AGU2024 Abstract- PFAS and livestock facilities: a GIS screening analysis to assess potential PFAS-livestock exposure pathways

Per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a class of thousands of chemicals linked to multiple adverse human and animal-health impacts. Dietary ingestion of PFAS through food and drink is the principal human and animal-exposure pathway. There are cases of PFAS contamination in US livestock and dairy products presumably from adjacent or nearby sources where PFAS was manufactured, used, stored, or applied as biosolids. It is not known how common such PFAS-livestock proximities are, nor the potential for exposure pathways connecting them to create risk for livestock and humans who consume livestock products. To explore this knowledge gap, we performed a GIS spatial buffer analysis across ten states to measure proximity of known and potential PFAS sources to animal-feeding operations (AFO). We emphasize that proximity alone does not determine likely presence of PFAS or of exposure pathways connecting source and receptor, but screening on proximity significantly reduces the search area and sets the stage for focusing further study and field testing. Two principal data sets were used to quantify proximity: 1) known and potential PFAS source locations obtained from United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) PFAS Analytic Tools data layers; and 2) AFO locations of permitted facilities from state and EPA sources. A third collection of landscape biogeophysical data sets such as imagery, hydrography, and topography from EPA, USGS and ESRI sources was used to visually assess likelihood of hydrologic connectivity between potential sources and receptors. We report on the spatial distribution of AFOs and animals in relation to known and potential PFAS sources and discuss how landscape and data factors affect the interpretation of these patterns. The proposed screening methodology can be applied to other states and regions across the US to support assessment of potential livestock exposure to PFAS.

Impact/Purpose

Per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a class of thousands of chemicals linked to multiple adverse human and animal-health impacts. Dietary ingestion of PFAS through food and drink is the principal human and animal-exposure pathway. There are cases of PFAS contamination in US livestock and dairy products presumably from adjacent or nearby sources where PFAS was manufactured, used, stored, or applied as biosolids. It is not known how common such PFAS-livestock proximities are, nor the potential for exposure pathways connecting them to create risk for livestock and humans who consume livestock products. To explore this knowledge gap, we performed a GIS spatial buffer analysis across ten states to measure proximity of known and potential PFAS sources to animal-feeding operations (AFO). We emphasize that proximity alone does not determine likely presence of PFAS or of exposure pathways connecting source and receptor, but screening on proximity significantly reduces the search area and sets the stage for focusing further study and field testing. We report on the spatial distribution of AFOs and animals in relation to known and potential PFAS sources and discuss how landscape and data factors affect the interpretation of these patterns. The proposed screening methodology can be applied to other states and regions across the US to support assessment of potential livestock exposure to PFAS.

Citation

Pilant, D., N. Cardona, T. Minich, L. Hutchens, AND Vasu Kilaru. AGU2024 Abstract- PFAS and livestock facilities: a GIS screening analysis to assess potential PFAS-livestock exposure pathways. AGU24 Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C., DC, December 09 - 13, 2024.