Ali Ling, assistant professor of civil engineering at the University of St. Thomas School of Engineering, wrote an op-ed for MinnPost on how society should be spending money on needed infrastructure.
From the story:
Everyone deserves clean water. It’s integral to health and society as we know it. But water is not simply clean or not clean – it’s a sliding scale that depends on many factors. ...
We absolutely have the technology to make drinking water as clean as we want it. But funding for drinking water is limited, and any money we as a society spend on PFAS in drinking water is money we can’t spend elsewhere. In places with high levels of PFAS that cause immediate health risks, there should absolutely be treatment. The picture gets more cloudy when PFAS levels are low.
Are there communities investing in PFAS treatment that could better achieve “cleaner” water by investing in infrastructure? Or by removing contaminants that present higher health risks in that water source? We don’t know the answer for most systems yet, but it’s a question we should be asking.
