As US Reels From COVID-19, the PFAS Pollution Crisis
Is Quietly Growing
Dow Chemicals and Solvay
USA Inc. facilities in Bristol, Pennsylvania, on February 6, 2019. While several
companies in the chemical industry, including 3M, DuPont and Solvay, have
phased out products linked to toxic chemicals from the per- and polyfuoroalkyl
(PFAS) substances group, there are 2,500 industrial manufacturing and chemical
facilities that could be releasing replacement PFAS into the air and water. BASTIAAN
SLABBERS / NURPHOTO VIA GETTY IMAGES
April
10, 2020
Rep. Chris Pappas has a
pollution double whammy in his New Hampshire congressional district. A plastics
manufacturer contaminated public water wells with per- and polyfluoroalkyl
substances, or PFAS, in the town of Merrimack. Residents of the town learned
in 2016 that they had been drinking water laced with tasteless,
odorless toxic chemicals for two decades. In another part of the district,
firefighting foam used at an Air Force installation contaminated the
surrounding environment with PFAS.
New Hampshire regulators
are currently investigating more than two
dozen PFAS contamination sites across the state, and Pappas is not alone in
Congress. PFAS are a broad group of chemicals that have been used for decades in
a variety of consumer products and manufacturing processes for their nonstick,
stain-repellent and waterproofing properties. These chemicals break down
incredibly slowly in the environment, and researchers suspect that small
amounts are detectable in every major source of drinking water in the United
States.
Now, as the nation reels
from a fresh public health crisis caused by the novel coronavirus, new research
suggests that more than 2,500 industrial facilities located in virtually every
congressional district could be discharging PFAS into the air
and water in the absence of federal regulations. While the Trump administration
has released a PFAS “action plan,” the White House pushed back against legislation passed
by House Democrats that would require the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
to draw up tough PFAS regulations and force polluters to assist in cleanup
efforts.
“It’s amazing to me that there is no
regulation of PFAS under the Clean Water Act right now in a way that can
protect our communities from the really toxic impacts that PFAS poses to
individuals’ health and well-being,” Pappas told reporters during a Zoom
conference on Thursday.
The two most notorious
PFAS chemicals, PFOS and PFOA, were originally used in Dupont’s Teflon and 3M’s
Scotchgard and are linked to health problems such as weakened childhood immunity,
cancer, and kidney and thyroid disease. PFOS and PFOA have been phased out of
use — although both persist in the environment. Independent research suggests
that dozens of other PFAS chemicals developed to replace PFOS
and PFOA may also have harmful impacts on the body, but with
hundreds of PFAS on the market, it’s difficult for researchers to keep up.
A map
of suspected industrial discharges of PFAS.EWG
Pappas’s district is home
to two primary examples of the major sources of PFAS pollution nationwide:
an industrial manufacturing plant and
an Air Force installation where firefighting
foam laced with PFAS was in use for years. Nationally, there are 2,500
industrial manufacturing and chemical facilities that could be releasing PFAS
into the air and water, according to a new dataset and map released by the Environmental
Working Group (EWG) on Thursday. The group previously identified and
mapped 678 military sites nationwide where PFAS
is known or suspected to have been discharged into the environment.
Lawmakers Say Trump’s EPA
Is Dragging Its Feet
Various PFAS chemicals
are used by a variety of industries for manufacturing and to coat their
products. Plastics manufacturers, carpetmakers, commercial printers and many
others use PFAS chemicals, according to Scott Faber, EWG’s vice president of
government affairs. Other major sources of pollution include 28 industrial
chemical facilities nationwide that report manufacturing or using large amounts
of PFAS.
One of the most notorious
polluters is the Chemours chemical plant in North Carolina,
which is currently under state orders to clean up PFAS pollution that
contaminated groundwater and the Cape Fear River. Dupont and 3M, two former
manufacturers of PFOS and PFOA that helped invent the PFAS class of
chemicals, concealed evidence that the chemicals were hazardous from
the public for decades.
Faber said researchers
dug through EPA data sets and other public records to identify and map out
potential PFAS polluters based on what types of products they use or produce,
but he cautioned that each facility is only suspected of discharging PFAS
pollution. Thanks to weak federal regulation, there is currently no way to
confirm whether each facility is discharging PFAS, and how much. While some
facilities are already confirmed sources of drinking water contamination, tap
water near others has yet to be tested.
“Unfortunately, even
though the EPA has known for decades that PFAS is toxic and building up in our
blood, EPA has so far failed to add PFAS to what’s known as the Toxic Release
Inventory,” Faber said, referring to the EPA’s system for tracking toxic
industrial release.
Lawmakers only
recently added 172 PFAS to the list of toxic chemicals
that chemical plants and industrial manufactures are required to report to the
EPA after discharging them into the environment, and Faber said that data on
that pollution will not be available until next year. Every year, industrial
facilities report discharging millions of pounds of toxic chemicals to
the EPA, but environmentalists and lawmakers say President Trump’s EPA has
dragged its feet in responding to PFAS.
Rep. Harley Rouda is a
Democrat whose district includes parts of Orange County, California, where a
local utility has invested $1 million in equipment to test
for PFOS and PFOA in drinking water. Rouda said the COVID-19 outbreak is not
hampering this effort because the water utilities are considered “essential,”
but he does not expect any help from the Trump administration, which has taken
a “systematic approach” to unraveling the EPA’s obligations to protect the
environment under federal law.
Indeed, the Trump
administration has relaxed federal environmental enforcement at the EPA in
response to the COVID-19 crisis, allowing the fossil fuel industry to spew more pollution into the air without facing fines. Rouda
pointed to California’s popular auto emissions standards, which the
administration forced the state to roll back after a long legal battle.
“I have no doubt that, if
they have the opportunity to do it on the PFAS front, they will do it there as
well,” Rouda told reporters on Thursday. “And I think that’s part of the reason
you haven’t seen the EPA honor what they said about coming out quickly with
standards specifically on PFAS discharges and a greater regulatory framework to
make sure we save American lives, when you get right down to it.”
Currently, there is no
mandatory maximum federal limit for PFAS in drinking water, and states such as
New Hampshire and Michigan faced lawsuits from the industry and the Department of
Defense after setting their own. The EPA has set an “advisory
limit” for PFOA and PFOS in drinking water at 70 parts per trillion, but the
limit is not enforceable and environmentalists argue that it’s far too high.
Cleanup Costs Cause a
Political Logjam
The EPA has started the
process of setting a maximum federal limit for PFOS and PFOA, but Rouda and
Pappas said the process appears to be logjammed within an agency that has
become dominated by pro-industry forces under Trump. Both lawmakers sit on
subcommittees that provide oversight of the EPA.
“I’m deeply concerned with what I see across
the agency with the fact that science isn’t put at the forefront,” Pappas said.
“There seems to be too much politics at play at the EPA.”
The EPA has pledged to
set a federal limit by the end of the year, but Rouda and other lawmakers are
frustrated by a lack of progress and transparency. Along
with a few Republicans, House Democrats recently passed sweeping legislation that would give the
EPA deadlines for setting national drinking water standards for a variety of
PFAS chemicals and require polluters to assist in cleanup. However, Trump threatened to veto the bill as it
stalled in the GOP-controlled Senate.
Here’s the rub: 446
public water systems are already contaminated with PFAS, according to EWG. If
the EPA sets strict federal limits for PFAS in drinking water, then hundreds of
utilities in states across the country may suddenly be
out of compliance. So, who foots the bill for installing expensive filtration technology and
removing the chemicals from water supplies? If lawmakers and the EPA do not
establish regulations that hold polluters accountable, then utilities and
taxpayers will be on the hook for cleaning up the mess.
“In some ways, it’s kind
of like the pandemic we’re dealing with right now: If you test, you will find
that you have issues with PFAS chemicals in every single district in the U.S.,”
Rouda said. “Just like the pandemic, we know if we did appropriate testing
nationwide, we would get a different story than we are getting now.”
The industry is already
pushing back. In North Carolina, Chemours recently told state regulators that
it cannot comply with a consent order to
clean up PFAS groundwater contamination because it would be too expensive.
Regulators rejected the company’s watered-down cleanup plan as “deficient.” 3M is spearheading an industry lawsuit challenging
strict PFAS standards recently set by the state of Vermont. The Defense
Department is facing a lawsuit for rushing to burn stockpiles of PFAS-laced
firefighting foam in incinerators, a disposal method that environmentalists claim is both dirty and illegal.
However, Pappas and Rouda
said other lawmakers can no longer ignore the PFAS crisis, because it’s likely
only getting worse in their districts as well. House Democrats are pushing to
invest $75 billion in water infrastructure improvements
as part of an upcoming coronavirus stimulus package, including funding for
removing PFAS and other industrial chemicals from the water supply. Dozens of
PFAS bills are currently floating around Congress, and Rouda said lawmakers
should not wait to act. PFAS are nicknamed “forever chemicals” for a reason,
and the problem can only get worse.
“We can stop what’s going
to be one of the largest cleanups in American history right now if we regulate
the discharge of PFAS chemicals,” Rouda said.
Copyright © Truthout. May
not be reprinted without permission.
Mike Ludwig is a staff reporter at Truthout and
a contributor to the Truthout anthology, Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect? In
2014 and 2017, Project Censored featured Ludwig’s
reporting on its annual list of the top 25 independent news stories that the
corporate media ignored. Follow him on Twitter: @ludwig_mike.
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