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'Everybody's contaminated:' Maine hunters worried about PFAS contamination in animals


Hunting season is now underway, but with new worries, as many hunters are forced to avoid areas of PFAS contamination. (WGME)
Hunting season is now underway, but with new worries, as many hunters are forced to avoid areas of PFAS contamination. (WGME)
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FAIRFIELD (WGME) -- Hunting season is now underway, but with new worries, as many hunters are forced to avoid areas of PFAS contamination.

"There's a horse farm up there,” former Fairfield hunter Joe Lefebvre said. “Place is just loaded with deer. It's a great area."

Lefebvre used to hunt deer for the venison every year in his hometown of Fairfield.

After the discovery of dangerous forever chemicals in fields and animals there, his hunting days are over.

"Everybody that's hunted, it's already in our systems,” Lefebvre said. “We've been eating bird, turkey, deer for years here. So everybody's contaminated. There's no question about it."

He says his neighbors have high levels of PFAS in their bodies, and he's still waiting on his test results.

Meanwhile, the state is waiting for the rest of their test results on the 60 deer they harvested a few months ago from the Fairfield area.

"What we saw when we tested some turkeys this spring was once you got off some of the highly contaminated areas, levels dropped pretty rapidly in the tissue of these animals," Mark Latti of the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife said. "Once you remove the PFAS and give them fresh water or fresh feed, PFAS levels drop very quickly."

For now, the state is still advising hunters not to eat any deer, fish or wildlife from the Fairfield area.

"I certainly wouldn't hunt down in that Fairfield area," North Yarmouth hunter Gordon Slocum said.

Hunters also know there's PFAS contamination on many other farms across Maine.

"It's definitely unnerving to think about taking an animal and not being able to use it," Windham hunter Josh Adams said.

Two major deer meat processors near Fairfield say they're as busy as ever, after opening weekend of hunting season.

"I got people still coming from the Fairfield area, and they're still eating them. They don't care. They say they've done it for years and years," deer meat processor Alan Boucher said. "I wouldn't feed it to my kid."

Lefebvre won't either, now that he knows the dangerous health effects of these forever chemicals from sludge spread on farm fields.

"I lost a daughter last October. Kidney, heart disease. They're saying that the PFAS is a big cause of that," Lefebvre said. "They can't dismiss it now. The proof is out there."

Right now, there's no way for hunters to test game for PFAS.

Latti says because of the high demand, labs are only running tests for state and federal agencies.

"Unfortunately, there's no way for a hunter to take a sample of the deer they shot and get it to a lab," Latti said.

The state hopes these tests, on deer harvested from the Fairfield area, will increase their understanding of PFAS in wildlife, so they can apply it in other contaminated parts of the state.

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