SGO Cie de SaintGobain

By Cameron McWhirter 

New Hampshire investigators added a fourth community Wednesday to their list of places in the state where they found unsafe levels of perfluorooctanoic acid, a potentially toxic chemical, in drinking water from private wells.

The state's Department of Environmental Services said that water samples from four of 11 wells tested in Amherst, N.H., a town with a population of about 11,000 in the southern part of the state, contained the acid, known as PFOA, at levels above 100 parts per trillion. That is the starting level that New Hampshire officials consider unsafe.

Test results ranged from no traces of PFOA to 620 parts per trillion, according to a department statement. Manchester, N.H.-based Textiles Coated International Inc. operated a chemical plant in Amherst from 1985 to 2006.

New Hampshire officials have been looking for possible PFOA contamination of drinking water in areas around former and current chemical plants since February, when Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics, a subsidiary of Saint-Gobain SA of France, notified the state that it found PFOA in water at a plant in Merrimack, N.H.

A Saint-Gobain spokeswoman has said the company is cooperating with officials in their investigations.

New Hampshire officials previously found unsafe PFOA levels in wells in Merrimack, Litchfield, Manchester -- and now Amherst. They are awaiting test results from samples taken in Bedford and Londonderry, according to a state environmental department spokesman.

The state's probes into PFOA contamination follow similar investigations into PFOA in water around a former chemical plant in North Bennington, Vt., and a chemical plant in Hoosick Falls NY. PFOA-contaminated water was found in both places. Saint-Gobain operates the New York plant and used to operate the plant in North Bennington.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is expected to announce a permanent health advisory for PFOA that likely will be more stringent than a provisional advisory of 400 parts per trillion that it issued in 2009. The advisory is not a regulation that can be enforced by the EPA, but a health guideline issued for state environmental and health agencies to consider.

Edward Frechette, an engineering manager at Textiles Coated International, issued a statement Wednesday saying that the company is no longer using PFOA and the chemical was brought into the former plant in raw materials.

"TCI is fully committed to health, safety and environmental compliance," he said. "TCI will work with the [state environmental officials] to fix the problem."

Write to Cameron McWhirter at cameron.mcwhirter@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

May 11, 2016 16:13 ET (20:13 GMT)

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