By Amudalat Ajasa — The Environmental Protection Agency announced Wednesday that it plansto rescind and reconsider limits on four “forever chemicals” under a landmark drinking water standard implemented last year by President Joe Biden.
The drinking water rules were adopted as part of the Biden administration’s efforts to limit public exposure to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), hazardous chemicals linked to a range of serious illnesses. The original rule covered six common PFAS contaminants, including PFOA, a known human carcinogen, and PFOS, a likely carcinogen.
The EPA estimates that more than 158 million Americans are exposed to PFAS through their drinking water.
The agency plans to maintain current rules for PFOA and PFOS, though it will extend the deadline for compliance from 2029 to 2031.
In its announcement, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said the changes will “protect Americans from PFOA and PFOS in their drinking water” while providing “common-sense flexibility in the form of additional time for compliance.”
The EPA did not provide additional comment, but during a congressional hearing Wednesday, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon) pressed Zeldin on whether the agency would “weaken” PFAS standards.
“That is not accurate,” Zeldin said in response. “That is not what the agency announced.”
The EPA chief added that the agency will kick off a lengthy process for revising the PFAS limits. “But that doesn’t mean that it gets weaker,” he said. “The number might end up going lower, not higher.”
The agency’s action follows the release by the White House in March of a 36-page “National Strategy to End the Use of Paper Straws” that detailed the dangers of PFAS, which some paper straws contain. It said the chemicals are “harmful to human health, and they have been linked to harms affecting reproductive health, developmental delays in children, cancer, hormone imbalance, obesity, and other dangerous health conditions.”
PFAS are a large class of persistent chemicals that repel grease, water, oil and heat, and are used to make a wide array of consumer and industrial products. Scientists have found these chemicals in the blood of almost every American and have detected the compounds in remote regions of the planet, such as Antarctica.
The regulations adopted last year gave the 66,000 public water systems in the United States until 2029 to comply with the new standards. Under the rule, the maximum contamination level for PFOA and PFOS was set at 4 parts per trillion. Three other compounds – PFHxS, PFNA and GenX – were limited to 10 parts per trillion. In addition, the water standard required utilities to use a “hazard index” to monitor for a mixture of the chemicals, as well as a fourth, PFBS.
In June, trade associations representing water utilities filed suit against the EPA, challenging the science and data underlying the drinking water standard and its timetable for meeting it. According to the agency’s estimates, the standard would cost utilities about $1.5 billion a year.
Under the agency’s new plan, the regulations covering PFHxS, PFNA, GenX and PFBS will be rescinded and reconsidered. The agency plans to begin a new rulemaking process in the fall and to issue a new rule next spring. The agency also said it plans to start a program called PFAS OUT to “share resources, tools, funding, and technical assistance to help utilities meet the federal drinking water standards.”
Erik Olson, the senior strategic director for health at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an advocacy group that is a party to the lawsuit, said the Safe Drinking Water Act’s “anti-backsliding” provision bars the agency from repealing or weakening the drinking water standard.
“The law is very clear that the EPA can’t repeal or weaken the drinking water standard. Any effort to do so will clearly violate what Congress has required for decades,” Olson said. “It shows that this administration doesn’t really care about protecting people’s drinking water from toxic forever chemicals that endanger the health of over 100 million Americans.”
Water utilities praised the move.
“EPA has done the right thing for rural and small communities by delaying implementation of the PFAS rule,” said Matthew Holmes,CEO of the National Rural Water Association, a trade group, in the announcement. “This commonsense decision provides the additional time that water system managers need to identify affordable treatment technologies and make sure they are on a sustainable path to compliance.”
Alan Roberson, executive director of the Association of State Drinking Water Administrators, said that “EPA’s proposed extension of the compliance date and increased technical assistance will address the number of systems that would be out of compliance in 2029 due to not being able complete all of these tasks on time.”
The American Chemistry Council, an industry trade group, said the Biden-era regulation was not consistent with the state of the science, and that it imposed steep costs on water utilities.
“EPA’s actions reflect efforts to address the concerns of water utilities and local governments, focus on national drinking water priorities, minimize the impact on water bills, and ensure consistency with the requirements of the Safe Drinking Water Act,” the ACC said in a statement.
Linda Birnbaum, a former director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, said the agency’s decision to remove restrictions on the known substitutions for PFOS and PFOA was concerning.
“It’s too bad. We know these chemicals are dangerous. We know their adverse health effects. The more we study them, the more problems we face,” Birnbaum said. “If anything, the science is stronger today than it was a year or two years ago.”
GenX has been linked to kidney and liver toxicity, immune and development effects, and cancer in rats, according to an EPA toxicity assessment.
Experts say that in the absence of federal regulations, more emphasis will be placed on the states to safeguard drinking water from PFAS pollution.
More than two dozen states have introduced almost 200 bills this year to address local PFAS issues. Lawmakers in North Carolina, for example, have proposed a bill that would require PFAS manufacturers to cover the cost of cleaning up drinking water contaminated by GenX and other chemicals.
“Our bipartisan bill specifically tackles GenX, one of the compounds which will now have looser regulation,” North Carolina state Rep. Robert Reives (D) said in an email. “I am disappointed but not surprised by the prospect of these rescissions. We know these forever chemicals are toxic to humans.”
Emily Donovan, who lives near Wilmington, North Carolina, an area affected by the release of GenX into the Cape Fear River, said that communities will bear the brunt of the EPA’s decision.
“The idea that they want to rescind and reconsider GenX is a victory for chemical companies,” said Donovan, who co-founded a grassroots advocacy group called Clean Cape Fear. “This isn’t a win for American public health.”
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Maxine Joselow contributed to this report.
