Wednesday, October 8, 2025 - Communities along the coast are facing two threats: rising seas and chemical contamination. Scientists have shown that seawater intrusion is pushing PFAS deeper into aquifers that are used for drinking water. In coastal areas where seawater is already putting strain on groundwater, the extra mobility of these forever chemicals is a new and unforeseen threat. PFAS have been used for decades in firefighting foams, industrial coatings, and consumer goods. Now, they are turning up in wells that are far away from places where they are known to be contaminated. Researchers claim that when seawater moves onshore, it pushes out groundwater and makes PFAS plumes move closer to where people live. The salt water also affects the chemistry of the sediments below the surface, which makes PFAS that were stuck there break down and move around again. This combination makes a pollution front that moves slowly but steadily and threatens whole coastal communities. People who get their water from private wells are generally the first to detect changes in water quality, but testing for PFAS is expensive and not done very often. Environmentalists are warning that these results show a substantial cancer risk from PFAS contaminated water that has mostly been ignored in plans to adapt to climate change along the coast. In response, several homeowners and cities have hired a PFAS water contamination lawyer to find out if federal infrastructure money or coastal protection programs can be utilized to help with the cleaning.
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) says that seawater has already gotten into hundreds of coastal aquifers in the United States, and this process is likely to speed up as sea levels rise. The EPA says that mixing saltwater with groundwater changes its pH and ionic strength, which makes some pollutants, like PFAS, more soluble and mobile. In places that are already polluted by industry or the military, this implies that chemicals that have been buried in sediment for a long time may suddenly start moving again. Tests done in coastal areas of California, Florida, and the Carolinas have discovered higher levels of PFAS many miles inland from where they were first released. Water companies in those areas are putting in more complex filtering systems, but experts say that prevention will be much cheaper than fixing things after the fact. Recently, policymakers are being told to include chemical pollution mapping in their plans to make coastal areas more resilient. Until recently, these plans have mostly been about flooding and erosion. Environmental engineers are also trying out subterranean barriers and reactive filters to stop PFAS plumes from getting to drinking water wells. It gets even worse because it's hard to get rid of seawater and PFAS once they mingle underground. Regulators want to see coordinated monitoring activities that keep an eye on both pollutants at the same time so that they can better predict how coastal aquifers will behave in the next decades.
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