Cleaning Up Legacy Contamination on Florida's Space Coast
4 October 2021Kennedy Space Center, Florida
Stel Bailey | www.fight4zero.org
The space industry has spent decades in Brevard County, Florida (also known as Florida's space coast), testing rockets and using chemicals released into the environment. Some of these chemicals damage the ecosystem and are known to harm human health.
NASA began identifying and characterizing contamination across the agency in the 1980s. Some of the contamination being disposed of today through Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Open Burn Unit are arsenic, lead, selenium, potassium, titanium, magnesium, barium, vanadium, chromium, cadmium, copper, aluminum, and perchlorate.
In 2005, the EPA asked that groundwater be sampled for perchlorate near rock launch sites, but the sampling wasn't done because there is no federal standard for perchlorate. Perchlorate is often mixed with other more significant contaminants and often remediated in conjunction with these other contaminants.
NASA has also identified a contaminate of emerging concern in groundwater at the Kennedy Space Center that exceeds federal standards. The chemical called PFAS was discovered in wildlife's blood at the space center and tested at the highest levels of toxic fluorinated chemicals ever measured in the species.
PFAS is linked to a wide range of health effects such as a weaker immune system, cancer, heart defect, increased cholesterol levels, liver and kidney damage, reduced fertility, and increased risk of thyroid disease.
