EPA Scientists: The Toxic Chemicals Our Agency Won’t Regulate Are Definitely in Our Drinking Water

A new study confirms the presence of a gnarly group of substances in tap water in 24 states.

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Update (2/14/2019): At a Thursday morning press conference, acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler released what he called a “Comprehensive Nationwide PFAS Action Plan” (press release here). However, the agency put off its decision about whether to set a maximum contaminant level in drinking water for two ubiquitous PFAS chemicals, PFOS and PFOA, noting it would be made “by the end of this year.” At the press conference, Wheeler called the EPA’s current nonbinding standard—that levels of PFOS and PFOA in drinking water should not exceed 70 parts per trillion—a “safe level,” environmental health journalist Mariah Blake reports. The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, part of the Department of Health and Human Services, reckons that the safe threshold is actually much lower: 7 parts per trillion for PFOS and 11 parts per trillion for PFOA. A 2015 paper by Harvard University and University of Massachusetts researchers concluded that the EPA’s voluntary limit “may be more than 100-fold too high.” 

Remember those disturbingly ubiquitous chemicals that the Environmental Protection Agency can’t bring itself to ban from our drinking water? Per- and polyfluoroalkyl (PFAS) are man-made substances that were once prized for their ability to make surfaces resist heat, oil, stains, grease, and water. Until the United States started to phase them out in 2006, PFAS were used in everything from microwave popcorn bags to fast-food wrappers to water-repellent clothing. One of them, PFOA, made famous by its use in Teflon, has been linked to high cholesterol, ulcerative colitis, thyroid conditions, and testicular and kidney cancers.

For a newly released study, the agency’s own scientists, in tandem with US Geological Survey peers, took samples from 25 drinking water treatment plants (in confidential locations across 24 states) and tested them for PFAS. The result: All of the samples tested positive for the chemicals, though just one exceeded the EPA’s voluntary “health advisory” of 70 parts per trillion for PFOA and PFOS, the most-studied of the chemicals. 

The finding comes on the heels of a draft report released last year by the Department of Health and Human Services concluding that the safety threshold is actually much lower than the EPA’s current standard: 7 parts per trillion for PFOS and 11 parts per trillion for PFOA. An additional three of the samples exceeded those lower standards. 

Meanwhile, the EPA isn’t eager to set a “maximum contaminant level” for these persistent chemicals under the Safe Drinking Water Act, which could force utilities to filter out the chemicals. On January 16, acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler refused to commit to setting a drinking water limit for PFOA and PFOS; on January 28, Politico reported that he had definitively decided not to set a limit, a conclusion that the EPA later denied, declaring in a press release that the decision is still undergoing interagency review. 

I dug a little into PFAS in this recent piece, and over at Science, Natasha Gilbert has more on the latest study and its implications. 

THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

payment methods

THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate