August 5, 2026| by Organic Consumers Association
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, known as “forever chemicals,” are a class of highly toxic man-made fluorinated chemicals used in a variety of products, including pesticides, waterproof fabric, sunscreen, dental floss, stain-resistant carpets, nonstick cookware, flame retardant furniture, food packaging, cosmetics, and firefighting foam.
PFAS lasts forever, accumulating in the environment, and it kills. There is scientific evidence that it causes cancer, kidney disease, birth defects, and liver damage, while battering the immune system.
PFAS has been detected in the blood of 98% of Americans and is contaminating 45% of U.S. tap water, because companies like 3M and DuPont have always had a free pass to dump this “devil’s piss” right into streams, rivers, and sewage systems.
The EPA promised to do something about this but never followed through on its promise to stop the estimated 30,000 PFAS polluters from dumping their forever chemicals into our water. Instead, regulators have cut sweetheart deals with polluters like the DuPont spin-off Chemours, which in July 2026 inked a $450 million settlement so meager it instantly raised the company’s stock price.
The EPA should stop the pollution at its source by banning all fire-retardant, non-stick, water-resistant, herbicidal, and insecticidal PFAS chemicals and getting them out of our water, out of consumer products, out of the military, out of firefighting, and out of food and farming. At the very least, it should require the factories making these products to dispose of their toxic waste safely instead of dumping it in our water.
The EPA hasn’t gotten that far yet, but it recently began a project it should have finished long ago: determining the health risks of PFAS in the sewage sludge spread on farmland. In its Draft Risk Assessment for PFOA and PFOS in Sewage Sludge, the EPA found that these toxic “forever chemicals” can cause cancer and other diseases in people who live near farm fields where sludge is spread, or who consume tainted milk, beef, or other foods from these farms, including kidney and liver cancers, decreased birth weight, increased cholesterol, and diminished immune system function.
The health risks were noticeable at any level above 1 part per billion (ppb). Since most sludge has more than 1 ppb of PFAS, if the EPA had finalized and enforced that threshold, it would have been a de facto ban on the disposal of sewage sludge on farmland.
The EPA found PFOA and PFOS are likely to be carcinogenic to humans. For PFOA, it cited epidemiological evidence of kidney, testicular, and breast cancer in humans. For PFOS, evidence of bladder, prostate, liver, kidney, and breast cancers, along with liver, pancreatic, and thyroid tumors in exposed rats. The agency also found the chemicals harm the liver, raise cholesterol, lower infant birth weight, and damage the immune system by altering the spleen and thymus, the organs that produce the antibodies and T cells the body needs to fight infection.
These findings are remarkable, because the EPA’s risk assessment was structured to underestimate the health harms of toxic sludge. As the Coalition for Sludge-Free Land has pointed out, the EPA didn’t consider higher real-world PFAS concentrations, repeated land applications, long-term exposure especially for children, all of the 23 PFAS chemicals the EPA has detected in sewage sludge rather than just PFOA and PFOS, or mixture toxicity. The Center for Food Safety adds that the EPA assumed far lower PFAS levels than tests show, looked at only one exposure source at a time rather than combined dietary exposure, and modeled only average exposure rather than the levels people in hotspots actually face.
And yet, even with all the downplaying and underestimation, it still found that PFAS in sewage sludge spread on farmland can cause kidney and liver cancers, decreased birth weight, increased cholesterol, and diminished immune function. That is a serious risk to the people living near these fields.
Now the agency is walking away from its own science. In July 2026, instead of moving toward enforceable limits, it chose instead to draft weak, voluntary guidance. The public can comment through September 4.
TAKE ACTION: Tell the EPA to Ban Toxic Sludge from Farmland!
READ: EPA, Draft Sewage Sludge Risk Assessment for PFOA and PFOS (January 2025)
WATCH: “PFAS & Congress,” Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (S8 E25)
WATCH: “How One Company Secretly Poisoned The Planet”
