Toxic Time Bomb: Asheboro’s Drinking Water Crisis Puts 900,000 Lives At Risk

A silent poison flows from Asheboro’s taps. It’s called 1,4-dioxane, a clear, odorless industrial chemical that’s a likely human carcinogen according to the EPA. The kicker? Up to 900,000 North Carolinians might be drinking it right now. Bet that makes your morning coffee taste different.

The culprit behind this toxic cocktail is StarPet, a local plastics company. Their waste flows through Asheboro’s wastewater treatment plant, which—surprise!—can’t filter out 1,4-dioxane. This chemical nightmare then travels downstream via Hasketts Creek into the Deep River and Cape Fear River Basin, serving communities from Pittsboro to Wilmington.

The industrial poison parade: StarPet dumps, Asheboro can’t filter, and downstream communities unknowingly drink the consequences.

StarPet’s pretreatment system, installed in 2020, fails constantly. Great investment, guys.

The numbers are staggering. Asheboro’s plant has exceeded permit benchmarks 159 times by their own admission, with levels reaching 3,520 parts per billion—that’s 160 times higher than what’s considered safe. In January 2025, downstream utilities got a friendly heads-up that their water might contain cancer juice. How thoughtful. A shocking spike of 826 ppb was recorded at the Asheboro Wastewater Treatment Plant on April 25, 2025, further confirming the ongoing contamination crisis.

Conventional water treatment doesn’t remove this stuff. It persists. It lingers. The Upper Cape Fear River Basin is now a national hotspot for 1,4-dioxane contamination. Congrats on the recognition!

Regulatory chaos isn’t helping. Asheboro, Greensboro, and Reidsville challenged state-imposed limits in 2023, and a September 2024 court ruling stripped North Carolina’s Department of Environmental Quality of enforcement authority.

Meanwhile, there’s no federal maximum contaminant level for 1,4-dioxane in drinking water—just a non-enforceable advisory goal of 0.35 ppb.

Environmental groups have sued Asheboro for Clean Water Act violations, but families can’t wait for litigation. They’re facing impossible choices: avoid local water, move away, or buy expensive filtration systems. The Clean Water Act mandates pretreatment programs specifically to prevent this type of industrial pollution from entering public waterways.

The health risks? Cancer, liver damage, kidney damage. Just the usual stuff when corporations treat public waterways like their personal toilet. But hey, at least the chemical is odorless, right?