EPA sets new, strict limits on forever chemicals in drinking water. What it will mean
The Environmental Protection Agency is setting the first-ever limits for some forever chemicals in drinking water, EPA Administrator Michael Regan announced Wednesday morning in Fayetteville.
“With today’s action, we are one huge step closer to finally shutting off the tap on forever chemicals once and for all. Folks across this country deserve real solutions,” Regan said Tuesday, at a press briefing ahead of the announcement.
North Carolina’s struggles with per- and polyfluoralkyl substances came to the forefront in 2017, when Regan was serving as secretary of the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality. After N.C. State University researchers found high concentrations of previously undisclosed forever chemicals coming from Chemours’ plant on the Cape Fear River, the state embarked on a still-ongoing years-long effort to regulate the chemicals.
The new limits will be:
4 parts per trillion for PFOA, the lowest level at which the compound can be detected. The EPA found that there is no safe level of PFOA.
4 parts per trillion for PFOS, the lowest level at which the compound can be detected. The EPA found that there is no safe level of PFOS.
10 parts per trillion for GenX chemicals, PFNA and PFHxS individually, in a change from the proposed rule.
A limit on any mixture of those three compounds as well as PFBS, a “hazard index” that measures how much concentrations of each of GenX, PFBS, PFNA and PFHxS make up of finalized health limits. If any amount of those concentrations divided by the health limits add up to at least 1, the water utility would be out of compliance.
“Today’s announcement of robust, protective legal limits on PFAS in tap water will give tens of millions of Americans the protection they should have had decades ago. It is easily, easily the most consequential and difficult decision to protect drinking water in the last 30 years,” Ken Cook, the president and co-founder of the Environmental Working Group, said Tuesday.
Emily Donovan, a Brunswick County resident who was one of the co-founders of Clean Cape Fear after learning about the contamination in Southeastern North Carolina’s drinking water in 2017, recalled the uncertainty and fear when the story first broke.
Speaking Wednesday, Donovan also recalled the frustration around utilities officials saying their water met or exceeded state and federal guidelines.
“We knew those words were worthless because there were no state and federal drinking water standards for PFAS,” said Donovan, whose organization pushed the United Nations to declare Chemours’ contamination in North Carolina a human rights violation.
Potential health effects of PFAS
PFAS are a group of nearly 15,000 man-made chemicals that are widely used because of their durability and persistence, the same qualities that can make them dangerous to humans. The drinking water regulation covers six of them.
The chemicals were historically used in firefighting foam and on nonstick pans, but have increasingly found uses in solar panels, semiconductors and other technology.
“While there’s no doubt that these chemicals have a place and are important for certain industries and in certain practices, there is also no doubt that these chemicals entering in an uncontrolled manner are harmful to our families, harmful to our communities and harmful to our economy,” Regan said.
Last year, the International Agency for Research on Cancer found that PFOA is carcinogenic to humans and PFOS is “possibly carcinogenic.”
The EPA has said that PFOA and PFOS are both likely human carcinogens, particularly dangerous for kidneys and livers. Researchers have also linked the chemicals with a litany of other health effects such as decreased birth weight and the suppression of immune response to vaccines among children.
“People should not be exposed to chemicals that are likely human carcinogens, but since zero is not currently achievable, the four parts per trillion is as close as can be achieved. So it is as protective as it can be given the technologies and the available funds that exist today,” Jamie DeWitt, an environmental and toxicologist who is the director of Oregon State University’s Environmental Health Sciences Center, told The News & Observer.
DeWitt, who previously worked in North Carolina, serves on North Carolina’s Secretaries’ Science Advisory Board.
With GenX, the EPA previously said the compound was linked with a constellation of liver lesions, as well as effects on the kidneys and immune system. In a 2022 health advisory, the EPA also found there is “suggestive evidence” that GenX could be linked with cancer in humans but insufficient data to decide how much leads to risk.
PFBS can impact thyroids, reproductive organs and developing fetuses, the EPA found in the 2022 health advisory. The EPA also found that PFHxS impacts the thyroid, as well as the liver and development. For PFNA, the main effects were developmental, with mice whose mothers were exposed to the chemical while pregnant gaining less weight and opening their eyes later, among other impacts.
The EPA said the rule announced Wednesday will cut down on PFAS exposures for about 100 million people and prevent tens of thousands of people from suffering from serious illnesses.
The American Chemistry Council, a trade group that represents chemical manufacturers, has long argued that the science underlying the standards is not sound and overstates the risk posed by the PFAS in question.
“We strongly support the establishment of a science-based drinking water standard, but this rushed, unscientific approach is unacceptable when it comes to an issue as important as access to safe drinking water. We strongly oppose this rule and will be working with the broad range of concerned stakeholders to determine next steps,” said an American Chemistry Council statement released Wednesday.
Removing PFAS from drinking water
The Fayetteville Public Works Commission, whose facility hosted Wednesday’s event, saw levels of PFOA and PFOS above the new standards in samples taken in 2022. They are now spending $80 million to build a granular activated carbon system that will start operating in 2028.
The EPA has estimated that 6% to 10% of the water systems nationwide will have forever chemical levels in excess of those allowed under the new rule. That’s 4,100 to 6,700 utilities that will likely need to build new filters or find new drinking water sources to bring levels down.
Utilities will have three years to test their drinking water under the new rule. Those that find high levels of PFAS will need to install treatment devices or switch their drinking water sources by 2029, the EPA said in a fact sheet.
In North Carolina, 41% of the state’s water utilities that serve more than 10,000 customers are expected to have more of at least one of the chemicals than will be allowed under the new EPA rule, Stephanie Bolyard, an N.C. Environmental Quality senior engineer, told the N.C Secretaries’ Science Advisory Board last week.
A DEQ release Wednesday said that more than 300 water systems will likely exceed the new standards. Those include 42 municipal water systems serving about 3 million people, as well as about 270 small water systems that have been tested and serve at least 15 connections or 25 people.
The American Water Works Association, which represents utilities nationwide, said in a statement Wednesday that it belives the cost of the rule will likely be significantly higher than the EPA’s estimates, about $4 billion each year nationwide instead of $1.5 billion.
“AWWA continues to encourage EPA to follow through on its commitments to address harmful PFAS manufacturing, uses, and releases to the environment. Doing so appropriately requires polluters – not communities – to be held responsible for PFAS contamination,” the statement said.
Bolyard’s Science Advisory Board comments came during a presentation about DEQ’s years-long effort to craft state surface water standards for a handful of PFAS. Many of the state’s large water utilities draw drinking water from lakes, rivers and other forms of surface water. DEQ is working to establish surface water standards for eight PFAS, including the six for which the EPA has now established drinking water standards.
“One of the motivations here is the connection between implementing surface water standards that could then translate to upstream effluent limits that, in hopes, would reduce any further impacts to downstream drinking water treatment plants from those industrial or publicly owned treatment water sources,” Bolyard said.
Under the most recent timeline, the drinking water standards would be phased in for industrial discharges beginning in 2027 and for wastewater treatment plants that accept waste from industry beginning in 2028. There would be a compliance timeline that could stretch to 2036.
Keeping PFAS out of water
In the wake of Wednesday’s announcement, North Carolina environmental groups argued that DEQ has the ability and an obligation to act now.
“EPA’s historic and protective new drinking water standards for PFAS will go a long way toward protecting North Carolinians from the adverse health impacts of forever chemicals exposure — particularly when paired with existing federal investments available to upgrade water utilities. North Carolina leaders must now take steps to address industrial discharges and turn off the tap of PFAS pollution at the source,” Stephanie Schweikert, the N.C. Conservation Network’s environmental health campaigns manager, said in a statement.
A key tool for DEQ right now could be what’s called a technology based limit in permits. That means the agency can ask a company what technology exists that can lower the amount of PFAS it is discharging and then set the limits based on what that technology can achieve.
DEQ has that authority right now and can use it in permits where PFAS discharges are either known or suspected, Jean Zhuang, a Southern Environmental Law Center senior attorney, told The News & Observer. In 2022, DEQ used that authority to set a limit for three PFAS in treated groundwater and stormwater around Chemours’ Fayetteville Works plant.
Using that authority more often would shift costs onto PFAS polluters, Zhuang said.
“We want our state to start putting that burden on industry to show what they can do to treat their waste, and the state should use their existing authority to put limits for PFAS in Clean Water Act permits,” Zhuang said.
This story was produced with financial support from the Hartfield Foundation and Green South Foundation, in partnership with Journalism Funding Partners, as part of an independent journalism fellowship program. The N&O maintains full editorial control of the work. If you would like to help support local journalism, please consider signing up for a digital subscription, which you can do here.
