‘Forever Chemicals’ Are Found in Some Milk, Including Organic

Those reports are alarming—but are they exceptions, showing that PFAS contamination is limited to a few isolated spots, or indicators of wider, more pervasive problems?

“At this point, it’s hard to know,” says James Rogers, PhD, head of food safety testing at Consumer Reports. “Without testing data that tells us where and how much PFAS the animals are being exposed to, we do not know.” He notes that the Environmental Protection Agency recently put limits on PFAS in drinking water, but there are still no federal guidelines regarding what’s acceptable in food. And while some testing from the Food and Drug Administration and others has turned up little PFAS in milk or other foods, there’s no routine widespread screening for it in the food supply.

To better understand the potential problem, CR recently conducted a limited test of our own. We bought 50 samples of whole milk in five states with known PFAS groundwater contamination: California, Michigan, New Jersey, Texas, and Virginia. We selected products from five leading brands: 365 Whole Foods Market, Great Value (Walmart), Horizon, Kirkland (Costco), and Organic Valley. 

The results of our limited spot check don��t (and can’t) show that our food supply is dangerously contaminated or that all milk contains the toxic chemicals. We found PFOS and PFOA—the two compounds most often linked to harmful health effects—in only six of the 50 samples. 

But the results also raised some red flags. The levels of those two PFAS were higher than previously found in limited sampling by the FDA, and high enough that in the European Union, they would have triggered investigations. In addition, we found the compounds in multiple states and brands, suggesting that PFAS affects a broad range of products—and that identifying where and how they get into milk will be difficult. Finally, our investigation found that in the absence of guidance from the federal government, states are struggling to address this emerging health concern.

“What we found does not mean that anyone needs to stop drinking milk,” Rogers says. “But this highlights shortcomings in how federal food safety agencies and manufacturers monitor milk and other food for these clearly harmful chemicals, and the urgent need to set health-protective limits on PFAS.”

Despite common misconceptions, organic food isn’t immune from PFAS. Organic food producers don’t use chemical fertilizers or recycled sewage sludge. Still, PFAS contamination can come from sludge that was spread on fields in years long past or from polluted water. The only organic milk samples where we saw PFAS were in a grass-fed variety. This may be because grass is more susceptible to absorbing and passing along PFAS from the surrounding environment than other types of cow feed, like corn, oats, or barley, according to Michael Hansen, PhD, a senior scientist at CR.

There was no clear pattern as to which products had PFAS. Not only did we find it in both conventional and organic grass-fed products but we also found it in milk packaged in cartons and plastic jugs. For every sample with PFAS purchased in a particular location, there were other samples from the same locations, and often of the same brands, without any detectable PFAS.

Additionally, while we purchased milk in places where previous research suggested contaminated groundwater was likely, companies typically combine milk from multiple dairies, and milk purchased in one state may have been produced in another. So the detection of PFAS in a single sample can’t indicate the source of contamination.

We also can’t say precisely how much of a health risk the amounts of PFAS we found pose, mainly because the FDA has not set limits on PFAS in food or beverages. What we do know is that any amount of PFAS is concerning as scientific research advances and the levels of PFAS that experts consider “safe” get lower and lower. 

The EPA had previously said PFOA or PFOS levels of 70 ppt or above were unsafe in drinking water; its new rule limits them to just 4 ppt each. But even that 4 ppt limit is a compromise, reflecting what’s feasible for the agency to enforce. In fact, the EPA now says that health harms are a risk with PFAS in drinking water at “near-zero” levels. While the lifetime risks of PFAS in milk aren’t exactly comparable, the levels we found in some samples were not only detectable but also magnitudes higher than what the EPA says is safe in drinking water. 

In contrast with the U.S., Europe does have guidelines for PFAS limits in food, including milk. The European Commission recommends its members investigate the source of contamination if milk is found to have PFOA levels over 10 ppt or PFOS over 20 ppt. By those standards, all six of our samples where we found those compounds would have led to investigations. 

The FDA says it doesn’t currently think that PFAS in the food supply is a public health concern, but that the science is evolving. It also says that while PFOS can accumulate in cow milk due to environmental contamination, that’s not the case with PFOA, so the agency disagrees with CR’s findings. But the FDA’s own tests of milk in an investigation of two farms in New Mexico found PFOA, as have some studies from other countries. 

CR sent our test results and methodologies to the five milk manufacturers in our investigation and asked them for comment. Costco (which makes the Kirkland Signature brand), Walmart (which makes Great Value milk), and Horizon Organic didn’t respond.

Whole Foods Market, the manufacturer of the 365 brand of milk, told CR that it takes this issue seriously, writing: “We have previously put measures in place to reduce the presence of PFAS in our supply chain, and we will continue to monitor the evolving body of knowledge around this complex issue with our suppliers and industry experts.” 

Organic Valley referred CR to the International Dairy Foods Association, an industry group. Matt Herrick, its senior vice president for public affairs and communication, told us that farmers and food producers should not shoulder “the burden of PFAS control, monitoring, awareness, and education” when PFAS comes from non-food-related sources in the environment. He added that the industry supports the FDA’s ongoing tests of PFAS in food. 

“Dairy foods and beverages are highly regulated and rely on a verified system to ensure their safety and integrity, from farms to processing to retail,” Herrick wrote, and consumers “can remain exceedingly confident in the safety of our nation’s milk and dairy supply.”

The USDA has conducted limited testing for PFAS in about 3,000 meat and poultry samples since 2019 and found it only in two cows. During the same time, the FDA tested about 1,300 food samples for PFAS, finding it in less than 3 percent of them, mainly imported seafood products, some of which were recalled. The agency detected PFAS in two beef samples but didn’t detect it in any of the 55 milk samples or 81 dairy food samples it tested as part of its Total Diet Study. 

But food safety experts say that current testing isn’t broad enough or sufficiently rigorous. They point out that the number of foods tested is still relatively small. And they note that the tests they’re using can detect PFAS at only relatively high levels, so the number of contaminated foods could actually be much higher. 

“The agencies say they’re not finding it, but that’s because they’re not looking for it in a targeted, systematic way,” says CR’s Michael Hansen. “They should be using more rigorous methods that can detect at lower levels. They should particularly pay attention to areas where sewage sludge has been known to have been used and focus on testing more grass-fed milk. The more they look for contamination, the more they will find it—that’s what it takes to deal with this.”

While the EPA has set limits for the amount of PFAS allowed in drinking water and the FDA has led efforts to keep PFAS out of food packaging materials, no federal agency has set limits for the amount of PFAS allowed in food. 

Without clear federal guidelines, states are struggling to respond to growing concerns. CR reached out to the states where we purchased milk to ask about their policies on PFAS in food and on farms. None of them appear to be testing food or farmland; several agencies specifically told CR that they weren’t doing so because there were no laws requiring them to.

California agencies said they were testing drinking water and testing blood in a biomonitoring program, but regarding food, the state referred us to the FDA. New Jersey said it was testing bottled water and regulating groundwater and soil, but on food, also referred us to the FDA. Virginia’s environmental quality department referred us to the state’s agriculture department; the state’s agriculture department referred us to the state’s environmental quality department; and the Virginia health department said that no one is testing food for PFAS. Texas said that PFAS is “a concern for Texas agriculture” that it “takes seriously”—but that they’re not monitoring it either.

Michigan said that it tests water and wildlife near known PFAS contamination sites, but it doesn’t systematically test milk or other foods. Scott Dean, at the Michigan PFAS Action Response Team, told us that “Michigan continues to ask the federal government to establish standards for PFAS in food products,” adding, “This is not an effort that can be undertaken on a state-by-state basis because of the interconnectedness of our country’s food supply.”

PFAS can also leach into water from landfills filled with waste from consumer products made with the chemicals or industrial waste from manufacturing processes. And it can get into the air as emissions from manufacturing plants or waste incinerators before settling into bodies of water and soil through rain. 

Art Schaap, who owned a dairy and cattle farm next to Cannon Air Force Base in New Mexico, had never heard of PFAS when the Defense Department contacted him in 2018 about needing to test his well water. When they found high levels of PFAS, he reported it to the state and had his cows’ milk tested by the FDA. Some of the milk tested as high as 1,620 ppt PFOS. 

Schaap lost his permit to sell milk and was forced to euthanize 5,000 cows. He says he hates to think about all the milk he sold before he learned of the problem. In addition to selling his milk, he made it into cheese and sold it to milk-powder plants, where it would become an ingredient in other food products. 

“When they told me I had PFAS, it hit me like a rock,” Schaap says. “Milk in this part of the country goes all over the U.S.”

While some regulators and legislators seem willing to tackle the problem of PFAS in drinking water, “we’re just at the cusp of recognizing we have a challenge with PFAS in our sludge and soil,” says Sarah Doll, national director of Safer States, an alliance of organizations working to protect communities from toxic chemicals. She says there may be a reluctance to test sludge for PFAS “because if you test and find it, then you actually have to respond and figure out how to clean it up.”

The EPA recently designated PFOA and PFOS “hazardous substances” under the Superfund Law, which may make it easier to get manufacturers and users of these compounds to pay for cleanup. The agency told CR that it’s trying to determine whether regulation of those PFAS in sewage sludge “is warranted under the Clean Water Act.” The agency also said it recommends that states monitor sludge for PFAS themselves in the meantime. 

Only a few states do this. Maine has banned the land-spreading of sludge altogether. Michigan mandates testing of sludge at wastewater treatment plants, and if it contains either PFOA or PFOS at 100,000 ppt or above, it can’t be applied to land. 

It was testing at one treatment plant that accepted waste from a nearby chrome plating plant that led Michigan regulators down the road to Jason Grostic’s cattle farm in 2019. Grostic had been spreading sludge from that plant, which he says the government encouraged, on the fields growing his cows’ feed, and he had always been told it was safe. But tests of his soil and meat showed that both were contaminated with PFAS. By 2022, the state had told him he couldn’t sell anything from his farm at all, and he’s now struggling to make a living.

Grostic is skeptical that he’s the only farm affected because other farms used sludge, too. He thinks the state wanted to make him the fall guy for a larger problem. “I was the one and only person who ever got tested, so I’m the one and only one that ever got contaminated,” he says.

Brad Deacon, emergency management and administrative law coordinator for Michigan’s Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, says that Grostic’s farm was the most immediate area of concern because of the history of sludge spreading and the way he sold whole livestock directly to local buyers. He said that the state is investigating several hundred hot spots of PFAS contamination, including some that are agricultural. 

Deacon says that the state needs to balance the need for testing with the difficulty of interpreting those results in the absence of national guidelines. “If we test and we find something, we have to say so,” he says. “If we found 1 ppt, what would that mean? Is that a public health concern?... Some of these questions are national and not best done at the state level.”

In Michigan, farmers have to give permission for state regulators to test their soil, water, or milk for PFAS. But they have seen what that did for Jason Grostic.

“Without financial safety nets, what farmer now is going to give permission to get their land tested?” asks Erica Bloom, who leads the Great Lakes PFAS Action Network. 

“Being the one running around telling everyone the sky is falling in is not a great situation to be in,” Stone says.

But it was also the catalyst for a series of regulatory actions and laws passed in the state to respond to what leaders there recognized was a crisis that went beyond one farm.

By March 2017 Maine had established limits for how much PFOS, the compound most prevalent there, would be allowed in milk. Now milk testing at 210 ppt PFOS or higher can’t be sold. It also published an interactive map of sites where sludge has been spread and started testing soil and farm products. According to Maine’s Department of Agriculture, Conservation, and Forestry, 68 farms have found contamination above their screening levels so far. 

The legislature also passed a $60 million safety net for farmers to test their land and water, replace lost income, or provide for farm buyouts if the tests detect PFAS. Researchers in Maine have also learned how to reduce PFAS levels in livestock, given lots of clean water and time.

“With technical assistance, with financial assistance, it is possible for many PFAS-impacted farms to pivot and produce clean food,” says Adam Nordell, campaign manager at Defend Our Health. He’s the former owner of a farm that was forced to close because of PFAS and that’s now a research site.  

Despite Maine’s successes, experts say it shouldn’t be up to states to tackle this problem. “We continue to advocate for federal leadership on action thresholds to avoid confusion in this space,” says Nancy McBrady, deputy commissioner of the Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry.

Congress is beginning to act. Maine’s farmer safety net is mirrored in the Relief for Farmers Hit With PFAS Act, introduced last year by Sen. Susan Collins (R) and Rep. Chellie Pingree (D). Supporters say it would not only assist farmers already afflicted but also encourage more farmers to test their own land, water, and food. 

Courtney Briggs, senior director of government affairs at the American Farm Bureau Federation, says that its farmers “share the public’s concerns over PFAS” and that chemical manufacturers, not farmers, should be held responsible. “Farmers and ranchers do not create or use any PFAS chemicals in their operations,” she says. “Our members are completely unaware of the PFAS levels on their farms until it’s too late.”

Nordell credits Fred Stone as the catalyst for Maine’s efforts. “If not for Fred’s courage as a whistleblower, my family would still be drinking poisoned water and tilling poisoned soil,” he says.

Stone says that’s giving him too much credit. “I cannot knowingly sell a product off this farm that I believe may cause harm to somebody else,” he says. “I think you will find most farmers in general would feel the same way.”

Nordell hopes that Maine can be a model for other states—and that regulators and legislators can agree to face the PFAS crisis ahead. “Nobody wants these chemicals on their dinner plate,” he says.