Babies exposed to PFAS weigh less at birth, earn less as adults, study finds

People born in the 1970s and 1980s near military bases with high levels of groundwater PFAS contamination had lower birth weights, were less likely to graduate college, and today earn less money than similar individuals who were not exposed to high levels of PFAS, according to a new working paper by economists at Iowa State University and the U.S. Census Bureau.

The paper was released on the same day the Environmental Protection Agency finalized stringent new regulations on “forever chemicals.” The study, which according to its authors “provides the first causal, national-scale estimates of exposure to a source of PFAS contamination on health at birth and adult earnings,” underscores why federal authorities are cracking down on the chemicals — and suggests cleaning up environmental PFAS will yield considerable public health and economic benefits.

Maplewood-based 3M invented and manufactured many of the chemicals, which are used in coatings and thousands of products that resist heat, oil, stains, grease and water, such as Scotchgard stain repellent, Teflon cookware, fast food wrapping and fire retardants. 

The recent study focused on specially formulated foam containing PFAS compounds, used to combat fuel fires on military bases starting in the early 1970s. Some bases conducted frequent training in the use of the foam to suppress fires, resulting in the release over time of massive quantities of the chemicals into the environment. 

Testing conducted several decades after the closure of Louisiana’s England Air Force Base, for instance, found PFAS groundwater concentrations of 20,700,000 parts per trillion. By contrast, the new EPA guidelines set the regulatory threshold at just 4 parts per trillion for two of the most-studied compounds.

But not all bases performed routine fire suppression training, resulting in a natural experiment: Were people born in the vicinity of bases with frequent fire training, and hence high levels of groundwater PFAS contamination, different from those born near bases where fire training didn’t occur?

To answer this question, the researchers collected individual-level birth data from the National Vital Statistics System and paired it to administrative records from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Internal Revenue Service. They were able to track specific individuals from birth through college enrollment and eventual workforce earnings.

They found that children born in counties with military bases where fire training was routinely conducted showed noticeable declines in birth weight starting in the late 1970s, with an average birth weight decrease of about 8 grams by the 1980s. This birth weight effect size is relative to children living near bases where fire suppression training wasn’t conducted, and is comparable to that of prenatal maternal stress caused by living among unexploded landmines.

The linked Census and IRS data, moreover, show that this setback followed the children throughout their entire lives. They were 0.6% less likely than their peers to graduate college, and reported 1.4% lower earnings on their tax returns later in life.

“The magnitude of this long-run earnings effect is comparable to that of the original Clean Air Act,” widely regarded as one of the great regulatory success stories of the 20th century, the authors write.

Cleaning up existing contamination and preventing new cases of PFAS exposure will be a long and costly process. But this study suggests it will ultimately be a worthwhile one, even when viewed through the narrow lens of dollars and cents. The authors’ back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest the total national earnings losses from PFAS exposure near military bases adds up to roughly $1 billion annually. 

That figure notably does not include the cost of all the human suffering wrought by PFAS-linked health conditions.