Colorado may have the largest number of sites in the nation that have handled PFAS chemicals, due to firefighting drills and operations at military installations, mountain wildland firefighting, and from PFAS chemicals in firefighting and other industrial materials at oil and gas exploration sites.
About 21,000 industrial sites in Colorado appear on the previously undisclosed EPA database of locations that “may be handling” PFAS, with more than 85% of those places related to oil and gas, and heavy concentrations of possible locations at the industry’s core in Weld County, according to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, which forced EPA to release the data.
