
Viability of Hemp as a PFAS Remediation Tool Moves Forward, as Contamination Spreads
January 23, 2025 | Source: Beyond Pesticides
(Beyond Pesticides, January 23, 2025) According to reporting by Bangor Daily News, “Starting in 2025, the Mi’kmaq Nation, [Upland Grassroots], [University of Virginia], the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station and Central Aroostook Soil and Water Conservation District will use a four-year, $1.6 million EPA grant to continue hemp planting at [the former] Loring [Air Force Base] and testing potential ways to extract PFAS [per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances] from harvested hemp.” This grant will support an existing initiative led by members of the Mi’kmaq Nation to remediate this contaminated Superfund-designated land purchased from the U.S. government in 2009 based on interviews of the Nation’s Vice Chief Richard Silliboy.
PFAS, colloquially known as “forever chemicals,” persist in various petrochemical-based pesticides, chemicals, and other consumer products. Beyond Pesticides, in coordination with national coalitions and local communities, continues to act against the proliferation of PFAS and PFAS-contaminated products through grassroots organizing and litigation.
The use and associated public and environmental exposure to PFAS as pesticide active ingredients in pesticide products and a wide range of consumer products (including containers holding pesticides targeting mosquitoes and sewage sludge fertilizers) represent a grave threat as a result of their use in homes, emergency rooms, health care facilities, schools, and lawncare. The contamination extends to homes and gardens, food, water, and soil. PFAS compounds have been found to contaminate water and irrigation sources, and soils themselves — often through the use of fertilizers made from so-called “biosludge” (biosolids) from local waste treatment plants where PFAS active ingredients can end up. In addition, run-off from land treated with PFAS active ingredients, these treatment plants may discharge millions of gallons of wastewater into waterways, contaminating them; current waste and water treatment generally does not eliminate PFAS compounds from the treated effluent water.