VDH issues fish consumption advisory for Eastern Henrico after fish tissue study shows elevated levels of 'forever chemicals'

The Virginia Department of Health is warning people not to eat any sunfish, largemouth bass, chain pickerel or creek chubsucker fish caught in the White Oak Swamp in Eastern Henrico, after fish tissue samples of those species conducted between 2021 and 2023 showed elevated levels of “forever chemicals” known as PFOS (perfluorooctane sulfonate), a type of man-made chemicals known as PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances).

As part of a fish consumption advisory the agency issued May 9, it’s also advising people to limit consumption of those species of fish to two fish meals or fewer per month for fish caught elsewhere in the Chickahominy Watershed, which stretches from the Chickahominy River at the State Route 360 bridge at the Henrico-Hanover line east to the confluence of the Chickahominy and James rivers in Williamsburg.

The warnings are effective immediately.

The studies, conducted at 13 sites throughout the Chickahominy Watershed, began in November 2021 and continued through September 2023 and were part of an effort by the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality to examine fish tissue, sediment and groundwater in the region to better determine where the chemicals were present and how long they might have been there.

The studies were prompted by a Newport News Waterworks study in 2021 that found elevated levels of the forever chemicals (so dubbed because they do not break down over time) within the Chickahominy Watershed and traced them back to the White Oak Swamp Creek basin, near Richmond international Airport.

Consumption of PFOS can lead to increased cholesterol levels, changes in liver enzymes and reduced antibody response to some vaccines. It also can cause pregnancy-induced hypertension and preeclampsia, and a decrease in birth weight, according to VDH officials.

Children, along with women who are pregnant or who may become pregnant, are at greater risk, so nursing mothers and young children should not eat fish from the advisory area, according to officials.

There is no health risk for recreational activities like swimming, water skiing and boating in the advisory areas, they said.

The Citizen reported in 2022 that Henrico County officials did not learn of the presence of PFAS in the region until NNWW officials told them at the conclusion of their study in October 2021 – and, perhaps more surprisingly, that federal officials knew the chemicals were present in Henrico as early as 2017 but never told county officials, either.

Subsequent tests conducted by the county of about 260 hundred private wells in Eastern Henrico near the White Oak Swamp Creek basin turned up nearly 30 that showed traces of the chemicals but only two that were over the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s health advisory level of 70 parts per trillion.

Though the source of the chemicals is still unknown, a former Virginia Air National Guard base at Richmond International Airport is a possible culprit. Federal officials began testing the region near Richmond International Airport for PFAS in 2015, after realizing that many of federal military bases used a certain type of firefighting foam known as aqueous film forming foam, or AFFF, which contain the chemicals.

In Henrico, contractors working for the National Guard Bureau and Army National Guard conducted two separate studies between 2015 and 2020 of the former Virginia Air National Guard base at the airport and the current Virginia Army National Guard base there as part of a hunt for possible PFAS contamination.

The former confirmed their presence, while the latter (a less exhaustive study) concluded that they could be present there.

The initial study was published in May 2019 and found surface water PFAS levels above federal guidelines at four of the five potential PFAS release locations (or PRLs) studied and groundwater levels above those guidelines in 10 of 16 individual locations, according to the 163-page report issued by the study’s authors from Amec Foster Wheeler Environment and Infrastructure, Inc.

No elevated levels were found in soil or sediment, but the study’s authors concluded that the nearby drainage basin was a migration pathway and that the soil “may be an ongoing source of contaminants to groundwater” and that “there is a potential for [PFAS] migration” downstream of each PRL “toward the White Oak Swamp Creek.”

The report recommended additional investigations to evaluate the concentrations of PFAS in the groundwater at each PRL and testing farther upstream and downstream to determine if other sources could be contributing PFAS to the area. It is unclear whether the National Guard Bureau completed any such follow-up studies. A Freedom of Information Act request made by the Citizen in 2022 for details has not yet been fulfilled.

In a 64-page report published in July 2020, the second study, conducted in 2019 and 2020 for the Army National Guard of the 94-acre ANG site in the southeastern corner of the airport, detailed 10 possible sources of PFAS there. They included the ANG site itself; the Air National Guard base; the Richmond Fire Academy site on Beulah Road; the airport’s fire department; private hangars operated by Altria Group, Inc., the Virginia Department of Aviation, and the FBI; and airplane crashes at the airport in 1996, 2008 and 2012.

Army operations at RIC began in 1964 and continue there today.

The DOD, however, never communicated any of its findings directly to Henrico County, the Virginia DEQ, the Virginia Department of Health or even other federal agencies, email communications obtained by the Henrico Citizen appeared to show in 2022.

The Citizen analyzed hundreds of emails between county and state officials about the PFAS situation between October and December 2021; none suggested that any of those officials had been aware of the chemicals’ presence in Eastern Henrico until October, when the NNWW report alerted them.