EGLE, Cyclopure, AECOM take part in PFAS test study in Cadillac

CADILLAC — Twenty homes in the Cadillac area were tested for PFAS by three different organizations this week as part of a comparability study.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, testing was done by representatives of the Michigan PFAS Action Response Team, Cyclopure and AECOM.

MPART Departmental Analyst Miranda Triolet said they took samples inside the homes first, without running the water. Then they took samples outside the home after running the water for three minutes.

All the samples were taken at the same time by the three testers.

The comparability study came about after discrepancies were discovered between MPART and Cyclopure test results.

At several locations in the Cadillac area, Cyclopure home self-test kits showed PFAS levels above state drinking water standards. When MPART retested these wells, however, they came up having “non-detect” levels of PFAS.

“It’s definitely a head-scratcher for us,” MPART Executive Director Abigail Hendershott said during a PFAS town  all meeting in May.

There could be a number of reasons why results differ so much from Cyclopure to EGLE, Hendershott said.

Contamination might have been introduced to the Cyclopure tests when the samples were taken. At the extremely small unit of measurement of parts per trillion, Hendershott said it doesn’t take much for a test to be tainted, especially if the person taking the sample isn’t careful about how they’re doing it.

It’s also possible that EGLE’s tests were flawed, although Hendershott said generally speaking, a tainted test won’t come up as non-detect.

Cyclopure Chief Executive Officer Frank Cassou told the Cadillac News that it’s unlikely their results could have been contaminated by the people taking the samples but there are other variables that could affect a test, such as the time and location samples are taken.

To get to the bottom of the discrepancy, MPART and Cyclopure agreed to take part in the comparability study, along with another tester — AECOM — that will be able to provide a third set of results.

Triolet told the Cadillac News on Tuesday it probably will take about a month for all the test results to come back.