EPA sets new, strict limits on forever chemicals in drinking water. What it will mean

Adam Wagner
·5 min read
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The Environmental Protection Agency is setting the first-ever limits for some forever chemicals in drinking water, an announcement EPA Administrator Michael Regan is expected to make Wednesday morning in Fayetteville.

“With today’s action, we are one huge step closer to finally shutting off the tap on forever chemicals once and for all. Folks across this country deserve real solutions,” Regan said during a Tuesday press briefing.

North Carolina’s struggles with per- and polyfluoralkyl substances came to the forefront in 2017, when Regan was serving as secretary of the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality. After N.C. State University researchers found high concentrations of previously undisclosed forever chemicals coming from Chemours’ plant on the Cape Fear River, the state embarked on a still-ongoing years-long effort to regulate the chemicals.

The new limits will be:

  • 4 parts per trillion for PFOA, the lowest level at which the compound can be detected. The EPA found that there is no safe level of PFOA.

  • 4 parts per trillion for PFOS, the lowest level at which the compound can be detected. The EPA found that there is no safe level of PFOS.

  • 10 parts per trillion for GenX chemicals, PFNA and PFHxS individually, in a change from the proposed rule.

  • A limit on any mixture of those three compounds as well as PFBS, a “hazard index” that measures how much concentrations of each of GenX, PFBS, PFNA and PFHxS make up of finalized health limits. If any amount of those concentrations divided by the health limits add up to at least 1, the water utility would be out of compliance.

“Today’s announcement of robust, protective legal limits on PFAS in tap water will give tens of millions of Americans the protection they should have had decades ago. It is easily, easily the most consequential and difficult decision to protect drinking water in the last 30 years,” Ken Cook, the president and co-founder of the Environmental Working Group, said Tuesday.

Potential health effects of PFAS

PFAS are a group of nearly 15,000 man-made chemicals that are widely used because of their durability and persistence, the same qualities that can make them dangerous to humans. The drinking water regulation covers six of them.

Last year, the International Agency for Research on Cancer found that PFOA is carcinogenic to humans and PFOS is “possibly carcinogenic.”

The EPA has said that PFOA and PFOS are both likely human carcinogens, particularly dangerous for kidneys and livers. Researchers have also linked the chemicals with a litany of other health effects such as decreased birth weight and the suppression of immune response to vaccines among children.

“People should not be exposed to chemicals that are likely human carcinogens, but since zero is not currently achievable, the four part per trillion is as closed as can be achieved. So it is as protective as it can be given the technologies and the available funds that exist today,” Jamie DeWitt, an environmental and toxicologist who is the director of Oregon State University’s Environmental Health Sciences Center, told The News & Observer.

DeWitt, who previously worked in North Carolina, serves on North Carolina’s Secretaries’ Science Advisory Board.

With GenX, the EPA previously said the compound was linked with a constellation of liver lesions, as well as effects on the kidneys and immune system. In a 2022 health advisory, the EPA also found there is “suggestive evidence” that GenX could be linked with cancer in humans but insufficient data to decide how much leads to risk.

PFBS can impact thyroids, reproductive organs and developing fetuses, the EPA found in the 2022 health advisory. The EPA also found that PFHxS impacts the thyroid, as well as the liver and development. For PFNA, the main effects were developmental, with mice whose mothers were exposed to the chemical while pregnant gaining less weight and opening their eyes later, among other impacts.

The EPA said the rule announced Wednesday will cut down on PFAS exposures for about 100 million people and prevent tens of thousands of people from suffering from serious illnesses.

Removing PFAS from drinking water

Then-EPA Assistant Administrator for Water Radhika Fox announced the rule proposal last year during a conference in Wilmington before touring the Cape Fear Public Utility Authority’s Sweeney Water Treatment Plant. The Wilmington-area utility spent $35.9 million installing granular activated carbon filters at the plant, with additional money routinely spent to operate and replace the carbon. Other utilities have used reverse osmosis or ion exchange technologies to remove the chemicals.

The EPA has estimated that 6% to 10% of the water systems nationwide will have forever chemical levels in excess of those allowed under the new rule. That’s 4,100 to 6,700 utilities that will likely need to build new filters to bring levels down.

Utilities will have three years to test their drinking water under the new rule. Those with high levels of PFAS will need to install treatment devices within five years.

In North Carolina, 41% of the state’s water utilities that serve more than 10,000 customers are expected to have more of at least one of the chemicals than will be allowed under the new EPA rule, Stephanie Bolyard, an N.C. Environmental Quality senior engineer, told the N.C Secretaries’ Science Advisory Board last week.

Bolyard was discussing DEQ’s years-long effort to craft state surface water standards for a handful of PFAS. Many of the state’s large water utilities draw drinking water from lakes, rivers and other forms of surface water.

“One of the motivations here is the connection between implementing surface water standards that could then translate to upstream effluent limits that, in hopes, would reduce any further impacts to downstream drinking water treatment plants from those industrial or publicly owned treatment water sources,” Bolyard said.

This story was produced with financial support from the Hartfield Foundation and Green South Foundation, in partnership with Journalism Funding Partners, as part of an independent journalism fellowship program. The N&O maintains full editorial control of the work. If you would like to help support local journalism, please consider signing up for a digital subscription, which you can do here.