New Mexico Environment Department launches public health survey focused on PFAS at Holloman Lake

The New Mexico Environment Department is asking people who have visited Holloman Lake to participate in a health survey that could give the agency valuable information about the public’s exposure to toxic chemicals from firefighting foams.

Holloman Lake, sometimes called Raptor Lake, is a manmade lake for Holloman Air Force Base’s treated wastewater. University of New Mexico researchers have found some of the highest recorded levels of PFAS in the world there.

PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are manmade chemicals that used to be common in firefighting foam and are still used in industry and consumer products. PFAS exposure has been linked to health issues like cancer, changes in liver function and pregnancy complications.

The Air Force began using firefighting foam that contained two PFAS chemicals in 1970 but transitioned to a firefighting foam with only trace amounts by 2018, according to an NMED study released earlier this year. Cleanups for PFAS contamination are planned at Air Force bases around the country, including New Mexico’s three bases.

Holloman Lake is within 10 miles of White Sands National Park. It was publicly accessible until 2025 and has been a popular spot for bird watching, camping and hunting. NMED tried to get it closed to the public in 2019.

NMED is trying to better understand how people have interacted with the lake, so it is asking anyone who has visited or recreated at Holloman Lake to participate in its 10-minute online health survey, which will remain open until Nov. 30. The survey is being conducted in collaboration with Eastern Research Group and can be done anonymously.

A public report will be released on the results. The information will be used to guide future public health efforts and help NMED officials determine next steps on PFAS exposure.

“This survey is one of the first of its kind, aiming to inform New Mexicans and others of potential impacts of PFAS pollution on their health,” New Mexico Environment Secretary James Kenney said in a statement.

The waterfowl that feed at Holloman Lake had shockingly high levels of PFAS contamination, said biology professor Christopher Witt, one of the UNM professors leading research on PFAS contamination at Holloman Lake.

“Especially the ones that really get in the muck, because the sediment there is where the highest levels of contamination are,” he said. “So if they’re accidentally ingesting a bunch of sediment with their food, then they seem to be really highly contaminated.”

That includes birds like northern shovelers — a common duck — or American avocets, a long-legged shorebird. The 2024 study UNM researchers published found world record levels of liver contamination in birds that frequent the lake.

Since publishing their research on PFAS at Holloman Lake last year, researchers have accumulated a lot of new data on the contamination, Witt said, getting a better picture of how contamination varies across bird species and time. The team is using the UNM Museum of Southwestern Biology’s specimen archive to look at frozen liver samples for ducks going back to the mid-1990s.

“I don’t want to give away our results, because they’re not fully baked yet. But there was a lot of contamination in the 90s and early 2000s,” Witt said. “It was even worse then than it is now.”

There are open questions about how much PFAS people take up via environmental exposure, Witt said. PFAS can be taken up via ingestion of contaminated foods, so eating PFAS-contaminated ducks, for example, could pose a health risk.

The European Food Safety Council has issued guidelines on the maximum amount of PFAS that shouldn’t be exceeded. The concentrations in ducks UNM researchers sampled that call Holloman Lake home exceeded those safe levels, Witt said.

“There’s no safe consumption level for ducks that are that contaminated,” Witt said.