The EPA Is Giving Some Forever Chemicals a Pass

The EPA on Wednesday said it would change a rule intended to protect Americans from forever chemicals in their drinking water. The agency plans to extend a compliance deadline to limit two key chemicals, and rescind and reconsider regulations on four others.

Last year, the Biden administration released a long-awaited rule setting limits on forever chemicals in municipal drinking water systems. This rule not only mandated low levels for two of the most-studied forever chemicals, PFOA and PFOS, but for four other chemicals that have been linked to a variety of adverse health effects.

In addition to removing those four other chemicals from the rule, the Trump EPA now says it will give drinking water systems until 2031 to get rid of PFOA and PFOS in the supply—two years after the original deadline of 2029.

“EPA has one mission: to protect human health and the environment,” says Kyla Bennett, a director of science policy at the nonprofit Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. “This flies in the face of their mission and everything they're supposed to stand for.”

“We are on a path to uphold the agency’s nationwide standards to protect Americans from PFOA and PFOS in their water,” EPA administrator Lee Zeldin said in a press release. “At the same time, we will work to provide common-sense flexibility in the form of additional time for compliance. This will support water systems across the country, including small systems in rural communities, as they work to address these contaminants.”

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, also known as PFAS or forever chemicals, are a class of thousands of chemicals used in a variety of industries and consumer products, from nonstick pans to raincoats to firefighting foam to waterproof furniture protectant. The EPA has linked PFAS to a wide variety of health concerns in humans such as cancer, hormonal imbalances, decreased fertility, developmental delays in children, and reduced vaccine response.

As their name suggests, these chemicals can last for thousands of years in the environment, and can build up to very high concentrations. Studies have found that nearly all Americans have traces of PFAS in their blood, while EPA data released earlier this year shows that half of the US population is exposed to PFAS in their drinking water.

While mounting research has for years linked forever chemicals to negative human health outcomes, the government has been slow to regulate PFAS. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, a series of lawsuits, including a landmark case in West Virginia, exposed how producers of PFAS chemicals allegedly concealed the human health impacts of their products from the public and regulators. As a result, major US manufacturers of forever chemicals worked with the government to phase out production of PFOA and PFOS, the two most commonly used forever chemicals. Rather than abandon PFAS entirely, industries turned to alternative forever chemicals that they claimed were safer.

Research has since shown that these replacements may also accumulate in the environment and be harmful to human health. The EPA has noted that hexafluoropropylene oxide dimer acid and its ammonium salt, for instance, appears to linger in the environment as long as PFOA and PFOS. Chemical giant Chemours began manufacturing a chemical class, called GenX, using hexafluoropropylene oxide dimer acid, in 2009, claiming the chemicals could be used as a “sustainable replacement” for PFOA. Animal studies indicate that oral exposure to GenX chemicals could have adverse impacts on the liver, kidneys, and reproductive systems. The Biden rule set allowable GenX limits in drinking water at just 10 parts per trillion (ppt). In water tests done at one North Carolina water utility in 2016, near a Chemours facility, levels of the chemicals averaged at 631 ppt, with some samples testing as high as 4,500 ppt.

In a statement, Chemours spokesperson Jess Loizeaux told WIRED that the company had invested more than $400 million to reduce PFAS discharges from its factory in North Carolina. The company also noted that the chemical has a shorter half-life in the human body than PFOA and PFOS.

“Chemours wholly supports setting reasonable and scientifically justified" limits for PFAS, Loizeaux says. "But getting the science right is absolutely critical … We applaud EPA’s willingness to review and correct the underlying science."

“The idea that somehow the newer chemicals the industry has shifted to are safer is baloney,” says Erik Olson, a senior director at the nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council. “The EPA has found that these chemicals are very dangerous, and that’s why they’re being regulated.”

In a statement provided to WIRED, EPA spokesperson Molly Vaseliou said that the agency was reconsidering regulatory determinations for these chemicals to ensure compliance with the Safe Drinking Water Act. “EPA’s actions are designed to reduce the burden on drinking water systems and the cost of water bills, all while continuing to protect public health and ensure that the agency is following the law in establishing impactful regulations such as these,” she said.

The Trump administration’s legal path forward to change portions of the drinking water rule is unclear. The extension of the compliance deadline is “clearly illegal,” Olson claims. He points to provisions in the Safe Drinking Water Act that prohibit agencies from easily “backsliding” on rules and regulations. “The idea that they’re free to just extend deadlines and repeal standards—it’s very clear from the statute that it’s not something they can do.”

A coalition of manufacturing and chemical industry groups filed a lawsuit against the original Biden rule last year, claiming that it was an abuse of the agency’s authority under the Safe Drinking Water Act. The Trump administration has not yet said whether it will continue to defend the rule in court. On Monday, it filed for a 21-day extension in the case to “to allow the parties to confer and seek agreement on proposals to govern future proceedings following on from EPA’s anticipated announcement of potential proceedings addressing the regulations challenged here.”

The attempted rollback comes as EPA is moving to gut its Office of Research and Development (ORD), a key body in the agency that contributes scientific research on a variety of issues. The 1,500-person staff at ORD were told earlier this month to apply for a handful of other scientific positions within the agency and to expect cuts. Getting rid of ORD, as WIRED reported earlier this week, could eliminate a crucial team devoted to studying the health impacts of chemicals, which has long been targeted by industrial interests for elimination.

“If those folks are all let go, we’re concerned that basically it’s going to be a decade plus away from progress on forever chemicals, which is extremely worrisome,” says Olson.