The New Mexico Lake Where PFAS Contamination Was Literally Off The Scale When Testing Finally Happened

For years, Christopher Witt took birdwatchers to Holloman Lake in the Chihuahuan desert off the route 70 highway in New Mexico. By mid-morning the sun would beat down as they huddled in the scant shade of the van. There were no trees other than a collection of salt cedars on the lake’s north shore. But the discomfort didn’t matter when the peregrine falcons appeared, slicing through the sky. “It was hard to leave that place,” says Witt.

EDIT

When the PFAS results came back from the lab, Witt assumed it was a mistake. “There were no other analogs that we could find for this level of contamination,” he says. “The orders of magnitude that we were dealing with were absolutely shocking. We thought we were doing something wrong with the converssion of units.” But the numbers were correct. Across 23 bird and mammal species tested, Pfas concentrations averaged tens of thousands of parts per billion, 2024 research found. For comparison, in 2019 thousands of dairy cows in Clovis, New Mexico were culled because their milk was contaminated with less than six parts per billion.

The main cause of contamination is the firefighting foams used in training exercises by the US air force at the Holloman site from about 1970. The single most contaminated individual from the 2024 study was a 1994 specimen of a white-footed mouse, showing pollution had been high for decades.

EDIT

In Michigan, bluegill fish have been found to swim more slowly after Pfas exposure, suggesting they could be physically or neurologically impaired. Exposed black-legged kittiwakes are developing thyroid dysfunctions and hormonal imbalances. Sea turtles in contaminated sites in Australia are producing hatchlings with deformed scales and health problems. American alligators in North Carolina are more susceptible to infections, while dolphins in South Carolina are showing signs of chronic inflammation. More than 600 species on every continent are at risk of harm, according to a map by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) illustrating how harmful chemicals are filtering through ecosystems. When they began mapping the research, “we thought: ‘it’ll be a quick one month project’ – then you quickly realise there are hundreds and hundreds of studies,” says David Andrews, acting chief science officer at EWG. “It turned out to be a significant amount of work.”

EDIT

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jul/03/holloman-lake-birds-wildlife-pfas-forever-chemicals-aoe