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The Biden administration has completed the first national step to limit the dangerous “forever chemicals” found in the United States About half Drinking water in the United States. Some environmentalists called the new law a “major breakthrough” and a “historic” change to help protect human health.
The new standard is legally enforceable and aims to reduce exposure to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, known as PFAS or “permanent chemicals.” Water service providers now have to filter more than five 12,000 types Individual forever chemicals – PFOA, PFOS, PFNA, PFHxS and HFPO-DA, also known as GenX chemicals. The regulations set limits for any two or more mixtures of PFNA, PFHxS, PFBS and GenX chemicals.
This A family of ubiquitous synthetic chemicals Products help repel water and oil but stay inside The environment and the human body. They are linked to a variety of health problems, including cancer, thyroid disease, reproductive problems, and heart and liver damage. The chemicals are found in the blood of 97% of all Americans US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
By 2022, the US Environmental Protection Agency He gave health advice The chemicals are far more dangerous to human health than scientists first thought, and perhaps even thousands of times less dangerous than previously believed.
But until now there was no federal standard on chemicals in drinking water. Only a handful of states have enacted laws requiring water facilities to test and filter chemicals.
The new drinking water standard will reduce PFAS exposure to about 100 million people in the United States, the administration said.
“I'll tell you, five years ago, I was working hard in states all over the country that wanted to set their own drinking water standards because we all believed there was no way we could meet federal drinking water standards. “I think it's a breakthrough in terms of action against PFAS,” said Dr. Anna Reedy, director of environmental health at the environmental group NRDC, a PFAS advocate.
New levels, new investments
The new regulations set different standards for different chemicals.
For PFOA and PFOS, applicable maximum contaminant levels (MCLs) are set separately at 4.0 parts per trillion. The Administration stated that this standard would reduce the effective implementation of these PFASs in drinking water to the lowest possible level.
The new maximum contaminant level goal for PFOA and PFOS — a non-enforceable, health-based goal — would be zero. The zero level reflects recent research showing that there is no level of exposure other than risk, senior administration officials said Tuesday.
For PFNA, PFHxS, and GenX chemicals, EPA is setting the contaminant level at 10 parts per trillion.
The government estimates that between 6% and 10% of the 66,000 water systems in the US will need to upgrade their filtration systems to comply with this new standard.
Water treatment facilities have three years to test chemicals and two years to purchase, install and operate chemicals that exceed the standards, and perpetual chemicals to test. Public water systems must inform people about the level of PFAS in their drinking water.
The Biden administration is providing an “unprecedented” $1 billion in new funding through the bipartisan Infrastructure Act to help states and states increase testing and treatment for these chemicals in public water systems and private well owners. The funding is part of a $9 billion investment to help communities manage water contaminated with PFAS and other pollutants.
EPA also has Water technical support A program to help small, disadvantaged and rural communities access federal funding and plan for the future.
It's not entirely clear how much the federal standard will reduce people's overall exposure to PFAS, said Dr. David Andrews, a senior scientist at the Environmental Protection Group, an environmental group that has been pushing for decades to rid the country of these chemicals.
Andrews called the new national ranking “historic.”
“This is the first time since the passage of the Safe Drinking Water Act Amendments in 1996 that drinking water pollution has made it to the bottom line of the regulatory process,” Andrews said.
Drinking water probably accounts for at least 20% of people's lifetime exposure to these chemicals, Andrews said, but it may depend on the water supply.
People are exposed to these chemicals forever through food, clothing, furniture, dust, and many other sources.
The new standard will improve drinking water quality overall, he said, adding that filters used to remove PFAS will also filter out other contaminants, such as pesticides.
However, the practice does not completely eliminate exposure from drinking water. Most environmentalists believe that the EPA should set standards for the entire chemical class. This rule applies only to a few.
“This problem is huge,” said NRDC's Reade. “Again, we shouldn't take away from the fact that this is a really big step.
Eric Olsen, senior strategic director of health at NRDC, said the effectiveness of the standard also depends on implementation. In most states of the country, states have primary enforcement responsibility.
“In most states, monitoring of violations, reporting of violations, enforcement of violations is very poor and most violators go unpunished,” Olson said.
According to Olson, the regulation encourages water utilities to invest in modern technology. Some systems still rely on World War I-era technology, he said.
“We hope they realize they need to make these investments,” Olsen said. “In fact, we're living off the investments of our great-grandfathers who built many of these systems.”
Dr. Chad Seidel, an engineer with Colorado's drinking water utility and president of Corona Environmental Consulting, said the change would cost some utilities too much.
Sidel, a critic of the standards, said many facilities were working hard to reduce PFAS from drinking water “before the national regulation.”
Seidel believes facilities with high PFAS concentrations should address the problem, but the health benefits may not be significant for facilities with low concentrations. “In reality, it is a very high cost for a low public health benefit,” the rule said.
“We want to make sure that the limited resources that we have in our communities are actually being used to address public health concerns and drinking water, and I wish the list was really shorter than PFAS, but unfortunately, there's actually a lot more pressing things that we want to address,” Seidel said.
The American Chemistry Council, the association representing the U.S. chemical, plastics and chlorine industries, disputed the science used to develop the new standards. The EPA argued the rule would cost three to four times more than expected, with the cost burden falling on smaller water utilities and taxpayers.
The EPA reviewed the rule and found that the benefits and costs of the standard would be about $1.5 billion, with the real benefits being fewer cancers, fewer heart attacks, and fewer birth defects.
's Sandy Lamott contributed to this report.