The EPA is being urged to regulate a group of chemicals that are contaminating the public water supply in dozens of states. The group of chemicals known as PFAS were used in everything from nonstick cookware to firefighting foam. Scientists first discovered the tasteless, odorless chemicals along a stretch of southern New Jersey in 2020. Combinations of carbon and fluorine molecules littered the soil and water, where they were absorbed by fish and, quite possibly, the people who live there.
Records show a local plastics plant had been polluting the air and water with the chemicals for a quarter century. Documents indicate the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency knew in advance of the chemicals’ danger but took no action, even after being criticized for PFAS crises in other states. “It shows a total system failure from the federal government,” Donovan said. “The processes that we pay for are not working.”In 2020, the agency added about 200 PFAS to a list of chemicals that companies across the country are required to report when they are produced or discarded. It’s also implementing a national testing program it says could help identify which alternative PFAS chemicals could be harmful.
They also doubt the agency’s capacity to tackle PFAS. The 200 chemicals the EPA is now tracking represent just a fraction of theknown to exist. PEER, an organization that supports current and former employees of public environmental agencies, calculates that based on current staffing levels and methods at the EPA, evaluating all PFAS would take about a thousand years.
Health concerns have been mostly limited to a handful of PFAS chemicals such as PFOS and PFOA. In West Virginia, extensive studies linked the latter chemical to elevated rates of cancer, ulcerative colitis, and other serious health issues among residents. Chemical companies later settled personal injury lawsuits there for $670 million – other PFAS settlements followed or are pending in Michigan, New York, and other states.
Documents recently submitted to the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection show the company Solvay Speciality Polymers used the chemicals there as early as 1996 and ramped up production and emissions by the early 2010s, when they also began submitting toxicity studies to EPA. But what the EPA knew during that time was shielded from the public, said Wendy Wagner, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law.
But Wagner said the discovery in New Jersey happened almost by accident. Similar circumstances led to the discovery in North Carolina. The number of other PFAS chemicals with potentially concerning toxicity remains knowable only to the EPA.
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