Trump EPA moves to weaken drinking water limits on toxic ‘forever chemicals'
The Trump administration said Wednesday it intends to roll back first-ever limits set by the Biden administration on four toxic 'forever chemicals' contaminating water supplies across the country.
Even low levels of the chemicals known as PFAS are linked with cancer, immune system problems, developmental effects and other health ailments. EPA-mandated testing has found them in nearly half of Americans' drinking water.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said the agency will leave in place and continue to defend limits for the two most notorious types of PFAS — PFOA and PFOS — which have been phased out of use. But EPA will ask a federal court to let the agency 'rescind the regulations and reconsider' the decision to regulate four of their close cousins that were designed to replace them. Zeldin also said he will craft a regulation to give water utilities two more years to comply with the remaining limits and will provide technical support to water systems, especially those in small and rural communities, as well as opportunities to request exemptions from the regulation.
'We are on a path to uphold the agency's nationwide standards to protect Americans from PFOA and PFOS in their water. At the same time, we will work to provide common-sense flexibility in the form of additional time for compliance,' he said in a statement.
Zeldin, who pushed for aggressive regulation of PFAS chemicals when he was a representative from Long Island, New York, has said addressing the country's PFAS problem is one of his top priorities as administrator. He recently announced plans to boost research and address industrial releases of the chemicals.
But the drinking water regulation presents a politically treacherous decision for the administration, with some of the country's most powerful business groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers and the American Chemistry Council, fiercely opposing it.
Many of those groups' members have used or produced the chemicals for decades in everything from stain-resistant carpeting to nonstick cookware to firefighting foam and could face significant liability for cleanups and personal injury lawsuits. They are also continuing to profit from that production and use, including in politically important sectors such as semiconductors and defense technology.
Drinking water utilities have also sued over the Biden-era limits, arguing the cost of system upgrades to comply with it would be almost twice the $1.5 billion annual cost EPA estimated and would exceed the $12.5 billion settlement water utilities and chemical manufacturers reached over the chemicals.
Spokespeople for the American Water Works Association and the American Chemistry Council did not immediately have comments on the EPA announcement.
It's unclear how much those cost estimates would change by reworking just the standards for the four newer chemicals. But the move is a victory for industries that still actively produce and use the newer PFAS. Those chemicals include GenX, PFHxS and PFBS, as well as PFNA, a longer chain chemical that has largely been phased out. The 2024 regulation set a 10 parts per trillion limit for three of those chemicals and regulated mixtures of all four.
Pulling those limits stands to have a particularly significant impact on communities near military bases and industrial sites, which have faced some of the most acute contaminations and have been struggling to understand the health impact of the brews of PFAS their families have been exposed to for a generation.
That includes communities along the Cape Fear River in North Carolina, where the company Chemours for years discharged GenX and dozens of other PFAS directly into the water supply for roughly 200,000 people.
Emily Donovan, whose group Clean Cape Fear has advocated for eliminating PFAS exposure and boosting scientific research, blasted the Trump administration's move.
'It's disrespectful to PFAS contaminated communities who have suffered debilitating illnesses and devastating losses. This is a clear victory for the trillion dollar chemical industry—not public health,' she said in a statement.
North Carolina is one of the 39 states that do not have their own enforceable limits for some PFAS.
Three of the four PFAS whose limits EPA wants to pull back are structurally different from the two whose limits the Trump administration wants to leave in place. That raises the prospect that drinking water utilities that upgrade their systems to treat for PFOA and PFOS could select technologies that don't effectively treat for other PFAS. If the Trump administration decides to issue regulations for those chemicals in the future, water utilities may need to reengineer their systems.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration is also facing another hot-button decision around PFAS: whether to continue defending a Biden-era regulation listing PFOA and PFOS as hazardous under the nation's Superfund law. That rule is seen as key to forcing chemical companies and others responsible for the pollution to pay for cleanup — something Zeldin has said he supports. But it also stands to create massive financial liabilities for major companies and the Defense Department.
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