The goal of We Are Wolverine is to create a regular cadence of information and maintain transparency with residents in our home town.
Today, Wolverine Worldwide announced that it has committed $40 million to address local groundwater issues potentially connected to its legacy tannery operations.
To read the full press release, click the link below:
WOLVERINE WORLDWIDE COMMITS $40 MILLION TO COMMUNITY RESPONSE
Wolverine Worldwide will soon begin sampling approximately 100 residential wells for PFOA and PFOS in the Wolven Northeast Study Area – an area newly-established by the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) and located in the vicinity of 11 Mile Road between Wolven Avenue and Summit Avenue. Wolverine and its environmental engineers, Rose & Westra/GZA, began notifying homeowners on February 5, 2018, and sampling is expected to begin later this week. Homeowners are being provided with bottled water while waiting for their results, which we expect to be available within four weeks after sampling. We will post a map of this study area on our Maps section when one becomes available.
We will continue to keep the community updated about this issue through our blog at WeAreWolverine.com.
In our ongoing commitment to provide residents confidence in their drinking water, Wolverine Worldwide has been providing whole house filters to residents in the MDEQ-defined House Street, Jewell, and Wolven Study Areas that have confirmed test results with any detection of PFOA or PFOS. While the extent of any impacted area has not been determined, and sources are still being identified, we remain committed to the community and doing what we believe to be the right thing for our friends, family and neighbors.
To date, Wolverine has paid for the installation, testing, and maintenance of approximately 460 whole house filters, and additional installations are taking place every week. Last year, Wolverine selected the Culligan/Calgon filtration system, which relies on dual canister granular activated carbon (“GAC”) adsorption. This system has been demonstrated to effectively remove PFOA, PFOS, and other PFAS, and ensures that these compounds are not returned to the environment. The Culligan/Calgon filtration system has been used to treat water for PFAS in over 1,000 homes around the country. More information on the Culligan/Calgon filtration system can be found here.
In late November, Wolverine provided details about the operations and maintenance of the whole house filters, including the timing and process for sampling water after the installation of whole house filters.
We have now received retesting data from over 280 homes, which demonstrates that the whole house filters effectively reduce PFOA/PFOS to levels far below the EPA’s very conservative lifetime health advisory level of 70 ppt. More information about PFOA, PFOS, and this advisory level can be found in our blog post.
In our continuing efforts to share information and be transparent with the community, we wanted to provide some highlights of the retesting results:
All retesting results either have been or are in the process of being communicated to homeowners and the MDEQ. For those who have not yet received retesting results, it can take up to five weeks to receive them from the laboratory, so we appreciate the community’s patience during this process.
We will continue to keep the community updated about these results and this issue through our blog at WeAreWolverine.com. Any residents with questions are encouraged to contact us directly at (616) 866-5627 of HouseStreet@wwwinc.com
We’ve received questions from area residents whose wells have been tested for per- and polyflouroalkyl substances (PFAS) by Rose & Westra/GZA, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ), and other reputable lab services about how to interpret the results. MDEQ offers a fact sheet on this topic (click here), and we have asked our experts to provide some additional information for you. In this post you’ll find a sample well test report, along with a description of the relevant sections.
The most important information from your water testing report is in the middle section of the well report, and includes the analyte name, results, minimum reporting limit (MRL), and dilution, each of which is explained below.
Analyte Name: lists all of the PFAS compounds that were tested by the lab. The analytical labs use EPA’s modified method (EPA Method 537) to test for PFAS in your water, which provides results for 23 specific PFAS compounds.
The two PFAS compounds you should note are PFOA (perfluorooctanoic acid) and PFOS (perfluorooctane sulfonic acid). The results of PFOA and PFOS should be added together and compared to the EPA’s Lifetime Drinking Water Health Advisory Level of 70 ppt (see Result discussion, below).
Due to the pervasiveness of PFAS in a wide-range of manufacturing practices and consumer products, it is not surprising or uncommon to see trace levels of a range of other PFAS compounds in water samples.
Result: is the level of the specific PFAS compound detected in your water, listed in ng/L (which is the same thing as ppt).
PFOA and PFOS results should be added together and compared to EPA’s Drinking Water Lifetime Health Advisory Level of 70 ppt. Combined detections at or below 70 ppt are considered safe by EPA and MDHHS, and this level has a significant “safety buffer” built in, including assuming exposure for an entire lifetime, and that a pregnant or nursing woman could drink over 4 liters of water per day at 70 ppt PFOA/PFOS with no effect on developing babies and infants. For more information, please see our blog post on this topic.
None of the results from other PFAS compounds should be added together or compared to EPA’s Drinking Water Lifetime Health Advisory Level of 70 ppt. This value is only for PFOA and PFOS. In the sample well test report, then, the relevant number is 5.1 ppt of PFOA/PFOS.
ND means that the lab did not detect that PFAS compound in your water.
Additional letters like “U”, “E” or “J” may be present and are called “qualifiers”, which just means that the lab was unable to detect the PFAS, or the level was so low that it had to be estimated.
MRL: stands for Minimum Reporting Limit, which is the lowest level of that PFAS that the lab can reliably detect. These numbers may be different between different labs.
Dil.: stands for dilution. This is additional lab information that records whether the sample had to be diluted in order to reliably detect the PFAS chemical. A “1” means that the lab did not dilute the sample. Any higher number means that the same was diluted. This does NOT have any impact on how you interpret your results. The final result remains the same regardless of whether the sample was diluted or not.
We developed this blog as one way for you to hear directly from us and you’ll be hearing more from us in the coming days and weeks. West Michigan is our home and we’ve always acted responsibly and taken our obligations as part of this community personally – for over a hundred years, Wolverine has been not only a leader and contributor to this community, but we’ve also been your neighbor – that’s why we’ve taken the proactive steps we have so far and why we’re committed to seeing this through to the end. We hope you’ll follow this blog, learn about what we’re doing to make this right, and hear the other side of the story.
We Are Wolverine.