Threat of zero allowance regulations loom for forever chemicals
For many years, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) have been ubiquitous in American commerce and industry. That ubiquitous use, and the fact that PFAS chemicals do not break down in the environment, has led to the presence of PFAS in groundwater to varying degrees throughout the country. As a result, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has turned its full attention to PFAS regulation. In fact, EPA issued a PFAS Strategic Roadmap that sets timelines by which EPA plans to take specific actions, as it states, “to safeguard public health, protect the environment, and hold polluters accountable.” Pursuant to the Roadmap, the EPA issued interim health advisories on June 15, 2022, in which they advised that the safe lifetime drinking level for PFAS chemicals are as low as .004 parts per trillion (ppt) for perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and .02 ppt for perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS). To put that in context, one should understand that a level of .004 ppt equates to 1 drop out of 4.5 billion gallons of water., and that such miniscule levels are undetectable by current testing instruments, essentially making it zero.
According to the EPA, its interim health advisories are determined based on review of all available science by the EPA’s Science Advisory Board. It is unclear, however, on what the Science Advisory Board relied in reaching its conclusions concerning the level of exposure at which to set the advisory limit, as there is not only no current epidemiological studies that demonstrate that PFAS chemicals actually cause any adverse health consequences, there are certainly no scientific studies that support a level of exposure near zero.