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Sean Oshima worked for two summers on Songbird Farm in Unity, making some of his happiest memories. Five years later in 2022, the organic farm discovered PFAS contamination in its soil and water.
Oshima worried he had been exposed, but he hesitated to get his blood tested for the “forever chemicals” linked to diseases including kidney and testicular cancer. At the urging of his mother and the farm’s owners, he finally did so in December.
“Initially I thought, ‘Maybe I’ve been affected,’” said Oshima, 31, a Portland-based musician. “But it’s kind of nice not to know.”
In the fall, a state program sent out nearly 700 letters to people whose wells tested high for PFAS, encouraging them to get tested and offering state help in paying for tests. But the effort has been slow to start, with the state collecting only 164 positive tests as of mid-February, likely a fraction of those who have been exposed to high PFAS levels.
Reluctance and other barriers to testing, including lack of insurance, have meant that few Mainers are getting tested even after the statewide push that is aimed at tracking health conditions linked to exposure and finding new hotspots for contamination.
“Some people are really interested in getting tested,” said Dr. Rachel Criswell, a family physician and PFAS health expert at Redington-Fairview General Hospital in Skowhegan. “And some people are saying, ‘I don’t want to know if something’s going to kill me. There’s nothing I can do about it. The damage has been done,’ that kind of thing.”
Maine officials have identified more than 90 farms that have unsafe levels of PFAS. In 2022, lawmakers approved a $60 million PFAS Fund aimed at helping farmers and others whose land was affected by sewage sludge spreading, the now-banned practice that began in the 1980s and unwittingly caused widespread pollution.
Most of Criswell’s patients are from central Maine, where PFAS exposure through sludge-spreading was more common than other areas of the state. Only about 10% of at-risk individuals in her practice opt for testing, she said.
PFAS exposure is important information for future treatment, similar to knowing genetics or a history of smoking, Criswell said. If someone has been exposed, she could recommend annual screening for cholesterol, thyroid issues or kidney cancer.
Others want to get tested but have hit hurdles. Lisa Toles, 61, a migrant farmworker who has worked at contaminated farms and greenhouses throughout central Maine for 20 years, received one of the mailers and immediately wanted to get tested.
“The letter I got was a complete and utter shock. No one told me there was PFAS in the area where I worked,” she said. “I picked and planted things and moved old sludge piles by hand that had old toilet paper sticking out of them. No one told us that it was a forever chemical pile.”
But participating in the program requires health insurance or a doctor’s signature authorizing the bloodwork. Toles, who is uninsured and said she can’t afford to visit the doctor, has waited. Her work has slowed as farms have closed or paused operations after learning their fields were polluted with PFAS, she said. She just got a job with a call center and will have insurance for the first time in a decade.
“I want to know what my numbers are to see what I need to do proactively to monitor my health,” she said, of her plans to get tested when her insurance kicks in a month from now.
Nearly 30% of blood tests reported to the CDC as of mid-February were considered high. The letters advertising state help for testing went out months after the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention started to track blood tests that are positive for PFAS regardless of whether they came from the state-sponsored program.
Insurers appear to be covering more testing costs than state officials initially expected. The state allocated $1.3 million for blood testing but has only received just over $1,300 in bills so far.
Insurance is one reason why state officials aren’t able to track the total number of people who have gotten blood tests. If a plan covers the entire test, the fund doesn’t get an invoice, Beth Valentine, director of the PFAS Fund, said. The Maine CDC does not collect data on people whose tests came back negative.
The state has made recent efforts to expand testing, Valentine said. In January, pre-approved patients could get tested at the annual agricultural fair in Augusta. The PFAS Fund is also in the process of updating testing requirements to include more types of farmworkers and extending the period when people can request a test. Criswell also believes that people who initially received high tests will take advantage of the state program as they seek follow-up testing.
Despite his initial resistance, Oshima now urges others to find out whether they’ve been exposed. After his test came back positive in December, his doctor prescribed him an old remedy for lowering cholesterol called cholestyramine.
After taking the drug for three months, his PFAS levels plummeted by 70% to below the threshold for a high test.
“Even though there’s still a lot of question marks [around PFAS], it feels good to do something about it,” Oshima said.
Lori Valigra reports on the environment for the BDN’s Maine Focus investigative team. Reach her at [email protected]. Support for this reporting is provided by the Unity Foundation, a fund at the Maine Community Foundation and donations by BDN readers.
