New Hampshire environmental officials say well monitoring has detected elevated levels of potentially cancer causing chemicals near a former landfill in Salem.
Officials say water samples were collected from 10 monitoring wells adjacent to the former L.L. & S. Construction and Demolition Debris Landfill.
The 16-acre former landfill was unlined and operated from 1978 to 1984. Portions of the site were used as an auto salvage yard dating back to the 1950s. Firefighting foam used to extinguish fires at the site from the 1980s on may have contributed to elevated levels of PFOA and perfluorooctane sulfonate, or PFOS.
PFOA, used in non-stick coatings, was first found in more than 50 wells in towns surrounding the Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics facility in Merrimack, New Hampshire.
