GSA Annual Meeting in Denver, Colorado, USA - 2016

Paper No. 13-1
Presentation Time: 8:00 AM

OCCURRENCE AND TRANSPORT OF POLY- AND PERFLUOROALKYL SUBSTANCES (PFAS) IN GROUNDWATER NEAR A FORMER FIRE-TRAINING AREA AND WASTEWATER DISPOSAL SITE ON CAPE COD, MASSACHUSETTS (Invited Presentation)


LEBLANC, Denis R.1, WEBER, Andrea K.2, VECITIS, Chad D.2 and BARBER, Larry B.3, (1)U.S. Geological Survey, 10 Bearfoot Rd., Northborough, MA 01532, (2)Harvard University, John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Pierce Hall 120, 29 Oxford St., Cambridge, MA 02138, (3)U.S. Geological Survey, 3215 Marine St., Boulder, CO 80303, dleblanc@usgs.gov

Poly- and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) have been used since the 1950s for many applications because of their high stability and surfactant, hydrophobic, and oleophobic properties. Contamination of groundwater by PFAS is a growing concern because of their use in industrial processes, widespread use in aqueous film-forming foams (AFFFs) for fire suppression, and presence in landfill leachate and wastewater. We are investigating a PFAS plume at the site of a former fire-training area (operated from 1958 to 1985, with AFFF use beginning in 1970) and downgradient wastewater-infiltration beds (used from 1936 to 1995) near a military base on western Cape Cod to understand the subsurface transport of PFAS. More than 100 groundwater samples were collected in 2015 from monitoring wells located along a 1-km-long transect that is aligned with the direction of groundwater flow in the glacial sand and gravel aquifer. Concentrations of PFAS compounds analyzed by LC-MS/MS were used to construct vertical profiles of the subsurface PFAS distribution. Concentrations as high as 63 micrograms per liter (µg/L) perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS) and 8 µg/L perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) were measured. The Environmental Protection Agency has established a drinking water health advisory standard of 0.070 µg/L for the sum of PFOS and PFOA concentrations. PFAS signatures in shallow groundwater near the water table indicate that the PFAS sources in the vadose zones at the fire-training area and downgradient wastewater-infiltration beds are compositionally different, suggesting that the PFAS composition in groundwater samples can be used to “fingerprint” the potential sources. The PFAS plume partly discharges into a groundwater-flow-through glacial kettle lake about 1.1 km from the fire-training area. We measured concentrations as high as 1.8 µg/L PFOS and 0.14 µg/L PFOA in groundwater samples collected from shallow wells pushed about 1 m into the lake bottom near shore. Lake-water samples collected near the discharge area had concentrations as high as 0.080 µg/L PFOS and 0.029 µg/L PFOA. Studies are underway to determine whether PFOS and PFOA are present in lake-derived groundwater downgradient from the lake.