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PFAS is the subject where water treatment marketing gets least careful. We are going to try to be accurate rather than alarming, and to tell you where the honest limits of what we know are.
How Water Picks Up What Is in It
How Water Picks Up What Is in It
Water moves in a loop — it evaporates, forms clouds, falls as rain or snow, and either soaks into the ground to recharge aquifers or runs off into rivers and reservoirs.
Along the way it dissolves whatever it passes through. Some of that is natural: the calcium and magnesium that make water hard came out of rock.
The rest is ours. Industrial discharge, agricultural runoff, road salt, landfill leachate and firefighting foam all enter the same loop, and once something is in groundwater it travels. A contaminant is rarely confined to the property it started on.
What PFAS Are
What PFAS Are
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances are a large family of manufactured chemicals used since the 1940s in non-stick cookware, water-resistant fabric, food packaging, firefighting foam and hundreds of other products. They are called forever chemicals because the bond that makes them useful also makes them extremely slow to break down — in the environment, and in living things.
The EPA has set enforceable limits for several PFAS compounds in public drinking water and is continuing to develop the science behind them. The agency's own page is the place to check current figures. (See EPA overview for more information.)
Where They Come From Around Here
Where They Come From Around Here
Private wells are the exposure that goes unnoticed, because nobody is testing them unless the owner does. Documented sources near our New York service area include inactive landfills, Superfund sites, industrial properties and military installations.
The maps below are published by state and federal agencies. They are worth ten minutes if you are on a well.
National Priority List Superfund Sites
National Priority List Superfund Sites
NPL Superfund Site Boundaries (EPA Public)
This EPA content item depicts U.S. EPA superfund site boundaries intended for public use.
Embedded in this webpage 4/2/2025Item created: Feb 4, 2021 Item updated: Feb 29, 2024Lower Hudson Valley, NY & Western CT Superfund Sites
Lower Hudson Valley, NY & Western CT Superfund Sites
Superfund National Priorities List (NPL) Where You Live Map. United States Environmental Protection Agency. View Cleanups In My Community Map.
Data pulled 4/2/2025
South Carolina Superfund Sites
South Carolina Superfund Sites
Superfund National Priorities List (NPL) Where You Live Map. United States Environmental Protection Agency. View Cleanups In My Community Map.
Data pulled 4/2/2025
What Treatment Is Designed to Do
What Treatment Is Designed to Do
This is where we are going to be careful with our words, because the industry generally is not.
Certain filtration media — activated carbon, ion exchange resin and reverse osmosis membranes — are designed to reduce PFAS, and independent certification exists for that claim under NSF/ANSI 53 and NSF/ANSI 58. Contact time and correct sizing matter as much as the media itself; the same cartridge in an undersized housing does less.
What we will tell you is which standard a unit is certified to and which compounds that certification covers. Ask us, and we will show you the certification document for anything we quote. We will not tell you a system removes PFAS, because that is not a claim anybody can make honestly about a residential unit.
How to Find Out What You Have
How to Find Out What You Have
On public water — your utility's annual report covers what is regulated and tested.
On a private well — you need a certified laboratory. Our field equipment does not test for PFAS and no home test kit is adequate for it.
In New York, private well owners in six pilot counties can have PFAS testing done at no cost through a state program, with rebates toward treatment if results come back at or above 10 parts per trillion. More on the New York rebate program →
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