WESTFIELD—The community group Westfield Residents Advocating For Themselves (WRAFT) is collecting signatures for a petition that they hope will increase federal involvement in the issue of water contamination in the city.
WRAFT has begun gathering signatures on a petition requesting state-level politicians advocate for polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) blood serum testing and biomonitoring through the Center for Disease Control (CDC) Agency for Toxic Substances Disease Registry (ATSDR). According to WRAFT founding member Kristen Mello, if enough signatures are collected, the petition is expected to go to Senators Edward Markey and Elizabeth Warren, Rep. Richard Neal and Gov. Charlie Baker.
The group began its efforts for signatures last Wednesday during their public panel discussion on the city’s water, collecting 55 signatures during the event, and the petition also became available to sign online yesterday.
“If we got people to understand the health effects a little more, the blood tests would seem more important,” Mello said.
Previously, WRAFT began another petition, which Mello said was directed to request involvement from state-level agencies. That petition has over 100 signatures.
According to Mello, a myriad of health risks and issues have possibly been linked to PFAS, including cancer, thyroid issues, liver conditions, elevated cholesterol in children and ulcerative cholitis.
Mello said that the blood serum testing is desired to see what the levels of residents are currently, not to find what occurred previously.
“I understand it won’t tell you how much you got from the water but it will give us an idea to how much is in our system and how worried we should be as to the health effects,” she said.
Mello said that WRAFT wants the petition to spur requests for ATSDR to come to the area and work with state agencies on a site investigation related to PFAS in the city’s water.
Two of the city’s public water wells have been offline due to elevated levels of PFAS, also interchangeably referred to as perfluorinated compounds (PFCs), in January 2016 after the Environmental Protection Agency lowered the lifetime advisory limit exposure of the compounds to 70 ppt.
The city has since been working on building a granular carbon-activated filtration system to treat the two city wells.
For more information on WRAFT and their petition, you can follow the links at their Action Network page.
