Guardian Drinking water containing dangerously high levels of toxic chemicals has been pumped into the homes of more than 1,000 people, the Guardian can reveal. Cambridge Water has admitted it removed a supply containing four times the legal limit of perfluorooctane sulphonate (PFOS) from the homes of customers in south Cambridgeshire in June last year. But the 1,080 customers living in Stapleford and Great Shelford were never informed that they had been exposed. The company has not revealed for how long the water had been tainted.
PFOS is a man-made chemical that has been associated with increased cholesterol, low birthweight and suppressed immune response. The chemical was widely used in firefighting foams from the late 1960s until the early 2000s in large quantities at airfields and firefighting training centres.
Dubbed “forever chemicals” because they are designed never to break down in the environment, the substances can percolate through the ground for years, reaching drinking water aquifers.
Jamie DeWitt, professor of pharmacology and toxicology at East Carolina University in the US, said: “People who have been consistently consuming water at [these levels] will have increased risk of certain types of diseases that have been linked to epidemiological studies … including changes in cholesterol … [and] reduced vaccine antibody responses, which is concerning because we really need our immune system to be working really well right now.”
The aquifer supplying the affected houses, close to Duxford airfield, was found to have PFOS levels at almost 400 nanograms per litre (ng/l) of water – four times the Drinking Water Inspectorate’s limit.