It’s an aggressive move that represents what health experts and community activists say is a long-overdue effort.It’s an aggressive move that represents what health experts and community activists say is a long-overdue effort.
The Biden administration is proposing the first-ever federal drinking water limits for toxic chemicals used to make nonstick materials like Teflon, stain-resistant carpeting and military firefighting foam, which are estimated to be contaminating 200 million Americans’ drinking water.
It’s an aggressive move that represents what health experts and community activists say is a long-overdue effort to begin reining in the widespread contamination from PFAS “forever” chemicals, which are linked with cancer, reproductive problems and a wide array of other health ailments. If finalized, the regulation would spark the first major upgrade to the safety of the nation’s drinking water in three decades.
The class of some 12,000 different PFAS substances are characterized by a strong chemical bond that makes them invaluable as nonstick agents, but also causes them to persist and accumulate in the environment — and people’s bodies. Studies have found the substances in virtually every American’s blood, and EPA estimates that its proposal to limit six of them in drinking water would save tens of thousands of lives and significantly reduce serious illnesses.
But, the agency acknowledges that the $772 million annual cost would, at least initially, be borne by American households through higher water charges.
“It’s time,” Radhika Fox, EPA’s top water official, said in an interview. “The American people want this. They want their drinking water to be safe.”
The regulatory proposal unveiled by EPA Tuesday would require utilities to cleanse their drinking water supplies of any detectable levels of the two most notorious chemicals in the class, known as PFOS and PFOA, which were used for decades in water repellent Scotchguard and Teflon, as well as firefighting foam, before being phased out of production in 2002 and 2015, respectively.
EPA’s new proposal also includes a surprise provision aimed at limiting the chemicals that the industry shifted to using after the PFOA and PFOS phase-out, which chemical companies argued were safer, but that federal scientists have concluded pose severe dangers of their own.
