The Biden administration is taking strong measures to address the presence of toxic “forever chemicals” in America’s tap water, food, and household products.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has recently approved the first-ever regulations to limit the presence of PFAS in drinking water. These newly imposed restrictions categorize PFAS alongside other widely recognized contaminants such as lead, arsenic, and nitrate.
PFAS, also known as “forever chemicals,” earned their nickname due to their non-biodegradable nature. Instead of breaking down, they accumulate both in the environment and within our bodies, posing a significant risk to human health. Numerous peer-reviewed studies have established a connection between PFAS and various health concerns, including certain types of cancer, decreased fertility, reduced vaccine efficacy, elevated cholesterol levels, and developmental delays in children.
According to Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, protecting drinking water has never been a more significant and challenging decision in the last three decades.
According to him, the watchdog group has been studying PFAS for over twenty years and discovered its presence in various locations, including umbilical cord blood.
The use of these chemicals dates back to the 1940s when they were initially created for non-stick cookware. However, their usage quickly expanded to include various products such as clothing, carpets, food packaging, and even firefighting foam utilized by airports and military bases to extinguish jet-fuel fires. Unfortunately, the manufacturers of PFAS also irresponsibly disposed of the chemical by dumping it into waterways, landfills, and unlined pits in states like North Carolina and Minnesota.
EPA Administrator Michael Regan is making an important announcement regarding the revised drinking water limits in Fayetteville, North Carolina. This comes after residents of the area discovered in 2017 that a river nearby was severely polluted with PFAS contamination, stemming from a manufacturing plant previously owned by Chemours and DuPont.
Regan, in a press conference, emphasized the potentially life-saving impact of this action, stating that it has the potential to prevent thousands of deaths and significantly reduce the number of serious illnesses. He referred to estimates provided by the EPA regarding the effects of implementing drinking water limits.
According to David Andrews, deputy director of investigations and senior scientist at EWG, the EPA is currently regulating six out of the many thousands of PFAS types that are manufactured today. This regulation is based on research that has established a connection between these specific types of PFAS and potential harm, as well as evidence indicating their prevalence in drinking water.
PFOA and PFOS are two chemicals that can be found in waterways and the environment, even though they have been phased out of production in the US since the 2000s. According to the EPA, these chemicals are considered unsafe at any level, but the lowest level that modern labs can detect in drinking water is 4 parts per trillion, which is the limit set by the agency.
Several other chemicals have a limit of 10 parts per trillion, according to the EPA. The EPA has also established limits for mixtures of two or more PFAS chemicals, as research suggests they may have cumulative health effects.
States and local water officials will need to meet the new limits within a five-year timeframe. This includes three years for testing PFAS levels, and if those levels exceed the federal limits, an additional two years to implement water treatment technology. To support this effort, the administration is providing $1 billion in grants for both public water systems and private well owners to facilitate the installation of treatment technology.
Senior administration officials anticipate that approximately 10% of the 66,000 water systems in the United States will need to implement measures to meet the new PFAS limits. This implies that the majority of systems will not detect PFAS levels that exceed the prescribed thresholds. However, it is important to note that this is merely an estimation. The true extent of the issue will become evident during the initial three years of sampling.
According to Andrews, the technology to remove harmful compounds from drinking water already exists. However, the main challenges lie in the cost and political feasibility of implementing these solutions.
“The agency has been aware of the harmful effects of these chemicals for several decades,” he emphasized. “Unfortunately, many individuals throughout the nation have been consuming water with elevated levels of contamination, which is likely to have an adverse impact on their health.”
The Biden administration has developed a comprehensive $9 billion strategy to address PFAS contamination, which extends beyond just drinking water. This strategy includes initiatives to tackle PFAS pollution in various areas such as military bases, airports, and food packaging.
In February, the FDA announced that certain types of grease-proofing PFAS are no longer being used in paper food packaging, including fast-food wrappers, microwave popcorn bags, and take-out pizza boxes. This voluntary phase-out has effectively eliminated the primary source of exposure to PFAS from our diets, according to the agency. However, there are still remaining stocks of packaging that contain PFAS, and it may take several months for these supplies to be completely exhausted.
According to several scientists interviewed by BI, although these measures are crucial, they fall short in effectively managing PFAS contamination.
According to Carmen Messer, a professor of reproductive environmental epidemiology at Harvard’s TH Chan School of Public Health, who specializes in PFAS research, the current regulations are only a temporary fix to the broader issue. While it’s a step in the right direction, she believes that the focus should be on regulating the entire group of chemicals and preventing companies from producing them in the first place, rather than just monitoring the levels in our water.
