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The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Wednesday introduced the country’s first legally-enforceable limits on “forever chemicals,” or toxic substances introduced to the water supply through manufacturing. Under the new rules, water utilities will be required to test for and introduce measures to mitigate certain types of chemical pollution entering public waterways.
Forever chemicals, or perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), are a group of over 12,000 pollutants generated during and used for industrial processes. Because they contain some of the toughest known chemical bonds, PFAS are difficult to eradicate. Once they enter the water supply, they become a part of our drinking water and agricultural products, each of which serve as a first-class ticket to the human body. There, they might trigger damage to the reproductive system and increase a person’s odds of developing learning disorders and certain types of cancer.
Startups and university research laboratories are working to develop PFAS destruction methods that can remove forever chemicals from polluted waters. But to reduce the amount of forever chemicals that enter our waterways in the first place, the EPA has spent the last year devising PFAS pollution limits. These limits are legally enforceable and will require anywhere from 3,900 to 6,000 US water systems to reduce their levels of PFAS pollution in order to achieve compliance.
Firefighting foams are one easily-recognizable source of PFAS.
Credit: Erik Mclean/Unsplash
In Wednesday’s announcement, the EPA set concentration limits on five types of PFAS: perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS), perfluorononanoic acid (PFNA), perfluorohexane sulfonate (PFHxS), and hexafluoropropylene oxide dimer acid (HFPO-DA), also known as “GenX chemicals.” While the maximum contaminant level for PFOA and PFOS now sits at 4 parts per trillion, PFNA, PFHxS, and HFPO-DA are maxed out at 10 parts per trillion.
In order to comply with the new rule, public water utilities must complete an initial PFAS monitoring procedure within the next three years. If any of the above five forever chemicals exceed the EPA’s limits, the utility must implement PFAS pollution prevention methods within the following five years, then re-test the water to prove those methods’ efficacy. Such practices are expected to reduce PFAS exposure for approximately 100 million people, resulting in the prevention of “tens of thousands” of serious illnesses related to PFAS contamination.
The EPA also set a non-enforceable “maximum contaminant level goal” for PFOA and PFOS at zero. This is reportedly because PFOA and PFOS exposure has been shown to trigger negative health effects regardless of concentration. While utility companies can’t be held liable for exceeding this goal, there’s a chance they could use the goal as a guiding principle toward long-term pollution prevention.