EPA slashes forever chemical health advisory levels to ‘near zero’ in drinking water
The Environmental Protection Agency announced Wednesday that it has lowered drinking water health advisories for two “forever chemicals” and is setting advisory levels for their replacements, including the chemical found in southeastern North Carolina’s drinking water.
Radhika Fox, the EPA’s assistant administrator for water, announced the proposed levels at the Third Annual National PFAS Meeting. Cape Fear Community College in downtown Wilmington hosted the event, held just over five years after the region learned that the Chemours chemical company was contaminating the region’s drinking water with GenX.
“The Cape Fear River is a reminder of the devastation chemicals like GenX have on communities,” Fox said.
The EPA’s long-awaited advisory level for GenX chemicals is 10 parts per trillion. That’s significantly lower than the 140 ppt interim advisory level that North Carolina has been using since 2017. State health officials have indicated that they will update the NC standard to follow the EPA guidance.
More than 400 studies have indicated that PFOA and PFOS are more dangerous to human health than previously believed, Fox said, causing the EPA to lower interim health advisory levels for lifetime exposure from a combined 70 parts per trillion to .004 ppt for PFOA and .02 ppt for PFOS.
“Near zero. Near zero,” Fox said, drawing applause in a conference room filled with scientists and community members from areas that have dealt with PFAS contamination.
Fox also announced that the EPA is setting a health advisory level of 2,000 ppt for PFBS. That chemical was the replacement industry used for PFOS. DuPont developed GenX to replace PFOA in manufacturing. Chemours uses it to make chemicals that go into a wide range of products, from semiconductors to airplanes.
Health advisories are not regulatory and are not enforceable, but are intended to provide guidance to state regulators and health officials. The GenX and PFBS health advisory levels are final, while Fox said the PFOA and PFOS levels are meant to signal health risks while the agency works toward an enforceable standard for those two chemicals that will likely be proposed later this year.
“Our new interim health advisories are important milestones to help protect the public while EPA works to finalize our drinking water standard,” Fox said.
After making the announcement Wednesday, Fox joined N.C. Department of Environmental Quality Secretary Elizabeth Biser to tour the Cape Fear Public Utility Authority’s under-construction granular activated carbon filtration devices that the utility is building in an effort to keep GenX and other PFAS out of their customers’ drinking water.
“The health advisories are really a scientific document that describe the health effects from a lifetime of exposure to those four chemicals but also provide technical information to states, to local water systems, to communities around methods of testing for PFAS as well as some of the treatment solutions that are out there,” Fox told reporters.
In North Carolina, Wednesday’s health advisories could result in about 1,700 additional well-water drinkers around the Chemours plant receiving whole-house water filtration, Biser said.
A consent order between Chemours, Cape Fear River Watch and the state requires the Delaware-based company to provide three reverse osmosis systems to anyone whose groundwater is contaminated with 10 ppt of any one PFAS linked with Fayetteville Works or a combined 70 ppt. If samples contained GenX at the North Carolina health advisory level of 140 ppt, Chemours had to provide whole-house filtration systems, reverse osmosis filters on every sink or a connection to municipal water.
But the consent order also provides flexibility if there are new health advisories such as the 10 ppt GenX level the EPA set on Wednesday. That means some people who got three reverse osmosis systems could receive filtration systems for their whole home.
“There will be adjustments made about who’s eligible for whole-house granular activated carbon filtration already based on the EPA standard coming out, so it’ll automatically adjust,” Biser said.
With the new health advisories in place, Biser added, communities throughout the state will be looking to Brunswick County Public Utilities and the Cape Fear Public Utility Authority for guidance on how to deal with the chemicals. Brunswick is spending about $167 million to install reverse osmosis treatment, and the Wilmington-area CFPUA decided to spend $46 million to add granular activated carbon treatment at levels that will remove a signfiicant amount of PFAS from finished drinking water.
All four of the chemicals are man-made and have been prized by industry for their resistance to water and long-lasting properties. But those same properties mean that they pose a risk to human health because they do not easily degrade in the natural environment and can accumulate in the human body.
The chemical industry, including Chemours, reacted strongly to Wednesday’s health advisory announcement. In a statement, Chemours argued that the EPA “disregarded relevant data” when formulating its health advisory and that GenX itself is not a commercial product.
“We are already using state-of-the-art technologies at our sites to abate emissions and remediate historical releases,” the Chemours release stated. “We are evaluating our next steps, including potential legal action, to address the EPA’s scientifically unsound action.”
The American Chemistry Council, an industry trade group, argued that existing water treatment technology cannot meet the new PFOA and PFOS health advisory levels and that the levels are based on toxicity assessments that are still under review by the EPA’s Science Advisory Board.
“(Lifetime health advisories) assume a lifetime of exposure. While they are non-regulatory levels, they will have sweeping implications for policies at the state and federal levels. Getting the science right is of critical importance,” the American Chemistry Council statement said.
Coffee at Wednesday’s event featured a sign that said “made with reverse osmosis filtered water,” touting that it had been run through filtration devices that have been found to eliminate PFAS.
PFOA and PFOS could cause health impacts at concentrations that are lower than those the EPA can detect right now, the agency warned in its press release.
The chemicals suppress vaccine response in children by lowering the concentration of serum antibodies, according to an EPA fact sheet. They also have been linked with decreased birth weights and certain cancers, among other impacts.
Liver effects, namely a “constellation of lesions” on the organ, served as the basis for setting the EPA’s GenX advisory level. The agency also said that evidence suggests that oral exposure to GenX can cause cancer, but there is not enough evidence to set a cancer risk concentration.
Brian Buzby, the executive director of the N.C. Conservation Network, wrote, “EPA’s action on these four PFAS is ... a reminder that this entire class of chemicals appears to be much more toxic than previously known — it’s crucial that we keep them out of our water, air, clothing and food.”
Wednesday’s announcement is a sign that federal regulators need to move more quickly to limit exposure to forever chemicals, according to the Environmental Working Group, a watchdog group.
“Today’s announcement should set off alarm bells for consumers and regulators,” Melanie Benesh, the group’s legislative attorney, wrote in a statement. “These proposed advisory levels demonstrate that we must move much faster to dramatically reduce exposures to these toxic chemicals.”
Fox also announced Wednesday that $1 billion from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law is available for water utilities in small or disadvantaged communities to address PFAS or other so-called emerging compounds.
The EPA’s Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Rule 5 will require all water utilities serving at least 3,300 people to sample their water for 29 different PFAS between 2023 and 2025.
Additionally, the agency plans to soon issue a rule that would allow the EPA to use its Superfund authority to require entities that release PFOA and PFOS to pay to clean up the chemicals.
“A core priority for the Environmental Protection Agency is to restrict PFAS from entering our air, land and water in the first place,” Fox said.
This story was produced with financial support from 1Earth Fund, in partnership with Journalism Funding Partners, as part of an independent journalism fellowship program. The N&O maintains full editorial control of the work.
This story was originally published June 15, 2022 at 11:01 AM.