were comfortable with,” Kim said.
Illinois’ standard is relatively progressive as far as acknowledging the toxicity of PFAS, Olson said. The federal government’s guidance suggests one of the chemicals, PFOA, is acceptable in drinking water at 70 parts per trillion. That means for every trillion parts of drinking water, 70 parts can safely contain PFOA, according to the standard that Olson calls “outdated.”
“As the science is coming in, we’re realizing it’s a lot more toxic than we thought,” Olson said.
Illinois set its standard at 2 parts per trillion, which is among the lowest in the country. Vermont set its standard at 20 parts per trillion while New Jersey is 14 parts per trillion.
Illinois’ draft guidance is a sign that when Illinois sets its own regulations, it could be stricter than the federal government’s, the Illinois State Bar Association wrote in a March 2021 environmental law newsletter.
The future of PFAS research could explore the exact impacts of exposure at different levels, said Pelch, the University of North Texas professor. It will also look at how PFAS can be removed from the environment and safely destroyed, and what alternatives can replace the chemicals in consumer and industrial marketplaces.
Meantime, only a handful of states have placed enforceable limits on PFAS in drinking water, and there still isn’t a federal standard.
“That leaves many people at risk of exposure,” Pelch said. “We need to move away from nonessential uses of PFAS.”
After the radioactive treatment for her thyroid cancer, Cathy Lantz waited almost a decade to have children. Doctors told her they could have birth defects.
She went on to become a nurse and to have two healthy sons. But Lantz never thought about looking for other people who had inexplicable diseases like her after living at Scott AFB.
“I just thought there was nothing I could do.”
