‘Bloodletting’ has been recommended to residents of Jersey, one of the Channel Islands, as a way to reduce high concentrations of “forever chemicals” in their blood after tests showed some have levels that could lead to health problems.
Private drinking water supplies on the island, which is south of England, were polluted by the use – at the local airport – of firefighting foams containing PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), which were manufactured by the US multinational 3M.
PFAS, a family of more than 10 000 chemicals, can build up in the body and are linked to conditions like kidney and bladder cancer, thyroid disease and immune deficiency, reports The Guardian.
Bloodletting draws blood from a vein in measured amounts. It is safe and the body replenishes the blood naturally, but it must be repeated until clean.
“I just want this out of my body. I don’t want to end up with bladder cancer,” said Sarah Simon, one of 88 residents of the polluted area in whose blood the tests found high levels of PFAS.
In response to the blood results, the government established an independent PFAS scientific advisory panel to advise public policy.
The panel’s first report recommended that the government should look at offering bloodletting to affected residents.
“Studies show that this is an effective way to lower levels of PFAS in blood,” said Ian Cousins, one of the panel members, though he added that there were no guarantees the process would prevent or cure diseases associated with the chemicals.
The therapy costs about £100 000 upfront and then as much as £200 000 a year to treat 50 people. The panel is also considering the benefit of the drug cholestyramine, which a study has shown reduces PFAS in blood more quickly and cheaply, albeit with possible side effects.
The government says it plans to launch a clinical service by early 2025.
Contamination persisted on the island for decades. “We know they started to use 3M’s firefighting foam in the 1960s and then ramped up in the 1990s in weekly fire training exercises, after which foam started to appear in nearby streams,” said Jeremy Snowdon, a former Jersey airport engineer who drank contaminated water for years.
He has measured elevated levels of PFAS in his own blood and has high cholesterol.
Jersey discovered PFAS in groundwater in the mid-1990s. 3M met officials from island about their firefighting foams in September 2000 and stopped making the product at about the same time.
It was not until 2006, however, that residents living in St Ouen’s Bay, part of the “plume area” affected by PFAS contamination, were moved to mains water supplies.
“Why did they allow us to keep drinking the well water all that time?” said Graeme Farmer, who lived next to the airport in the 1990s with his family.
Farmer has multiple myeloma, a type of leukaemia linked to PFAS exposure in some studies. He said doctors had taken a bone marrow sample to assess the cancer’s progression and found it to have been extremely slow, indicating it started around 1998.
His father developed kidney and bladder cancer around the same time, reinforcing their belief that the illnesses had been caused by drinking polluted water.
Graeme Farmer is among the cohort of plume area residents offered blood tests by the state. Tests on 88 islanders showed that 70% of them had levels of perfluorohexanesulphonic acid (PFHxS) above safe thresholds, potentially affecting brain development and thyroid function. More than 30% had elevated levels of perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS), a possible carcinogen, and 18% had high levels of the carcinogen perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA).
All of these persistent, bioaccumulative compounds are now banned under the Stockholm convention.
PFAS contamination has also affected public water supplies. Jersey Water stopped using the most polluted borehole more than 15 years ago, but only ceased using five other contaminated sources in 2022. All of its reservoirs contain PFAS deemed to be at medium risk levels.
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