New Research Details PFAS Prevalence in the Delaware River Basin

For Immediate Release

May 28, 2026

(West Trenton, N.J.) -- The Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) is sharing the latest results of extensive field investigation and monitoring of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in PFAS Water Quality and Fish Tissue Assessment Study, a report marking more than 20 years of dedicated research into so-called forever chemicals within the Delaware River Basin.

The new research confirms PFAS contamination is both widespread and persistent in the Delaware River and selected tributaries. Surface water concentrations are increasing at a faster rate than water volume as the river moves downstream into Delaware Bay, suggesting there are ongoing inputs from unknown sources like industrial facilities, wastewater discharges and stormwater.

"Safeguarding water for over 14 million people requires science-informed management actions," said Kristen Bowman Kavanagh, DRBC's Executive Director. "We will continue our decades-long active monitoring of PFAS and heighten our focus on targeted tracking, trend modeling and data communication, ultimately allowing DRBC to help reduce PFAS prevalence throughout our shared waters."

PFAS contamination does not stop at state lines, making the DRBC's basin-wide monitoring uniquely valuable. PFAS were consistently detected in surface water, sediment, fish and blue crab tissues collected at 21 locations within the Delaware River Basin.

Each sample type had a unique suite of PFAS compounds, underscoring the complexity of this problem in the basin and the need for greater emphasis on sampling across the ecosystem to more thoroughly uncover the extent of PFAS pollution.

"The Delaware River Basin is a global hotspot for PFAS pollution and this study adds more data showing that these chemicals are widely present in water, fish, crabs and sediment, demonstrating that we are in the early stages of what will be a long-term effort to reduce their loading and protect ecosystem, organismal and human health," said Jeremy Conkle, Ph.D., DRBC Senior Chemist/Toxicologist and lead author on the study.

To share these critical insights with stakeholders, the DRBC will host a public webinar to review the report's findings on Monday, June 15, at 12:00 p.m. Members of the public, environmental professionals and media representatives can register for free here.

The webinar will also feature the official launch of a new interactive application, PFAS in the Delaware River Basin, with a demonstration of its capability to visualize PFAS data from across the Basin. Combining PFAS data from federal, state and other entities into one interactive map, this project enables the public to view and explore known contamination in the Delaware River Basin, including local watersheds.

"Science is most powerful when it is accessible. This new interactive visualization will be an excellent resource for the community, because DRBC is taking complex data collected by the Commission and other partners and putting it directly into the hands of the public, water suppliers and policy makers," said Diana Oviedo-Vargas, Associate Research Scientist at the Stroud Water Research Center and member of the DRBC's Toxics Advisory Committee. "Managing the risks of PFAS requires a unified regional approach, and this tool provides a transparent, big-picture view while helping us understand relevant data gaps, leading to science-based protections for the 14 million people who rely on our basin's shared water resources."

"The Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control has been sampling and making its PFAS data public in Delaware, and DRBC's contributions to regional PFAS data collection and interpretation efforts mirror and further that effort," said John Cargill, Delaware's representative to the DRBC's Toxics Advisory Committee. "Their information, along with available data from surrounding states, makes the new web app an incredibly useful tool to inform the public about the distribution of PFAS throughout the Delaware River Basin."

Continued monitoring, especially in the tidal Delaware River and in tributaries highly impacted by human development, will be critical to track trends and determine sources. The DRBC will continue to collect, synthesize and share PFAS data for the Delaware River Basin to enhance public understanding, boost regional coordination and support science-based management actions that reduce PFAS entering waterways, protect aquatic life and wildlife and safeguard human health.

The report marks the third and final year of a PFAS Water Quality and Fish Tissue Assessment Study supported in part by a grant from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service through the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation's Delaware Watershed Conservation Fund. Development of the web app was funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Section 106 Water Pollution Control Grant Program.

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, are a diverse group of >14,000 chemical compounds with varying degrees of toxicity and bioaccumulation in the environment. The most produced and studied are Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and Perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS). Known as forever chemicals, they have unique properties to repel water and oil and are characterized by strong bonds making them indefinitely persistent in the environment.

The DRBC is a federal/interstate government agency created in 1961 by concurrent compact legislation, marking the first time that the federal government and a group of states joined together as equal partners in a river basin planning, development and regulatory agency. The five Commission members are the governors of the basin states (Delaware, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania) and the commander of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' North Atlantic Division, who represents the federal government.

To learn more about the Commission, please visit www.drbc.gov or follow @DRBC1961 on X.

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Contacts:

Elizabeth Brown, [email protected]

Kate Schmidt, [email protected]

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