1,4 Dioxane Found in Some Plaistow Residents' Drinking Water

Plaistow resident Carmen Rosado is in her kitchen, slicing Yucca Root for a dinner she’s preparing for her family.
160 (nat sound slicing)1:15 we’re making a big stew, cause my daughter everyone is coming over to eat
Rosado says cooking takes longer, and is more aggravating, because she can’t use her tap water.
Carmen1 “see now like this I’m going to have to wash it three or four times cause I have to use bottled water and I can’t use that water –SO YOU ACTUALLY HAVE TO WASH ALL YOUR VEGETABLES TOO WITH BOTTLED WATER yeah cause I don’t want to take no chances.”
On March 3rd, the Department of Environmental Services found 1,4 dioxane in the drinking water Rosado uses at her house on Shady Lane – which sits just behind the Beede Waste oil site.
The chemical -often used as a solvent- is found in paints, greases, varnishes and antifreeze among others.
Dave Gordon with DES’s Environmental Health Program says the EPA classifies it as a probable carcinogen.
166 Dave1 “meaning it causes cancer in laboratory animals mice and rats, they don’t know if it will do so in humans but to be protective they assume it will.”
It also can cause liver and kidney damage.
The amount of 1, 4 dioxane found in the Rosado’s water was eight times higher than what the state considers safe for drinking.
Carmen Rosado, who owns a few cockatiel birds, says DES immediately told her not to use the water.
“156 1:48 he just told us it was very dangerous and whatever I do, not to cook with it, not to brush my teeth with it, and not even to give the bird water.”
DES found 1, 4 Dioxane in wells that provide drinking water to 14 other homes too.
Some residents had safe amounts of the chemical, but others were provided bottled water.
Richard Pease, who manages the state’s superfund sites, says finding 1, 4 dioxane is not that surprising.
6:10 I was hoping we wouldn’t see it, but it is found with chlorinated solvents, and we have chlorinated solvents at the site, so to think it wasn’t going to be there was wishful thinking”
Pease says the chemical has recently surfaced at three other Superfund sites in the state.
DES just started testing for the chemical last year.
Until then, the technology wasn’t sophisticated enough to detect it at low levels.
Pease says unlike other volatile organic compounds found on the site that can evaporate– 1,4 dioxane tends to stay in water.
That means typical carbon filters currently treating the water, may not remove the chemical as well.
152 3:21 when we found the dioxane in the water supplies we replaced the carbon units in hopes of keeping the concentrations down to acceptable levels, and thus far it has.
165 1:16 (I just wish it would go away)
That’s Plaistow resident Philip Gagne, who owns a duplex where 1,4 dioxane was detected at levels almost five times higher than what the state considers safe.
He lived in the duplex for 11 years before moving out and says the latest discovery is frustrating.
165 3:30 I’ve been watching the levels of things over the years, hoping it would be going away by now but it really hasn’t gone away, I know they’re in the process of getting ready to start cleaning up over there, it just seems like it’s taking a long time to get it cleaned up.
Carbon filters were replaced in contaminated wells.
Since then, tests have shown dioxane levels dropped to safe standards.
And DES environmental health officials point out that the state’s safe drinking water standard for dioxane is one of the strictest in the country.
Under those standards, residents would have to drink the water for 70 years to have only a one and a million chance of getting cancer.
For NHPR news, I’m Amy Quinton.