COCOA BEACH, Fla. – Workers grabbed more samples Tuesday of sewage, well and reclaimed water in Cocoa Beach, in yet another round of tests for chemicals linked to local cancer cluster fears, to find out where the highest levels of the compounds originate.
Workers from SGS North America Inc. are gathering samples from 19 sites in Cocoa Beach's sewer service area, including six groundwater wells, eight sewage samples and five reuse and surface water sites. They also pulled samples from where Port Canaveral's sewage flows to the Cocoa Beach's system, News 6 partner Florida Today reported.
The two compounds of greatest concern have not been found in any drinking water in Brevard County, and the beachside drinking water comes from mainland sources.
But the chemicals have been found at high levels in the groundwater at Patrick Air Force Base and at much lower levels in groundwater and wastewater in the Cocoa Beach and Satellite Beach areas.
What Cocoa Beach does next once it gets the latest test results has yet to be determined.
"Everything is speculative now," said Scott Barber, director of the city's Water Reclamation Department.
Earlier this month, a day after the city of Satellite Beach announced it found cancer-causing chemicals in three test wells, Cocoa Beach samples showed the same fluorinated compounds in its groundwater at levels as much as six times higher than in neighboring Satellite Beach. The high concentrations were discovered in water used to irrigate Cocoa Beach's city golf course.
The chemicals, perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), were widely used in fire extinguishing foams, including at Patrick Air Force Base until a few years ago. The chemicals were also used in pesticides, Teflon coatings and a litany of consumer and industrial products. Their use has been phased out but the compounds remain in the environment for decades and are not regulated.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has yet to set a regulatory limit for the compounds. In 2016, the agency published a voluntary health advisory for them, warning that long-term exposure to the chemicals at levels above 70 parts per trillion, total, could increase risk of cancer and other illnesses. One part per trillion is roughly the equivalent of a single grain of sand in an Olympic-sized swimming pool.
But other studies have shown the chemicals endanger human health at far lower levels.
Cocoa Beach's consultant previously had measured combined levels of the two fluorinated compounds at 248.3 parts per trillion in a well at the northern end of the city's golf course; 129.6 parts per trillion at a second well on the golf course near the Banana River; 430.1 parts per trillion where Patrick Air Force Base sewage flows into the city's sewer system; 284.4 parts per trillion at the city sewer plant's discharge; and 177.2 parts per trillion where all the sewage, including Patrick's, flows into the city's sewer plant.
While Cocoa Beach's drinking water comes from sources on the mainland, the latest discovery of the toxic chemicals increases concerns that the contamination of the barrier island's water table could be more widespread than originally feared with bigger health implications.
Of 21 fluorinated chemicals tested for at Brevard's 13 beach-side public schools, 20 of the chemicals were not detected. But the tests did find a chemical called perfluorobutanoic acid (PFBA) at the nine beach-side schools on Melbourne's water system, located south of Pineda Causeway. PFBA is a breakdown product of chemicals used in paper food packaging, stain-resistant fabrics, carpets and in the manufacturing of photographic film.
Retests to validate the results at Satellite High are a expected in a few weeks, district officials said, because that school tested the highest, 12 parts per trillion.
No schools on Cocoa's water system had PFBA.
The local water testing came after a Jacksonville oncologist, who's also a cancer survivor and Satellite High School grad, questioned whether her illness and the cancers others in the Satellite Beach area constitute a significant cancer cluster.
Cocoa Beach is testing the following sample locations:
- Plant Influent
- Influent 24 hr. composite sample (WWTP)
- Lift station #17 Shearwater Drive Satellite Beach
- PAFB Vault sewer
- LS#3 S. 13th Street
- LS#10 Banana River Blvd.
- LS# 5 Belt Road
- Port main lift station
- Reuse /Surface water
- Plant effluent
- Effluent 24 hr. composite sample (WWTP)
- Reuse North distribution line
- Reuse South distribution line
- GC pond discharge point into the Banana River (surface water)
- Groundwater
- Golf Course Monitoring Well #3
- Golf Course MW #4
- MW #2 outside Public Works/WRD complex
- June Drive artesian well
- Lori Wilson Park well
- Brevard Avenue property well