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U.S. NEWSWednesday 27 January 2016
American Living:
Factory village’s trail of cancer leads to tap water probe
MARY ESCH
Associated Press
HOOSICK FALLS, N.Y. (AP)
— After his factory worker
father died a painful death
from kidney cancer at age
68 in 2013, Michael Hickey
made it his mission to find
out why so many people
in his hometown along the
Hoosic River were getting
sick.
Two years later, the U.S.
Environmental Protection
Agency has warned resi-
dents of Hoosick Falls not
to drink or cook with water
from municipal wells, and
a plastics plant has agreed
to install a $2 million car-
bon filtration system at the
village water treatment
plant.
Hickey’s campaign began
with suspicion about indus-
trial pollution in the factory
village near the Vermont
border. His father had
worked for 35 years at a
plant that made high-per-
formance plastics similar to
Teflon, so Hickey searched
online for “cancer” and
“Teflon.”
What he found: PFOA.
Perfluorooctanoic acid,
a water and oil repellent,
had been used since the
1940s in products including
non-stick cookware, stain-
resistant carpeting and
microwave popcorn bags.
Manufacturers agreed to
phase it out by the end of

of cancer there, particu- plant, 500 yards from the
larly rare, aggressive forms.
The 44-year-old Martinez village’s main water wells.
himself is in remission from
atypical bronchial carci- “Saint-Gobain Perfor-
noid tumor, a rare form of
lung cancer. mance Plastics is com-
When the two men sug-
gested testing the village mitted to helping the vil-
water supply, part-time
Mayor David Borge at first lage of Hoosick Falls with
refused, citing state guide-
lines. New York state classi- this situation,” company
fies PFOA as an “unspeci-
fied organic contaminant” spokesman Carmen Ferri-
and doesn’t require testing
for it. gno said. While the source
The EPA has a non-enforce-
able guidance level of 400 of the PFOA contamina-
parts per trillion — roughly 4
teaspoons in enough water tion hasn’t been identified,
to fill a 10-mile string of rail
tankers. Saint-Gobain has been
Hickey used his own money
in summer 2014 to have wa- paying for bottled water
ter from his kitchen tap and
other sources tested. The for residents since Novem-
results showed PFOA at 540
ppt from Hickey’s home, ber and has agreed to pay
exceeding the EPA’s guid-
ance. Village officials sub- for filtration to remove the
sequently tested the mu-
nicipal supply and found chemical from the public
PFOA at similar levels.
Michael Hickey, left, Dr. Marcus Martinez, center, and lawyer Saint-Gobain Performance water supply, he said.
David Engel pose for a photo in Hickey’s dining room in Hoosick Plastics, part of a Paris-
Fall, N.Y. They formed the grass-roots group Healthy Hoosick based global conglomer- Hickey and Martinez, along
Water to press officials to investigate and find a solution after ate, in 1999 became the
lab tests paid for by Hickey detected the chemical PFOA in the fifth owner of a plastics fac- with Albany environmen-
municipal water supply of Hoosick Falls. tory in Hoosick Falls. It con-
ducted tests in the sum- tal lawyer David Engel,
(AP Photo/Mary Esch) mer of 2015 and reported
a PFOA level of 18,000 ppt weren’t satisfied. They
in groundwater under its
wanted people to be told
not to drink the tap water,
2015 shortly after DuPont documented that the vil- along with a full investiga-
reached a $16.5 million set- lage has an unusually high
tlement with the EPA over cancer rate, but Hickey tion and remediation.
the company’s failure to and a local doctor had
report possible health risks heard enough anecdotal Engel contacted Judith
associated with PFOA. evidence that they felt it
A scientific panel that con- should be addressed. Enck, who heads the EPA
ducted health studies as “There’s always been talk
part of a DuPont settlement around town about how region that includes New
of a West Virginia class- there’s a lot of cancer,”
action lawsuit concluded Hickey said. “When my York.
there was a “probable link” dad, who didn’t drink or
between PFOA exposure smoke, was diagnosed She issued a statement in
and kidney cancer, testicu- with kidney cancer, that
lar cancer, thyroid disease, made it more personal.” December warning resi-
high cholesterol, ulcerative Dr. Marcus Martinez, the
colitis and pregnancy-in- family doctor for many of dents not to drink or cook
duced hypertension. the village’s 3,500 residents,
In Hoosick Falls, nobody added there certainly with village water. Until
has ever scientifically seemed to be a high rate
then, state and village offi-
cials had told residents the
water was unlikely to cause
health problems.
On Jan. 14, Enck and a
panel of leading EPA sci-
entists addressed a stand-
ing-room-only crowd at
Hoosick Falls’ high school
auditorium.q