For the first time, the federal government is requiring municipal water systems to remove six synthetic chemicals linked to cancer and other health problems from the tap water of hundreds of millions of Americans.
The emergency move by the Environmental Protection Agency requires water providers to reduce perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, known collectively as PFAS, to near-zero levels. The compounds, found in everything from dental floss to firefighting foams to children’s toys, are called “forever chemicals” because they never fully break down and can accumulate in the body and the environment.
The chemicals are so ubiquitous that they can be found in the blood of almost every person in the United States. A 2023 state study of private wells and public water systems detected PFAS chemicals in almost half of the country’s tap water.
PFAS exposure has been associated with metabolic disorders, reduced fertility in women, developmental delays in children, and an increased risk of certain cancers of the prostate, kidney, and testicles. according to the EPA.
Michael S. Regan, the administrator of the EPA, called the new regulation “life-changing.”
“This action will prevent thousands of deaths and reduce tens of thousands of serious illnesses,” Mr. Reagan said on a call with reporters on Tuesday. He described the rule as the most significant action the federal government has ever taken to reduce exposure to PFAS in drinking water.
“We are one giant step closer to turning off the chemical tap once and for all,” he said.
The EPA estimated it would cost water utilities about $1.5 billion a year to comply with the rule, though utilities say the cost could be twice that amount and worry about how to finance it. State and local governments have successfully sued some PFAS manufacturers for contaminating drinking water supplies, but settlements tasked with municipalities have been saddled with the cost of cleaning up the chemicals, municipal officials said.
Industry executives say taxpayers will ultimately foot the bill in the form of increased water rates.
The bipartisan Infrastructure Act of 2021 provides $9 billion to help communities deal with PFAS contamination, and the EPA said $1 billion of that money will go to help states with initial testing and remediation.
Mr. Regan announced the regulation Wednesday in Fayetteville, NC, near the site where, in 2017, a Chemours chemical plant discharged PFAS-contaminated water into the Cape Fear River, making local drinking water unsafe.
Mr. Regan, who previously served as North Carolina’s top environmental regulator, oversaw the Cape Fear PFAS investigation at the time and forced Chemours to clean up the air, soil and water in lower Cape Fear River basin communities .
In 2022, the EPA found that the chemicals could cause harm at levels “much lower than previously understood” and that almost no level of exposure was safe.
Under the new EPA rule, water utilities must monitor supplies for PFAS chemicals and will be required to notify the public and reduce contamination if levels exceed the new standard of 4 parts per trillion for perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances. Previously, the agency had advised that drinking water contain no more than 70 parts per trillion of the chemical.
Public water systems have three years to complete their monitoring. If those samples show PFAS levels exceed the new EPA standards, utilities will have two more years to buy and install equipment designed to filter out PFAS.
In a 2020 peer-reviewed studyscientists at the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit organization, estimated that more than 200 million Americans had PFAS in their drinking water.
Public health advocates and scientists said the new regulation was overdue.
“A growing body of scientific research shows that PFAS chemicals are more harmful to human health than previously thought and at extremely low levels,” said Anna Reade, director of PFAS advocacy at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group.
Just last year, more than a dozen peer-reviewed studies have found evidence of additional health effects of PFAS exposure, including delayed onset of puberty in girls, leading to higher incidence of breast cancer, kidney disease, and thyroid disease; decreased bone density in adolescents, potentially leading to osteoporosis . and increased risk of type 2 diabetes in women.
Dr. Susan M. Pinney, director of the Center for Environmental Genetics at the University of Cincinnati, led a longitudinal study of young girls exposed to PFAS after an industrial plant in West Virginia released the chemicals into the Ohio River.
He called the number of people exposed to PFAS across the country “self-inflicted.”
Robert A. Bilott, a lawyer who has spent more than two decades litigating the dangerous dumping of PFAS chemicals, said he had been alerting the EPA to the chemicals’ dangers in drinking water as early as 2001. a long time to get to this point, but the science and the truth about the health threat posed by these man-made poisons has finally prevailed,” said Mr Bilott.
The EPA estimated the health benefits of the new regulation at about $1.5 billion annually from reductions in cancer, heart attacks and strokes, and birth complications.
But Republicans and industry groups, along with many mayors and county officials, said the Biden administration had created an impossible standard that would cost municipal water utilities billions of dollars.
Several questioned the EPA’s accounting as well as the science used to develop the new standard.
The American Water Works Association, the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies and other groups representing utilities have estimated that the cost of monitoring and remediating PFAS could reach $3.2 billion annually. The figure is based on an analysis performed for the American Water Works Association by Black & Veatch, an engineering consulting firm.
Communities with limited resources will be hit hardest by the new rule, they said.
“When regulations are almost zero, that’s not something that manufacturers or water utilities can achieve economically,” Brandon Farris, vice president of energy policy at the National Association of Manufacturers, wrote in a letter to the EPA “Regulations that are not economically feasible will lead to the production of critical substances outside the US, where environmental protection is often less stringent.”
Christina Muryn, the mayor of Findlay, Ohio, a city of about 50,000 people, said that while clean drinking water is imperative, the EPA was requiring municipalities to meet new mandates without adequate support.
“This is very disappointing to me as a citizen, as a mayor and as someone who is responsible for our water treatment system,” Ms Muryn said.
Public health advocates said the cost of the new rule was outweighed by the growing body of evidence about the dangers of PFAS.
Widely used since the 1940s, the chemicals are useful in repelling water and oil. Nonstick pans have been most famously associated with PFAS, but the chemicals can be found in water-repellent clothing and carpets, some shampoos, cosmetics, and hundreds of other household items.