"Kristen Mello wasn’t invited to the Environmental Protection Agency’s upcoming “National Leadership Summit” on PFOA, PFOS, and other PFAS chemicals. For most of her life, Mello, a member of Westfield Residents Advocating For Themselves, drank water contaminated with the chemicals that are going to be discussed at the meeting. At least six compounds in this class seeped into local drinking water from firefighting foam used at the Air National Guard base in her hometown of Westfield, Massachusetts. Mello and several of her immediate family members have developed some of the health problems associated with the chemicals, including thyroid disease, ulcerative colitis, and liver problems. While most people in the United States have been exposed to PFAS, Westfield is one of the growing number of communities to learn they’ve had an especially high dose of the chemicals as the result of living near a military installation or manufacturing site that used them.
But when Mello sent the EPA a request to attend the PFAS summit, which will be held May 22-23 at EPA headquarters in Washington, D.C., the agency said she wasn’t welcome. “EPA has limited the invitation to federal partners, states, territories, tribes and representatives from national organizations,” the EPA’s Office of Ground Water and Drinking Water wrote to Mello in an email. Although the summit is intended to identify actions “needed to address challenges currently facing states and local communities,” according to the agency’s website, the people in these communities who are directly affected by the chemicals will be strikingly absent from the meeting."
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