Ayer Historical Commission Backs PFAS Research, Approves Grant Application Signature

AYER -- January 13, 2021, Ayer Historical Commission aids federal PFAS health study and unanimously authorizes chair to sign a historic resources inventory grant application. At the January 13 remote meeting, researchers from Silent Spring Institute, including research scientist Laurel Shader and community partner Lori Nairing, presented details of a CDC- and ATSDR-funded multi-site study aiming to recruit 300 adults and 100 children in Ayer to examine health effects linked to PFAS contamination in the town's Grove Pond and Spectacle Pond well fields. Commissioners, including Chair George Bacon and member Ruth Eronimus Quark, pointed researchers toward firefighter and fire history archivist Brendan Hurley, retired fire chief Paul Philobrown, the Devens museum's Devens Dispatch collection, and longtime residents Calvin Moore and Don Wallace as potential sources of historical fire records. The commission also advanced a draft historic preservation restriction for the Sandy Pond School Association's CPC grant, with Eronimus Quark recommending review by Massachusetts Historical Commission contact Michael Steinitz before the draft is formally submitted. The historic resources inventory grant application is due February 8.