PFAS in Maine

We have launched this website from the Community Environmental Health Laboratory at MDI Biological Lab in Salisbury Cove, Maine. We have a long history of environmental monitoring to preserve and improve water quality in the Acadia Region. We have engaged stakeholders in identifying and prioritizing monitoring efforts over many years. In 2013, we created an online citizen science data portal called Anecdata to support data management and sharing from various projects.

Since 2016, we have expanded our focus to include drinking water issues across Maine and New Hampshire, engaging teachers and students in a school-based citizen science project to collect drinking water samples from homes for analysis of arsenic and other toxic metals. This project, called All About Arsenic, is also featured on Anecdata. We published on this project in Environmental Health Perspectives in 2024.

In 2022, we were asked by community members to help them with testing wells for PFAS. They lived near a school where PFAS was found in drinking water and wondered if their wells could be affected, too. We initiated an ongoing community-engaged research effort to test wells on surrounding properties. We are also investigating the movement of PFAS through the surrounding environment. This effort was also published in Environmental Health Perspectives in 2024. This effort is being repeated in other communities with affected schools.

We know that other research groups in Maine are also working on the PFAS issue and may want a venue to share resources, ongoing work, and publications.

We invite other research and community groups grappling with the PFAS issue in Maine to contribute data, share information and help build this website. We can be contacted at drinkingwater@mdibl.org.