SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
forever chemicals
Trump EPA Guts Rules Against Toxic Forever Chemicals in Drinking Water
"Once again, the Trump administration has demonstrated that its priority is bending to corporate interests, not protecting the safety and well-being of everyday people," said one critic.
May 14, 2025
Bowing to industry pressure, the Environmental Protection Agency is planning to roll back limits on so-called "forever chemicals" in drinking water—a move that critics said belies President Donald Trump's dubious pledge to "ensure that America has among the very cleanest air and cleanest water on the planet."
In a misleading announcement, the EPA said Wednesday that it will "keep maximum contaminant levels" (MCLs) for two per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)—PFOA and PFOS—as part of an effort to "provide regulatory flexibility and holistically address these contaminants in drinking water."
However, the EPA plans to scrap MCLs for four other forever chemicals: PFNA, PFHxS, GenX, and PFBS.
"These four chemicals are the ones currently in use because industry developed them to replace PFOA and PFOS, so they are the chemicals most likely to increase contamination in the future," explained former senior EPA water official Betsy Southerland in a statement issued by the Environmental Protection Network on Wednesday.
"It is incredibly inefficient to regulate them years after the treatment has been installed only for PFOA and PFOS," Southerland added. "[EPA Administrator Lee] Zeldin's announcement on PFAS drinking water standards ensures that America's children will be drinking PFAS for another decade while he slows drinking water and wastewater PFAS treatment for years."
The EPA just announced its decision on PFAS, toxic forever chemicals, that reverses course on most of a crucial public health rule from just last year. We need more action, not less, to protect Americans from PFAS.
[image or embed]
— NRDC (@nrdc.org) May 14, 2025 at 7:34 AM
The EPA also pushed back the deadline for compliance with a Biden administration rule finalized last year aimed at ensuring polluters pay forever chemical cleanup costs, from 2029 to 2031. Earlier this week, the EPA said it is delaying a key PFAS reporting rule by one year.
"This is a betrayal of public health at the highest level," Environmental Working Group president Ken Cook said in response to Wednesday's announcement. "You can't make America healthy while allowing toxic chemicals to flow freely from our taps. The EPA is caving to chemical industry lobbyists and pressure by the water utilities, and in doing so, it's sentencing millions of Americans to drink contaminated water for years to come."
"The cost of PFAS pollution will fall on ordinary people, who will pay in the form of polluted water and more sickness, more suffering, and more deaths from PFAS-related diseases," Cook added.
"Zeldin's announcement on PFAS drinking water standards ensures that America's children will be drinking PFAS for another decade."
Approximately half of the U.S. population is drinking PFAS-contaminated water, "including as many as 105 million whose water violates the new standards," according to the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), which added that "the EPA has known for decades that PFAS endangers human health, including kidney and testicular cancer, liver damage, and harm to the nervous and reproductive systems."
Forever chemicals—so called because some of them take up to 1,000 years to break down in the environment—have myriad uses, from nonstick cookware to waterproof clothing to firefighting foam. Increasing use of forever chemicals has resulted in the detection of PFAS in the blood of nearly every person in the United States and around the world.
"The PFAS contamination crisis is much larger than just two chemicals, and there is increasing evidence that other PFAS chemicals that pollute water harm health," Cook said. "Eliminating all PFAS chemicals from drinking water is an urgent public health priority."
"If this administration is serious about making America healthier, it needs to prove it by stopping PFAS from contaminating our drinking water," he added.
NRDC senior strategic director of health Erik Olson said Wednesday that "with a stroke of the pen, the EPA is making a mockery of the Trump administration's promise to deliver clean water for Americans."
"With this action, the EPA is making clear that it's willing to ignore Americans who just want to turn on their kitchen taps and have clean, safe water," Olson asserted. "The EPA's plan to retain but delay standards for two legacy forever chemicals may offer modest consolation to some, but throwing out protections against four others will be devastating."
"The law is very clear that the EPA can't repeal or weaken the drinking water standard. This action is not only harmful, it's illegal," Olson stressed. The Safe Drinking Water Act contains an "anti-backsliding" provision prohibiting the EPA from repealing or weakening the standard.
"With a stroke of the pen, the EPA is making a mockery of the Trump administration's promise to deliver clean water for Americans."
Kelly Moser, senior attorney and leader of the Water Program at the Southern Environmental Law Center—which successfully sued the industrial chemicals giant Chemours to stop PFAS contamination in North Carolina—said Wednesday that "when this administration talks about deregulation, this is what they mean—allowing toxic chemicals in drinking water at the request of polluters."
"This action also undercuts Administrator Zeldin's acknowledgment of the severe health harms of PFAS; what people need are protections from pollution, not press releases feigning concern," Moser added.
Food & Water Watch water program director Mary Grant said Wednesday that "today's decision is a shameful and dangerous capitulation to industry pressure that will allow continued contamination of our drinking water with toxic PFAS."
"Once again, the Trump administration has demonstrated that its priority is bending to corporate interests, not protecting the safety and well-being of everyday people," Grant continued. "Nothing is safe from Trump's greed-driven agenda—not even our drinking water."
"This will cost lives," she warned.
Keep ReadingShow Less
EPA Promoting Fertilizer Full of PFAS Despite Knowing Risks
New reporting shows the EPA was warned over 20 years ago that sewage sludge contained high levels of so-called "forever chemicals."
Dec 27, 2024
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency continues to promote a commonly used commercial fertilizer despite being informed over 20 years ago that its key component contained high levels of so-called "forever chemicals," a New York Times investigation revealed Friday.
The
Times' Hiroko Tabuchi reviewed thousands of pages of decades-old documents and found that scientists at chemical giant 3M discovered high levels of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in U.S. sewage during the early 2000s. Sewage sludge is in widespread use as farm fertilizer. PFAS are called forever chemicals because they do not biodegrade and accumulate in the environment and the human body. They have myriad uses, from nonstick cookware and waterproof clothing to firefighting foam and pesticides.
Officials at 3M—whose researchers had already linked PFAS to cancer, birth defects, and other ailments—informed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of its findings in 2003.
"The EPA continues to promote sewage sludge as fertilizer and doesn't require testing for PFAS."
However, as Tabuchi noted, "the EPA continues to promote sewage sludge as fertilizer and doesn't require testing for PFAS, despite the fact that whistleblowers, academics, state officials, and the agency's internal studies over the years have also raised contamination concerns."
According to the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, PFAS are linked to cancers of the kidneys and testicles, low infant weight, suppressed immune function, and other adverse health effects. They are found in the blood of around 99% of people around the world. EPA data show there's PFAS in the drinking water of tens of millions of Americans.
According to Tabuchi, EPA experts raised concerns about PFAS as far back as the 1990s, but their warnings went unheeded.
The
Times investigation follows reporting earlier this month led by Prism's Rebecca Barglowski showing that EPA and state officials in New Jersey have known about PFAS-contaminated water for nearly two decades.
Tabuchi noted that "the country is starting to wake up to the consequences" of PFAS' ubiquity. However, only one state—Maine—has begun systematically testing farms for PFAS. It has also banned the use of sewage sludge to fertilize fields.
At the federal level, the Biden administration in 2021 published its first "PFAS Strategic Roadmap" and designated forever chemicals "an urgent public health and environmental issue." Earlier this year, the EPA finalized a new Superfund rule meant to "help ensure that polluters pay to clean up their contamination" across the nation.
However, the chemical industry is fighting efforts to tackle PFAS, including through the use of research experts have called biased. Experts have also warned that the incoming administration of Republican President-elect Donald Trump will roll back Biden-era regulations, disempower agency specialists, and let political appointees make crucial regulatory decisions.
Even under Biden, the EPA is arguing that it cannot be sued for taking inadequate action to protect the public from PFAS contamination.
In June, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER)
sued the EPA on behalf of a group of farmers, ranchers, and green groups "for failing to perform its nondiscretionary duty to identify and regulate toxic pollutants in sewage sludge" used as fertilizer. In September, the EPA moved to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that it has complete discretion regarding the identification and listing of pollutants.
"EPA seems to have lost any sense of its legal and moral obligation to protect public health," attorney and former EPA scientist Kyla Bennett said at the time. "Under the plain language of the Clean Water Act, EPA has a mandatory duty to identify and regulate substances that are a threat to human health and the environment—not just to issue a report about it."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Beware the Toxic Chemicals at Dollar Stores
The nation’s largest dollar stores continually fail to meaningfully strengthen their chemical policies and intervene in their supply chains to keep their shoppers safe.
Dec 03, 2024
When shopping for the holidays, most people reasonably assume that products sold in major American retail stores are free of toxic chemicals. After all, harmful substances like lead and mercury have no place in the shopping cart, and regulations must prevent this kind of dangerous exposure, right?
Unfortunately, this is not the case. A recent study revealed that over half of the items tested on dollar stores’ shelves contained toxic chemicals. This includes lead foundin tablecloths, jewelry, and baby toys with known links to brain development harm; phthalates in school supplies, silly straws, and bath toys with links to early puberty in girls, birth defects in the male reproductive system, obesity, and diabetes; BPA in receipts, cookware, and can linings that can affect the brain and prostate gland of fetuses, infants, and children; and PFAS—long-lasting synthetic chemicals—found in popcorn bags that can affect the immune system and liver function.
Just last month Toxic Free Future released their latest Retailer Report Card, which graded Dollar General with a D+ and Dollar Tree/Family Dollar with a D for safety, based on hazardous chemicals in their products, company commitment to transparency, a willingness to change, and how easily customers can tell what substances are on store items.
With the incoming presidential administration promising to slash health and safety rules, customers and communities will have even fewer protections.
But for many families, shopping elsewhere isn’t an option. Dollar stores are often the only retailers selling essential household goods, including food, in many rural towns and urban neighborhoods, leaving customers with nowhere else to go. Dollar stores are frequently located in communities that already face multiple health and environmental risk factors, such as industrial pollution from factories or deteriorated drinking water. This means a family’s exposure to chemicals via items purchased at dollar stores is part of accumulated exposures.
Dollar stores’ leadership has been aware for over a decade that their products contain lead, BPA, phthalates, and PFAS, jeopardizing customer health. During this time, environmental justice and public health groups nationwide have advocated for safer products. Investors in these companies have raised concerns directly with management and through shareholder resolutions. Yet, the problem persists. Even this year Dollar Tree knowingly kept lead-contaminated apple sauce on its shelves, putting children in harm’s way. The stores have taken only minimal actions to address a handful of chemicals in some product categories.
To say federal agencies tasked with regulating these products fall short would be an understatement. Many take a “graveyard approach,” acting only after someone has suffered a physical toll. The federal Toxic Substances Control Act is so weak that only a handful of chemicals have ever been restricted, while tens of thousands have been exempted or fast-tracked for approval. With the incoming presidential administration promising to slash health and safety rules, customers and communities will have even fewer protections.
With this lack of protective action on the part of state and federal regulators, we urge dollar stores to do the right thing. In 2023, Dollar General's net sales were over $38 billion, and Dollar Tree’s revenues were over $30 billion. They can afford to stop buying products from suppliers that use toxic chemicals and switch to readily available safer alternatives. Mike Creedon, interim chief executive officer for Dollar Tree, claims, “Safety First, Safety Always is the guiding mantra for our store.” But these are only words when there is no action.
Instead, the nation’s largest dollar stores continually fail to meaningfully strengthen their chemical policies and intervene in their supply chains to keep their shoppers safe. Dollar General failed to expand its list of 19 restricted substances. The list does not include PFAS, most phthalates, and many other chemicals known to cause harm. It also applies only to private-label products. Similarly, Dollar Tree has not publicly documented progress on reducing chemicals or plastics of high concern in the last four years and has made no indication of support for the development or sale of safer products.
Competitors, including Walmart, have already made this change. In 2022, the company disclosed that it removed 37 million pounds of phthalates from products in response to consumer demand, with publicly available corporate policies. Similarly, Apple recently received praise for removing harmful chemicals and plastics from its products and even committed to a Full Material Disclosure program which promises manufacturers full transparency on products’ material compositions. These transitions are increasingly mainstream, and dollar stores are falling further and further behind.
Every family has the right to feel safe while shopping, and with the holidays around the corner, this issue is even more important. Dollar stores should transparently report on their progress and work with their suppliers to prevent all known dangerous chemicals from being used to make products sold in stores. Until this happens, dollar stores are putting already vulnerable communities at risk. Safe alternatives exist, and the transition to non-toxic products is both feasible and cost-effective in the long run. Dollar stores must stop prioritizing profit over families. We refuse to be sacrificed for the bottom line.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular