Faced with a silent but widespread threat to public health, environmental groups applauded the Biden administration for taking major steps to regulate and remove toxic PFAS “forever chemicals” from drinking water used by millions of people across the United States. During his first week in office, President Donald Trump began reversing this progress while installing chemical industry insiders to top posts in his administration.
Now under new White House leadership, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) withdrew a long-awaited Biden administration plan that would have protected people using tap water from the chemical manufacturing industry’s pollution. The plan would set federal discharge limits on the amount of PFAS chemicals companies in this sector can dump directly into the environment.
The EPA sent the proposed discharge limits to the White House Office of Budget and Management for a mandatory review in June, a process that typically takes 90 days, according to the watchdogs at the Environmental Working Group. The group pushed the Biden administration to complete the review in December, but the EPA said it was still studying the “organic chemicals, plastics and synthetic fibers” sector of the chemical industry, raising doubts about whether it would be finalized before Trump took office.
Melanie Benesh, vice president of government affairs at the Environmental Working Group, said the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw the proposal is a “devastating setback” for the effort to protect communities from common types of toxic PFAS.
“This move not only delays establishing critical federal standards but also sends a dangerous message giving polluters a green light to continue poisoning our water and communities without fear of consequence,” Benesh said in a statement.
A class of industrial compounds and nonstick chemicals previously used in consumer products, PFAS do not break down in the environment and water supply, and common types of PFAS are linked to cancer and other health problems. The Environmental Working Group estimates that 143 million people in the U.S. are exposed to PFAS through tap water, and contamination is so widespread that virtually everyone has trace amounts of PFAS in their blood.
A separate study of EPA data from 2013 to 2015 released last week found that unregulated industrial chemicals such as PFAS were detected in water systems serving 97 million people, with Black and Hispanic populations at particularly high risk for exposure. Even low doses of PFAS can suppress the immune system, and studies show exposure can also reduce vaccine effectiveness and harm fetal development.
PFAS is also found in sewer sludge used to fertilize farms fields, posing a risk to human health, particularly for farm workers and nearby residents, according to much-anticipated EPA study released in the final days of the Biden administration. (The EPA cautions that the federal agencies are monitoring PFAS in the food supply, and notes it generally does not appear to be impacted.)
The withdrawal of the Biden EPA’s proposal for limiting PFAS discharges from industrial chemical plants came after Trump signed an executive order broadly barring federal agencies from proposing or finalizing new regulations, part of an onslaught of executive actions designed to stretch the limits of presidential power.
Benesh said PFAS in the water supply is a public health crisis the government must address, and Trump’s initial moves signals PFAS cleanup will not be a priority for his administration.
“The science is clear: PFAS are toxic at even the smallest levels, and they have been linked to serious health problems, including cancer, immune suppression and developmental harm,” Benesh said. “Communities across the country, especially those near PFAS-manufacturing facilities, have lived with the devastating consequences of this pollution for decades.”
The progress toward removing PFAS from the water supply may come to a halt under Trump. The Biden EPA made history in April when it set the first enforceable limits on the amount of four types of PFAS allowed in tap water and gave utilities five years to meet the new standards. The EPA also declared two of the most common and dangerous types of PFAS, PFOA and PFOS, to be “hazardous substances,” which trigged $9 billion in funding allocated by Congress to pay for filters and upgrades at water treatment facilities.
However, Senate Republicans have been raising questions about the scientific decision-making behind the new “maximum containment levels” for PFAS in drinking water, and House Republicans are working to shred a scientific integrity policy meant to shield EPA scientists from political and corporate influence.
Rep. James Comer, GOP chair of the House Oversight Committee, wrote in a letter to the EPA in November that the scientific integrity polices would be used by EPA scientists to “hamstring the incoming Trump administration’s ability to implement their own executive agendas.”
Meanwhile, Trump is moving gut federal agencies and fire civil servants at odds with his political agenda. Trump also appointed two people who worked for the pro-industry American Chemistry Council to advise and run the EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety, including Nancy Beck, who worked to weaken PFAS regulation at the EPA during Trump’s first term.
The Trump administration is also expected to stall litigation over industry challenges to the new limits on PFAS in drinking water while it decides whether to continue defending the rules in court. The industry is reportedly lobbying hard for a “pause” on implementation of the rules, despite the five-year compliance window for utilities and billions of dollars in federal funding for technological upgrades.
Benesh said state regulators are waiting on the federal discharge limits for PFAS so they can “incorporate effective monitoring and treatment requirements” into state water discharge permits for chemical facilities. Without the regulation Trump has withdrawn from consideration, those PFAS cleanup efforts remained stalled.
“The Trump administration’s refusal to act now puts even more lives at risk, leaving American communities to fend for themselves as polluters continue their unchecked discharges of toxic PFAS into our water,” Benesh said.
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