The Environmental Protection Agency has a comment period open on its intent to stop monitoring drinking water for PFAS. Take action by July 20. Tell the EPA what you think!
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), known as “forever chemicals,” are a class of highly toxic man-made fluorinated chemicals used in a variety of products, including pesticides, waterproof fabric, waterproof sunscreen, dental floss, stain-resistant carpets, nonstick cookware, flame retardant furniture, take-out containers, 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, and batters the immune system.
The reason PFAS has been detected in the blood of 98% of Americans and is contaminating 45% of U.S. tap water, is because companies like 3M and DuPont have always had a free pass to dump their waste right into streams, rivers, and sewage systems. There are an estimated 12,000 PFAS formulations and 30,000 factories polluting our drinking water with this “devil’s piss.”
The EPA should stop the pollution at its source by banning all fire-retardant, non-stick, water-resistant, herbicidal, and insecticidal PFAS chemicals and get them out of our water, out of consumer products, out of the military, out of firefighting, and out of food and farming!
The EPA hasn’t gotten that far yet, but in 2024 it determined that long-term exposure to PFAS, in levels commonly found in drinking water, was linked to kidney cancer, immune system suppression, developmental delays in infants and children, and other serious health issues.
In response to its alarming finding, the EPA set its first maximum contaminant limits for PFAS in drinking water at 4 parts per trillion for PFOA and PFOS and 10 parts per trillion for GenX, PFNA, PFHxS, and PFBS.
Now, President Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency is rescinding protections for GenX, PFNA, PFHxS, and PFBS and delaying enforcement of PFOA and PFOS limits until 2031. This is a decision to disregard the EPA’s earlier findings that the amount of these chemicals in our drinking water today is causing serious health problems. Let’s start with the four PFAS chemicals that Trump’s EPA is completely deregulating.
PFBS
The Biden EPA’s toxicity report for PFBS, a compound that is toxic at low levels, found the chemical is linked to kidney disease, reproductive problems, and thyroid damage. PFBS is in the drinking water of an estimated 860,000 Americans.
Something fishy happened with the EPA’s consideration of PFBS during Trump’s first term. According to the Biden EPA’s Office of the Inspector General, EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler and other political appointees engaged in “unprecedented” meddling to downplay PFBS’s toxicity. The incoming Biden administration learned the assessment was “compromised by political interference as well as infringement of authorship” so it reworked and republished it.
According to the Guardian, which interviewed EPA scientists about the incident, three employees who willingly worked with the Trump appointees to weaken the PFBS assessment were never reprimanded or fired: Anna Lowit, Todd Stedeford and Tala Henry.
“People know what happened, and they know there were no consequences, so there’s no deterrent,” an EPA employee told the Guardian. “It’s only going to make people more brazen about doing this kind of thing in the future.”
Henry and Stedeford had a long history of altering scientific documents at industry’s behest to make chemicals appear less toxic and had been accused by whistleblowers before. In response to the inspector general investigation, Henry retired and Stedeford left the EPA to work for a law firm that represents chemical manufacturers.
Anna Lowit did indeed become more brazen. In 2026, as a senior science adviser for the Trump EPA’s Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics, she was caught on a leaked training video telling EPA scientists that the way to do a risk evaluation of a chemical was to study it “until the answer is affirmative,” and “when it passes, stop.”
PFNA
Something similar to the PFBS scandal happened with PFNA. Trump’s EPA has refused to publish the assessment finalized by scientists in 2025, but ProPublica was leaked a copy and reported that the EPA “found that PFNA interferes with human development by causing lower birth weights and, based on animal evidence, likely causes damage to the liver and to male reproductive systems, including reductions in testosterone levels, sperm production and the size of reproductive organs.” Additionally, the EPA concluded “PFNA ‘may cause’ immune problems, thyroid effects, harm to the developing brain and a cluster of other disorders, including Type 2 diabetes.” Why hasn’t Trump’s EPA made these findings public? As Darya Minovi, a senior analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists, told ProPublica, “If you’re trying to roll back drinking water standards, you probably don’t want to release information that makes the case for why those standards are necessary.”
GenX
For GenX, the EPA’s review of the science found “liver toxicity (increased relative liver weight, hepatocellular hypertrophy, and single cell necrosis), kidney toxicity (increased relative kidney weight), immune effects (antibody suppression), developmental effects (increased early deliveries and delays in genital development), and cancer (liver and pancreatic tumors) at doses ranging from 0.5 mg/kg-day to 1000 mg/kg-day.”
PFHxS
The EPA’s hazard assessment for PFHxS cites thyroid hormone disruption and developmental neurotoxicity as major concerns. PFHxS stays in the human body for up to 8.5 years. In animal studies, PFHxS interferes with estrogen receptors, leading to delayed puberty. PFHxS-exposed mice exhibited reduced memory and learning abilities, and children with higher PFHxS serum levels have measurable attention and executive function problems.
PFOA and PFOS
The EPA found PFOA and PFOS are Likely to Be Carcinogenic to Humans. For PFOA, the EPA found epidemiological evidence of kidney, testicular, and breast cancer in humans. Liver, testicular, pancreatic, and kidney tumorigenesis is also associated with PFOA exposure in human and animal models. For PFOS, the EPA found epidemiological evidence of bladder, prostate, liver, kidney, and breast cancers in humans. PFOS-exposed rats had liver cell tumors, pancreatic cell tumors, thyroid cell tumors, and multi-site tumorigenesis (liver and pancreas).
According to the EPA, exposure is also likely to cause liver, immunological, cardiovascular, and developmental effects in humans. PFOA and PFOS:
- Harm the liver by causing liver necrosis, inflammation, and injury.
- Damage the immune system. When exposed to PFOA and PFOS, children vaccinated against tetanus, diphtheria, and rubella showed a decreased antibody response. Immunotoxicity has been observed in rodents who experienced changes to their spleen and thymus when exposed to PFOA and PFOS. The spleen and thymus are the immune system’s most vital organs. The spleen produces lymphocytes and antibodies, while the thymus makes T lymphocytes (T cells), which are essential for adaptive immunity.
- Harm heart health by increasing cholesterol levels.
- Interrupt healthy development. Exposure to PFOA and PFOS is associated with decreased birth weight in human infants. In animals, decreased offspring survival, decreased fetal and pup weight, delayed time to eye opening, and related pre- and post-natal effects have been observed.
PFAS chemicals are making us sick and shortening our lives. We can’t let the EPA halt efforts to get PFAS out of our water.
Amara Strande died at age 20 of liver cancer because Scotchguard manufacturer 3M had been dumping its PFAS waste in her St. Paul suburb since the 1950s.
In 2023, the year Amara passed away, Minnesota passed a PFAS ban she tirelessly lobbied for until her untimely death. It came to be known as Amara’s Law.
According to Safer States, 193 state policies on PFAS have been adopted in 30 states. Eleven states (ME, MA, MI, NH, NJ, NY, PA, RI, VT, WA, and WI) have enforceable limits on PFAS in drinking water. Four states (ME, MN, NM, and WA) ban PFAS in a wide range of products.
For example, New Mexico passed a law in 2025 to phase out intentionally added PFAS in consumer products from 2027 to 2032. Beginning in 2027, New Mexico will ban the sale of cookware, food packaging, dental floss, children’s products, and firefighting foam containing intentionally added PFAS. In 2028, the law will ban the sale of carpets and rugs, cleaning products, cosmetics, fabric treatments, feminine hygiene products, textiles, textile furnishings, ski wax, and upholstered furniture containing intentionally added PFAS. By 2032, all products containing intentionally added PFAS will be banned for sale unless the state’s Environmental Improvement Board adopts a rule specifying that the use of PFAS in a product is unavoidable.
Several more states ban PFAS in:
- Apparel: Six states including CA, CO, CT, ME, NY and VT have enacted phase-outs of PFAS in apparel.
- Carpets/Rugs: Ten states including CA, CO, CT, ME, MD, MN, NY, RI, VT, and WA have adopted restrictions on PFAS in carpets, rugs, and/or aftermarket treatments.
- Cleaning Products: Four states including CO, CT, ME, and MN have enacted phase-outs of PFAS in cleaning products.
- Cookware: Six states including CO, CT, ME, MN, RI and VT have enacted phase-outs of PFAS in cookware.
- Dental Floss: Four states including CO, CT, ME, and MN have enacted phase-outs of PFAS in dental floss.
- Firefighting Foam: Fifteen states including AK, CA, CO, CT, HI, IL, ME, MD, MN, NH, NJ, NY, RI, VT, and WA have banned the sale of firefighting foam containing PFAS.
- Food Packaging: Twelve states including CA, CO, CT, HI, ME, MD, MN, NY, OR, RI, VT, and WA have enacted phase-outs of PFAS in food packaging.
- Juvenile Products: Eight states including CA, CO, CT, ME, MN, OR, RI, and VT have adopted restrictions on PFAS in juvenile products.
- Menstrual Products: Seven states including CA, CO, CT, ME, MN, RI, and VT have enacted phase-outs of PFAS in menstrual products.
- Personal Care Products: Ten states including CA, CO, CT, ME, MD, MN, OR, RI, VT, and WA adopted restrictions on PFAS in cosmetics.
Maine’s 2022 PFAS law included a ban on the use of sewage sludge as fertilizer (the industry name for it is “biosolids”).
In addition to Maine, several other states, including Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, and Virginia, are testing sewage sludge for PFAS and restricting land disposal when levels are above limits. Unfortunately, those levels are mostly set too high. The EPA’s 2025 draft Sewage Sludge Risk Assessment found severe risks posed by PFAS levels as low as 1–5 parts per billion, including immune dysfunction, thyroid disease, and cancer.
TAKE ACTION: Tell Your State Legislators to Ban Toxic PFAS!
The legislation that has been passed so far leaves out a significant source of PFAS: pesticides.
Some sectors are transitioning away from PFAS, but the pesticide industry is doubling down. The Environmental Protection Agency recently approved six new pesticides that qualify as PFAS: Corteva-DowDuPont’s fluazaindolizine under President Biden, and Syngenta-ChemChina’s cyclobutrifluram and isocycloseram, Bayer-Monsanto’s diflufenican, BASF’s trifludimoxazin, and Sumitomo-Valent’s epyrifenacil under President Trump.
TAKE ACTION: Tell Your State Legislators to Ban PFAS Pesticides!
In 2024, during the Biden Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency started to regulate PFAS, putting six PFAS formulations on its list of substances regulated in drinking water and two under its Superfund authority, to shift the costs of cleanup from taxpayers to polluters.
To understand why is this unacceptable, watch the film Dark Waters (2019) that dramatizes the shocking and true story of heroic attorney Rob Bilott who risked his career and family to uncover a secret hidden by one of the world’s largest corporations and to bring justice to a community dangerously exposed for decades to deadly chemicals.
Bilott was first contacted by two West Virginia farmers who showed him how DuPont’s toxic waste was getting dumped on their fields in the form of sewage sludge “fertilizer” and was killing their cattle. In an attempt to help the farmers, Bilott filed a complaint that kicked off an epic 15-year fight—one that tested his reputation, his health and his livelihood.
There’s a great scene in the movie, where Bilott’s wife Sarah (Anne Hathaway) demands to know what is going on and Rob (Mark Ruffalo) tells her how DuPont is knowingly poisoning the community.
The Devil We Know is a documentary version of the same story focusing on the plaintiffs in the historic class action lawsuit against the DuPont chemical plant that manufactures Teflon. They charged the chemical company with poisoning the drinking water supply of more than 70,000 people living near the factory. In the film, they break their silence about the suffering they’ve endured at the hands of the chemical giant in their backyard. Their lawsuit uncovered shocking internal documents revealing that DuPont knew for decades that C8 had toxic health effects, but continued to leave its workers and the entire community exposed.
There are several other excellent films to watch about PFAS.
Semper Fi Always Faithful tells the tragic and inspiring true story of Marine Corps Master Sgt. Jerry Ensminger, a devoted Marine for nearly twenty-five years. When Jerry’s nine-year old daughter Janey died of a rare type of leukemia, his world collapsed. As a grief-stricken father, he struggled for years to make sense of what happened. His search for answers led to the shocking discovery of a Marine Corps cover-up of one of the largest water contamination incidents in U.S. history. Military bases like Camp Lejeune still have the highest concentrations of PFAS in the country primarily from the near daily use of firefighting foam.
Burned is the true story of how the spouse of a firefighter revealed their significant exposure to forever chemicals.
The heroic people whose stories are told in these films deserve our support. Please don’t leave this page without taking action.
