PFAS Drinking Water Limits Praised but More Regulations Sought

The EPA’s caps on PFAS in drinking water will decrease the amount of the disease-linked chemicals that many people drink, but regulations on the release of the substances into water and management of wastes with them are still needed.

Individuals, parents, firefighters, and farmers discussed final drinking water standards and a waste regulation that the Environmental Protection Agency released in April during a recent conference on emerging science about the chemicals. Participants called for nonessential uses of PFAS to be eliminated while pressing for new water permit limits and requirements to manage wastes as hazardous.

Data from the first federal study comparing concentrations of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in drinking water exposures to blood levels in local residents “tells us that efforts like EPA’s are effective,” said Rachel Rogers, who oversees research on the chemicals carried out by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

People whose water supplies had lower levels of the PFAS or lowered it by using home water filters generally had lesser amounts in their bodies, she said, summarizing results from a CDC report about its investigation of 10 communities in nine states.

“No administration has ever done as much to keep us safe from toxic chemicals,” said Scott Faber, senior vice president of government affairs for the Environmental Working Group, regarding the drinking water, waste, and other PFAS rules the agency has issued or proposed.

The EPA’s Safe Drinking Water Act rule covered six PFAS with numerical limits for some and a cap on mixtures. Industry groups have challenged the rule.

The agency chose the PFAS based on scientific information showing they have similar harmful effects on the liver, kidney, immune system, and other body functions, said Brittany Jacobs, a health scientist in the EPA’s water office who led the effort to set the limits. Those effects can be more potent when some of the chemicals are combined, she said, describing the agency’s rationale for the mixtures limit.

More Controls Sought

The EPA’s drinking water rule was historic, said Emily Donovan, co-founder of Clean Cape Fear, a North Carolina community organization.

But communities living in PFAS-contaminated regions still face “poisoned tap water, toxic air and soil, polluted fish” and are forced to debate the pros and cons of feeding their infants contaminated breast milk, she said.

In one example, Joanne Stanton, who co-founded Buxmont Coalition for Safer Water in Pennsylvania, said her community’s drinking water was contaminated with high concentrations of PFAS from local military bases. She recalled her son’s diagnosis with a cancerous brain tumor at age 6, which doctors attributed to something that happened while he was in her womb. “It was gut wrenching for me to be told that my exposure might have caused my child’s cancer.”

“Much more needs to be done to address the harms caused by PFAS polluters,” Faber said.

The EPA’s drinking water rule doesn’t stop companies making or using the chemicals from releasing them into water, he said. Nor does the Safe Drinking Water Act rule apply to private wells that millions of US residents rely on.

Limits on PFAS releases to water should be required through National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permits that states and the EPA provide manufacturers under the Clean Water Act, he said.

Semiconductor and lithium-ion battery producers were two types of industrial sectors discussed at the conference, although many more industries use the chemicals. They do so due to PFAS’ stability, ability to smooth the transport of electricity, reduce friction, and resist heat, water, and other damage to many types of products.

The EPA’s recent rule designating two types of PFAS—perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS)—as hazardous substances under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act or Superfund law makes it easier for the agency and state regulators to require cleanups. But it doesn’t designate the chemicals as hazardous wastes.

A Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) rule that the EPA proposed this year would make nine PFAS hazardous constituents, but that wouldn’t make them hazardous wastes. The agency would have to issue a subsequent rule to designate one or more of those nine chemicals to be a hazardous waste.

Waste Disposal

The agency must prevent the chemicals from continuing to get into the environment through uncapped industrial discharges and unregulated disposal, Faber said, calling for quicker hazardous waste regulation.

Data on PFAS waste disposal is limited due to a lack of regulations, but some facilities have voluntarily reported it, he said.

Information the EPA has compiled includes shipments of non-RCRA regulated materials containing the chemicals to hazardous waste incinerators in East Liverpool, Ohio, and El Dorado, Ark.; a deep well injection facility in Texas; landfills; and other licensed facilities across the country, he said.

The database shows companies, laboratories, universities, hospitals, and military bases shipped millions of pounds of PFAS-enabled firefighting foams, contaminated soil, and other material from July 2018 through March 2024, according to a Bloomberg Law analysis.

Alaska Airlines, BASF Corp., Cargill Inc., Disney Cruise Lines, GlaxoSmithKline PLC, Harvard University, the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and multiple military bases are among the facilities that shipped wastes to incinerators on specific dates between July 2018 and February 2024, according to the database. PFAS-enabled aqueous film forming foam (AFFF) was one of the most frequently listed materials these facilities sent to hazardous waste incinerators.

American Airlines, Exxon Mobil Corp., and Perimeter Solutions—which provides equipment and services for firefighting—shipped water with AFFF to licensed deep well and underground injection companies between January 2020 and March 2024.

The EPA’s database reports one case of open burning of PFAS wastes. Shore Terminals LLC, which stores, handles, and distributes petroleum products, shipped oily water with PFOS to US Ecology Inc., a waste management company, for open burning or detonation in Beatty, Nev., in 2019.

The EPA says on the waste transfer portion of its database that some shipment manifest records might not contain PFAS and that the data doesn’t reflect all PFAS waste transfers.

According to Faber, ultimately, companies, federal agencies, and states must end needless uses of PFAS, stop releasing them into the environment, and properly manage them as hazardous wastes.

Even as progress is being made to remove PFAS, it’s slow and remediation is challenging, said Hope Grosse, the other co-founder of Buxmont Coalition for Safer Water, who grew up across the street from the Naval Air Warfare Center in Warminster, Pa. “Our community is going to be dealing with this cleanup for decades to come.”