The EPA on Wednesday said it would change a rule intended to protect Americans from forever chemicals in their drinking water. The agency plans to extend a compliance deadline to limit two key chemicals, and rescind and reconsider regulations on four others.
Last year, the Biden administration released a long-awaited rule setting limits on forever chemicals in municipal drinking water systems. This rule not only mandated low levels for two of the most-studied forever chemicals, PFOA and PFOS, but for four other chemicals that have been linked to a variety of adverse health effects.
In addition to removing those four other chemicals from the rule, the Trump EPA now says it will give drinking water systems until 2031 to get rid of PFOA and PFOS in the supply—two years after the original deadline of 2029.
“EPA has one mission: to protect human health and the environment,” says Kyla Bennett, a director of science policy at the nonprofit Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. “This flies in the face of their mission and everything they’re supposed to stand for.”
“We are on a path to uphold the agency’s nationwide standards to protect Americans from PFOA and PFOS in their water,” EPA administrator Lee Zeldin said in a press release. “At the same time, we will work to provide common-sense flexibility in the form of additional time for compliance. This will support water systems across the country, including small systems in rural communities, as they work to address these contaminants.”
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, also known as PFAS or forever chemicals, are a class of thousands of chemicals used in a variety of industries and consumer products, from nonstick pans to raincoats to firefighting foam to waterproof furniture protectant. The EPA has linked PFAS to a wide variety of health concerns in humans such as cancer, hormonal imbalances, decreased fertility, developmental delays in children, and reduced vaccine response.
As their name suggests, these chemicals can last for thousands of years in the environment, and can build up to very high concentrations. Studies have found that nearly all Americans have traces of PFAS in their blood, while EPA data released earlier this year shows that half of the US population is exposed to PFAS in their drinking water.
While mounting research has for years linked forever chemicals to negative human health outcomes, the government has been slow to regulate PFAS. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, a series of lawsuits, including a landmark case in West Virginia, exposed how producers of PFAS chemicals allegedly concealed the human health impacts of their products from the public and regulators. As a result, major US manufacturers of forever chemicals worked with the government to phase out production of PFOA and PFOS, the two most commonly used forever chemicals. Rather than abandon PFAS entirely, industries turned to alternative forever chemicals that they claimed were safer.
Research has since shown that these replacements may also accumulate in the environment and be harmful to human health. The EPA has noted that hexafluoropropylene oxide dimer acid and its ammonium salt, for instance, appears to linger in the environment as long as PFOA and PFOS. Chemical giant Chemours began manufacturing a chemical class, called GenX, using hexafluoropropylene oxide dimer acid, in 2009, claiming the chemicals could be used as a “sustainable replacement” for PFOA. Animal studies indicate that oral exposure to GenX chemicals could have adverse impacts on the liver, kidneys, and reproductive systems. The Biden rule set allowable GenX limits in drinking water at just 10 parts per trillion (ppt). In water tests done at one North Carolina water utility in 2016, near a Chemours facility, levels of the chemicals averaged at 631 ppt, with some samples testing as high as 4,500 ppt.