Biden EPA praised for ‘historic progress’ but pressured to ban forever chemicals
The Biden administration’s proposed first-ever national drinking water standard for six “forever chemicals” is both “groundbreaking” and far from the comprehensive action needed to address the environmental and public health crisis, advocates, scientists, and people from polluted U.S. communities said Tuesday.
Commonly called forever chemicals because they persist in the environment, humans, and wildlife for long periods, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) have long been used in products such as firefighting foam, food packaging, nonstick pans, and water-resistant fabrics for clothing and furniture despite their ties to various health issues.
As part of U.S. President Joe Biden’s action plan for PFAS pollution, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) calls for regulating PFOA and PFOS as individual contaminants in drinking water at 4 parts per trillion (ppt) as well as regulating PFNA, PFHxS, PFBS, and HFPO-DA—often referred to as GenX—as a mixture. The rule would require public water systems to monitor for the six chemicals and, if levels exceed the proposed standards, notify the public and take action to reduce contamination.
“Communities across this country have suffered far too long from the ever-present threat of PFAS pollution. That’s why President Biden launched a whole-of-government approach to aggressively confront these harmful chemicals, and EPA is leading the way forward,” said the agency’s administrator, Michael Regan.
“EPA’s proposal to establish a national standard for PFAS in drinking water is informed by the best available science, and would help provide states with the guidance they need to make decisions that best protect their communities,” he added. “This action has the potential to prevent tens of thousands of PFAS-related illnesses and marks a major step toward safeguarding all our communities from these dangerous contaminants.”
The administration’s rule—which follows new lifetime advisories for PFOA, PFOS, PFBS, and GenX unveiled last June—would be “much stricter than the EPA suggested in 2016, when its health advisories recommended PFAS concentrations in drinking water of no more than 70 ppt,” and “one of the first new chemical standards that updates the Safe Drinking Water Act since 1996,” CNN reported.
U.S. military veteran, registered nurse, and Sierra Club member Mark Favors highlighted that “unfortunately, today’s protections arrived too late for my family members who drank water contaminated by the use of PFAS at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs for decades.”
“Sixteen people in my extended family have had cancer, including five military veterans,” he explained. “But the new rules will have far-reaching implications for future generations.”
EWG senior scientist David Andrews declared that “these six PFAS stand out as some of the most well-studied PFAS, but the entire class of chemicals is a health concern. Action to reduce exposure cannot come soon enough.”
Waterkeeper Alliance CEO Marc Yaggi also argued that more must be done, calling on “federal and state governments to adequately fund the infrastructure upgrades that utilities need to effectively remove these dangerous chemicals, which should ultimately be paid for by the manufacturers and not by the public.”
Originally published at Commondreams.org.
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