EPA imposes stricter limits on four types of toxic ‘forever chemicals’
The US Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday announced new advisory limits for four kinds of PFAS “forever chemicals”, warning that the compounds, which most Americans are exposed to daily, are far more toxic than previously thought.
The dangerous chemicals are estimated to be contaminating drinking water for more than 200 million people, and the new limits could have significant financial consequences for PFAS polluters, including the US military and producers like 3M, DuPont and Chemours.
PFAS are known as forever chemicals due to their longevity in the environment.
“People on the frontlines of PFAS contamination have suffered for far too long,” the EPA administrator, Michael Regan, said in a statement. “That’s why EPA is taking aggressive action.”
Though public health advocates praised the move, they note that it addresses only four out of about 9,000 PFAS compounds, and they called on the EPA to regulate the entire chemical class. The new standards also are not enforceable limits, but advisories that are often used by state regulators to set legally binding levels, or serve as a cleanup guide.
“There’s no safe level for PFAS and science is telling us they don’t belong in our tap water,” said Emily Donovan, director of the Clean Cape Fear advocacy group, which works on contamination issues in North Carolina. “There are still thousands of other PFAS out there. It’s time to regulate these ‘forever chemicals’ as a class and set an enforceable [limit] at 1 ppt.”
PFAS, or per- and poly-fluorakyl substances, do not naturally break down and accumulate in the environment and human bodies. They are used to make thousands of products across dozens of industries which resist water, stain and heat. Though they are effective,
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