ABOVE: George Lake in Fairmont. Recently, the Minnesota Department of Health has put out guidance that encourages people to refrain from eating walleye caught in George Lake as PFAS, the ‘forever chemical’ was found in walleye in the waterbody.

FAIRMONT– The Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) has recently updated its fish consumption guidance due to PFAS found in fish some waterbodies, including walleye in George Lake in Fairmont. According to the agency, PFAS (per-and polyfluoralkyl substances) also known as the ‘forever chemical’ are harmful chemicals that have been widely used for decades to make products that resist heat, oil, stains, grease and water.

Brian Nerbonne, Regional Fisheries Manager with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR), said, “we have been working with the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) and Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) to decide which waterbodies to test. We tend to test fish from locations where we have pollution issues.”

He said that annually the three agencies meet and discuss where they want to test. He further explained that the testing process is incredibly expensive and time consuming so that they only test about 30 lakes each year.

The DNR is responsible for collecting the fish and then hands them off to the PCA, which does the testing, and then the information is given to MDH, which makes the consumption advisory.

Angela Preimesberger, MDH’s fish consumption guidance lead, said that five species of fish were collected from George Lake and only one type, walleye, had some type of PFAS that were outside of the average.

“That walleye data was what really prompted the change in our guidelines to recommend people don’t eat walleye there and have only one serving a month of any other specie until we can get some more data,” Preimesberger said.

She said that because PFAS are mobile, and especially because George Lake is a connected waterbody to the Fairmont Chain of Lakes, she is hoping to evaluate the other waterbodies.

“This was a really small dataset and it’s not clear if this was a wider problem for fish in these lakes or a more localized issue. We’ll continue to study it,” she said.

Overall, Preimesberger said people are exposed to PFAS in many different ways through products and the environment. However, she said right now they’re focused on where PFAs has been showing elevated levels in fish around the state.

“Because PFAS can accumulate in our bodies overtime, we wanted to help people make safer choices about where they’re catching and eating their fish,” she said.

PFAS are found in most people and are associated with developmental effects including lower birth weight in infants and reduced immune response in children. In adults they can cause changes to liver function and can increase risk for cancer.

Kim Larsen, is with MDH’s drinking water protection unit. She works closely with engineers and regulates all of the public water supplies in the state. She spoke to how, if at all, PFAS affects the water quality.

“The Fairmont water treatment plant is a surface water plant and so it’s highly specialized and technologically advanced. They can remove viruses, bacteria and all kinds of things,” Larsen said.

She said that the drinking water across the state, and in Fairmont, has been tested for PFAS for a number of years and that there are no results from the Fairmont water treatment plant that are above any maximum contaminant level at this point.

“They’re meeting the standards currently and if at any time with the sampling they exceed a trigger level or standard level they’d be required to add treatment to remove PFAs,” Larsen said.

Preimesberger said that there are 44 waterbodies, out of 170 tested, around the state where they’ve found elevated levels of PFAS in fish in the last 15 years.

“We’ve been really fortunate in Minnesota that we’ve had a good partnership with EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) and other organizations that can provide funding to the PCA to get this data. Now the legislature and Governor Walz appropriated to the DNR more money so we can include PFAS in our regular monitoring along with mercury and PCBs, which are other fish contaminants,” Preimesberger said.

Because of this she said they have a fairly good representation of fish studied across the state and that 55 percent of them have some detect of a PFAS in them.

Preimesberger said that PFAS spreads through the atmosphere, like mercury, but doesn’t have as wide of a dispersion, which is why they can get to low levels in surface water and in fish. She said she’s found that there is usually some kind of local source but noted that the chemicals have been used for decades in many different products.

“There are multiple sources that can occur for these contaminants,” she said.

Nerbonne echoed this and said, “I think that this is something that is fairly widespread. There are multiple chemicals that make up the PFAs family and multiple ways it’s gotten into the environment. They’re called ‘forever chemicals’ for a reason. They’re very persistent so once they get into these systems they tend to stay there.”

While people are told not to consume fish with PFAS, Nerbonne said they don’t have a lot of data about the health impact to fish themselves.

“It’s something that’s being studied but we don’t have real conclusive information to help us understand that better. If it’s a health concern to people, I think it would also be a health concern for other wildlife,” Nerbonne said.

Preimesberger encourages people to check out the Fish Consumption Guidance on MDH’s website, which was just updated this month.

“It can link you to a list of counties, including Martin, this lists the guidelines. There are links to PFAS and health information. I think it’s important for people to know that eating fish is not your only route of exposure because they (PFAS) are in so many products in our homes. We provide guidelines that are improving our information every six months or so to help people limit their exposure to PFAS,” Preimesberger said.

That information can be found at health.state.mn.us/communities/environment/fish/index.

Larsen added that the city of Fairmont will also soon be releasing its consumer confidence report, which lists any contaminants are have been found in the drinking water. She said the city is required by law to annually release the report by July 1.