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https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/4d9966a4576d113ffc2a55c2bf4545af.mp4
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https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/dd0156da8b10354852624702ed938c7b.pdf
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Living With PFAS
Interviewee: Sandy Wynn-Stelts
Interviewer: Dani Devasto
Date: April 8, 2021
DD: Alright so I am recording now. I am Dani Devasto and today April 8 th, 2021, I had the
pleasure of chatting with Sandy Wynn-Stelt. Sandy, can you tell me about where you are from
and where you currently live?
SWS: I’m originally from the Kalamazoo area, I grew up in Parchment, but right now I live in
Belmont, Michigan.
DD: And how long have you lived there?
SWS: I moved here to Belmont in 1991—1992 I think with my husband Joel.
DD: So you are a long-time resident?
SWS: I am a longtime resident, yes.
DD: So, Sandy, can you tell me a story about your experience with PFAS [Per- and
polyfluoroalkyl substances] or with PFAS in your community?
SWS: Sure. So, Joel and I moved to our home in 92’. We’d gotten married in 1991 after dating
for 4 years or so. We both loved being outside, we both loved nature and bird watching, and so
we found our home in Belmont and it was perfect because it was right across the street from a
100 acre Christmas tree farm. It was — there’s actually Christmas trees to the south of us and so
we had kind of this beautiful house in the middle of the woods and we loved it. We lived really
boring dull [chuckles] obnoxious lives, really it was so boring. But we were best friends, so it
worked out pretty good. Then, in 2016, Joel became ill, and we thought he was having problems
with his - with a hernia and he went in for a surgery for that and it turned out that he had stage 4
liver cancer and he died like 3 weeks after that.
It was the following year that EGLE had come to my home, which is our Department of Energy,
Great Lakes and Environment, to ask if they could test my water for PFAS and I will be honest, I
had never heard of PFAS before that. I wasn’t even saying it right for probably the first 4
months. But they tested my water, and my water came back at 21,000 parts per trillion, and again
if you don’t know anything about PFAS you hear these numbers and don’t know if that’s a good
thing or a bad thing. And it turned out to be a really bad thing, it was pretty high. So that’s how I
became involved with this.
Turned out that the Christmas tree farm we had fallen in love with was actually a former
dumpsite for Wolverine Worldwide which is the manufacturer of Hushpuppy shoes and a lot of
other shoes. They had used Scotchgard on all of their products, but had to dump all that tannery
waste, so they had dumped it [electronic notification] in the 90 acres or 87 acres across the street
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�from us for years and years and years in big trenches. When the trenches would start overflowing
with the waste, they would punch through the clay lining and let it all drain into the aquifer. That
water table then, obviously, traveled to my well, but it also travelled to like the 25 square miles
of my community and contaminated all of our water. So, that was how my PFAS journey started.
DD: Do you want to say anything about, you mentioned that then you got involved, do you want
to say anything about that?
SWS: Yes; I got involved because I happened to be the person that lives across the street, and
[chuckles] so that, that was a deadlock. I think it also happened that, you know, they tested the
first time and it was like 24,000 or whatever. They thought it was an error because it was so high,
so when they tested the second time it was like 38,000. They tested again after that, and it was
like 80,000 parts per trillion. I eventually got my blood tested and my blood came back at like 5
million parts per trillion, that’s some of the highest that you can find out there. So naturally, the
press started coming by and wanting to talk about this because it became a pretty big issue here
in Northern Kent County. You know, Wolverine’s is a - had been a really good company in this
area and was really valued, but now they’ve contaminated a big part of it, so that becomes a
pretty important story to read. And they became very reluctant to take responsibility for this. So,
I started by just doing a few news interviews, and one day I was watching television and saw our
Senator on TV, Senator Gary Peters talked about doing a hearing in Washington on PFAS. And I
thought, and it was open to the public, I remember hearing that, and I said to my two cats: ” well
I’m the public, maybe I should go?” [chuckle] - I know a thing or two about PFAS, and low and
behold, I did. Eventually it just kind of snowballed from there. So, I went to Washington, and I
met with both of our State Senators. I met with our local representative because I thought this is
what governments are supposed to do; they’re supposed to step in and make sure this stuff
doesn’t happen. So DD: Who was the - who was the local representative at that time?
SWS: So, I met with Senator Peters and Senator Stabenow, and Justin Amash was our
representative. So, I met with him as well.
DD: Did you know that you were going to be such an activist [chuckles] in your earlier life?
SWS: No! In fact, I still laugh when people say I'm an activist because I am not active. If you
knew me you’d know [chuckles] I’m not — I’m busy, I’m just not really active. You know, it
kind of gradually starts creeping into your life and I think what happened was I did that stuff and
realized that people really sat down and listened to us. Senators Peters and Stabenow and
Representative Amash made time out of their day to meet with us and that was really important
to me because it made me realize that they do listen. I mean, when Senator Peters led the senate
hearing that day, he talked about that he had just met us the hour before and he talked about it. At
that point I realized that you really can make a kind of a difference if you just take a step towards
that.
DD: What concerns do you have about PFAS contamination moving forward?
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�SWS: Where to start? Obviously, this is a forever chemical so it’s not going away; it’s not
breaking down; it’s not evaporating; it’s not doing any of that. I think every week I hear more
and more examples of how ubiquitous this is. I was just, in fact, meeting with someone from
EGLE that had come over and we were talking about PFAS contamination near airports, and that
every airport in the country has PFAS contamination. So if you have people on private wells that
live near airports, there’s a pretty good chance that you’re drinking contaminated water. Every
military base, I’ve met people that are dairy farmers that live near military bases, that the cows
have drunk PFAS contaminated water, and their milk is now contaminated. We don't test milk for
PFAS, in part because we don’t want to know that. So it’s like an onion, the more you start
peeling away, the more you realize that this is a problem. This is a slow-rolling pandemic of
environmental consequences that we are going to have to deal with quickly to figure it out.
DD: Wow, that’s so discouraging. [chuckles]
SWS: [chuckles] Now you’ll sleep badly, right? [chuckles]
DD: I mean, I’ve been thinking about it for a while probably not quite as long as you but, yeah,
you know you hear about it everywhere and—
SWS: Yeah, yeah it’s insane that we have done this to ourselves. It’s kind of crazy when you
figure out that companies, Chemours is still in North Carolina making these products. That, you
know, 3M and those are still making these products. They've tweaked them a little, but they’re
still out there and they’re still being disposed of somewhere. So that’s what I worry about. I
worry about how much we are all ingesting it, but I also worry that we don’t know what this does
to people. Not just to me, right now, today, but what is this going to do for future generations?
because I suspect we are going to find that this has got a genetic and ongoing legacy of issues
that we haven’t even thought of.
DD: Yeah, I’m really looking forward to hearing more from the MiPEHS study [Michigan PFAS
Exposure and Health study] and other studies. You know, hopefully other studies that will be like
that will get some of that longitudinal data.
SWS: Yeah, yeah.
DD: So, before we wrap up, is there anything else you would like to add that either we haven’t
touched on or that you would want to go back to that you’d like to add more about?
SWS: I’ve just been rambling on. I can't think of anything else I could say. I mean I could tell
you recipes or jokes but that’d be kind of boring. [chuckles] No, I can’t think of anything else.
That’s kind of my story in a nutshell.
DD: Alright. Well, thank you so much, Sandy, for taking the time to share your story today.
SWS: No problem.
DD: I’m going to stop the recording.
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Living with PFAS Interviews
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Devasto, Danielle
Description
An account of the resource
The Living with PFAS interviews were recorded during 2021 to gather the personal stories of individuals impacted by PFAS contamination. PFAS, or per- and polyflourinated substances, are a group of chemicals used to make coatings and products resistant to heat, oil, stains, grease, and water. These products include clothing, furniture, adhesives, food packaging, and heat-resistant non-stick cooking surfaces. They are considered "forever chemicals" in that they do not break down in the environment, can move through soils and contaminate drinking water sources, and they build up in fish, wildlife, and in the human body. Studies have shown that exposure to large amounts of PFAS may affect growth and development, reproduction, thyroid function, the immune system, and may injure the liver. More research is needed to assess the full health effects of exposure to PFAS.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2021
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Living with PFAS (project)
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
In copyright
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Personal narrative
PFAs (Perfluorinated chemicals)
Groundwater--Pollution
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
DC-11
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
video/mp4
application/pdf
audio/mp3
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Motion Picture
Text
Sound
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PFAS0002
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Wynn-Stelt, Sandy
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2021-04-08
Title
A name given to the resource
Sandy Wynn-Stelt, 2021 (Interview video and transcript)
Description
An account of the resource
Sandy Wynn-Stelt moved to Belmont, Michigan in 1992 with her husband Joel. In the interview she discusses her husband's death from liver cancer and the presence of high levels of PFAS in their water. Sandy is now an activist working through legal and political channels to improve PFAS awareness and testing.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
DeVasto, Danielle (interviewer)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Personal narrative
PFAs (Perfluorinated chemicals)
Groundwater--Pollution
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Living with PFAS (project)
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In copyright</a>
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Moving Image
Text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
video/mp4
application/pdf
Language
A language of the resource
eng