Of the 400 sites we sampled throughout Quebec, five or six showed contamination rates that were high enough to call for intervention. Often, these were landfill sites, firefighter training sites or airports, for example. In this case, it is a military base. Are there landfill sites nearby? Certainly landfill sites could cause contamination in the past. It is not impossible for there to have been a landfill site that is contributing to a form of contamination. But landfill sites include a lot of old PFAS. The PFAS found in the water in La Baie, however, do not share that profile. They really have a profile that corresponds more to the substances used in firefighting foam.
