J ust steps outside the door of the Coastline Conference Center in Wilmington, the Cape Fear River moseys on its last 35 miles of its journey to the Atlantic Ocean. But the 300-plus people inside the conference center no longer trust the Cape Fear as their source of clean drinking water.

A persistent and toxic industrial chemical known as GenX has been detected in the drinking water in Wilmington, North Carolina, and in surface waters in Ohio and West Virginia. DuPont introduced GenX in 2009 to replace PFOA, a compound it used to manufacture Teflon and coatings for stain-resistant carpeting, waterproof clothing, and many other consumer products.

Some 60,000 Wilmington, N.C., residents get their drinking water from the Cape Fear River. DuPont and its spinoff company Chemours manufacture chemicals at a plant upstream from the city. The plant is situated on a 2,100-acre property on the Cape Fear River in Fayetteville. It is there where a chemical called GenX — a potentially cancer-causing substance that is a byproduct of DuPont and Chemours’ manufacturing processes — is produced.

A study by Orb Media and State University of New York at Fredonia made headlines this week for reporting that, of 250 water bottles sourced from 11 brands in nine different countries, 93 percent of the samples were contaminated with microplastics. http://www.foxnews.com/food-drink/2018/03/16/93-percent-bottled-water-contains-microplastics-study-says.html  

The report found that 20 cities and regions nationwide — including Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Miami and Louisville — contained high PFAS levels.