It’s up to us to protect our ecosystems and communities from toxic chemicals.
Most of the 80,000 chemicals on the market in the United States have been put into use without testing long-term consequences for the environment, or their impacts on our health. We should make sure that any chemical in use is safe, eliminate those we know are dangerous, and stop using any that are damaging healthy ecosystems. And if an industry makes a toxic mess, we should know right away, and they should be the ones to pay for cleaning it up.
On Wednesday, experts from PIRG, Environment America and Southern Environmental Law Center discussed what states can do to stop contamination of PFAS from industrial sources.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) unveiled on Wednesday new health advisories for four of the most common toxic PFAS chemicals that pollute drinking water nationwide. These official EPA actions “provide technical information to drinking water system operators, as well as federal, state, Tribal, and local officials, on the health effects, analytical methods, and treatment technologies associated with drinking water contaminants.” In addition, the EPA announced the first round of funding to help clean up these so-called “forever chemicals” in public water systems. However, the EPA does not have the authority to enforce any PFAS standard associated with the health advisory.
Legislators in Missouri and Colorado have just approved bills requiring remediation when lead in schools' drinking water exceeds 5 parts per billion (ppb).
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Rep. Chris Pappas of New Hampshire introduced the Clean Water Standards for PFAS 2.0 Act into the Senate and the House this week. The bill would require the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to establish limits on how much PFAS chemicals producers can dump into waterways and to set water quality criteria to protect human health. There are currently no federal regulations that address industrial releases of PFAS into America’s waterways. Already, millions of Americans’ drinking water is contaminated with PFAS.
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (NY) and Rep. Dan Kildee (MI-5) introduced the PFAS Firefighter Protection Act into the Senate and the House this week. The bill aims to ban firefighting foams made with a class of toxic chemicals commonly referred to as PFAS. Firefighting foams, frequently used at airports and military installations, are one of the major sources of PFAS groundwater contamination in the United States. The bill would ensure that such foams are no longer in use within two years from the date it is passed.
