Student Map Shows Finger Lakes PFAS Hot Spots
The public map gives New York residents local PFAS data that the state's drinking water rules do not cover for most ponds and streams.
Updated on Nov. 3, 2026 in Geography
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Cornell undergraduates collected more than 500 water samples from roughly 300 bodies of water across the Finger Lakes region and screened them for 24 common PFAS. The student-built work is published as a public interactive map; it is a completed research project, not a shipped regulatory or monitoring program.
Why it matters
The Environmental Protection Agency announced regulations limiting PFAS in drinking water in 2023, yet residents still lacked local data on ponds, lakes, streams and creeks. The mapping shows how crowd-sourced student sampling can fill that gap for regulators and communities across New York.
The dataset covers more than 500 samples from about 300 water bodies, screened for 24 common PFAS. Exceedances of New York state guidance values were confined to hot spots near airports and fire training stations, while overall concentrations across the Finger Lakes were relatively low.
The players
Cornell University
A research university in Ithaca whose undergraduate students produced the Finger Lakes PFAS sampling and interactive map.
Environmental Protection Agency
The federal agency that announced drinking water regulations limiting PFAS in 2023.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
The federal public health agency that found PFAS in the blood of 97% of Americans it surveyed.
The details
PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are a class of synthetic chemicals sometimes called forever chemicals because they resist breakdown in the environment. Students collected water samples from across the Finger Lakes region and tested them for 24 common PFAS compounds using screening methods. The results were entered into an interactive map that shows where levels rose above state guidance values. The highest readings clustered near airports, where aircraft de-icing fluids are a known source, and near fire training stations, where fire-extinguishing foams are used.
Timeline
2023: EPA announced regulations to limit PFAS in drinking water, and local residents sought local data.
October 2026: The student team's Finger Lakes PFAS map was published.
The Tech Race
The EPA's 2023 drinking water rules set federal limits on PFAS, but they apply to regulated public water systems rather than to individual surface waters. The Cornell effort shows university sampling programs can fill that monitoring gap in the Finger Lakes region.
Residents near the Finger Lakes can consult the public interactive map to see whether nearby ponds, streams or lakes had PFAS readings above state guidance values. The students plan to use the accumulated data to identify high-priority areas in other regions of New York, but no timeline for that expansion is given.
The takeaway
Student-collected sampling can produce a usable, public PFAS map covering hundreds of water bodies, showing where contamination concentrates near airports and fire training sites. Watch whether the students extend the mapping to other New York regions as they have proposed.
Further reading
For more on how such contaminants are tracked across regions, see the Geography section.
More information
Read the complete Cornell full-length story on the Finger Lakes PFAS map.
Source note: This article includes information reported by Tompkins Weekly.
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