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EPA Lacks a PFAS Containment Strategy
The environmental and public health challenges posed by PFAS are immense. EPA needs to do much more than it is doing.
Jul 15, 2024
Every day there is a new headline about discoveries of dangerous amounts of toxic per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances or PFAS in groundwater, municipal wastewater systems, in soil outside military bases and on farms, in freshwater fish, in human blood, and even in mothers’ milk. It seems like the PFAS pollution crisis is out of control.
This April, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finally set a maximum drinking water contamination limit for two of the oldest and most widespread PFAS. That limit was set at 4 parts per trillion, but EPA also acknowledged that there is no safe amount of PFAS for human consumption.
While this was an important regulatory step, EPA does not appear to have grasped the implications of its own action. Removing PFAS from our water will be very, very expensive, and it will not stop the endless cycle of contamination. To stop this crisis, EPA must interrupt the flow of PFAS reaching our water, soil, and food chain every day.
Although it is far less expensive and far more feasible to prevent PFAS from reaching the environment in the first place than removing these aptly named “forever chemicals,” EPA does not yet have a PFAS containment strategy.
In fact, it seems that EPA is spending more time impeding PFAS containment than implementing it. Consider these examples:
Plastic Containers. Inhance Technologies fluorinates an estimated 200 million containers a year for a wide array of products, such as chemicals, pesticides, personal care products, and fuels, as well as edible oils and flavorings. The fluorinated linings create PFAS which leach into the containers’ contents. This means PFAS contaminates a huge portion of all U.S. commerce.
Yet, EPA moved to block a citizen suit against Inhance on the grounds that EPA was handling the issue. After EPA’s enforcement effort was invalidated by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, EPA declined to appeal or take any other action. As a result, the citizen groups are gearing up again to seek a ban on these PFAS-laden containers in favor of available alternative barrier technologies that do not create PFAS.
Biosolid Fertilizers. Biosolid fertilizers are made from sewage sludge. PFAS are not removed at wastewater treatment plants, and EPA does not limit the amount of PFAS they can contain. Yet under the Clean Water Act, EPA has long been required to identify toxic pollutants in biosolids and adopt regulations to prevent harm to human health or the environment. Unfortunately, it is a responsibility the agency has neglected for decades.
Meanwhile, farms, ranches, and dairies ranging from New Mexico to Maine have been devastated by PFAS contamination from biosolids. Unfortunately, EPA has ignored their pleas for assistance. Now some of these victimized farmers are suing EPA for its failure to prevent set standards for PFAS in biosolids.
Pesticides. PFAS have been found in many insecticides at incredibly high levels. These PFAS are being taken up into the roots and shoots of plants, which means that they are entering our food supply through contaminated soils, water, and the pesticides themselves. Since these are “forever chemicals,” this contamination will last long after the pesticide application.
Ignoring a growing trove of evidence, EPA contends there are no PFAS in pesticides and is discouraging states from testing. The agency has even gone so far as to publish faulty test results in attempt to conceal that scientists had confirmed widespread presence of PFAS in pesticides.
Landfills. Disposal, transportation, and importation of PFAS remains largely unregulated. For example, huge amounts of PFAS are leaching out of U.S. landfills, burned in incinerators, and injected underground with no regulations. Meanwhile, the agency has resisted efforts to designate hundreds of dangerous PFAS chemicals as “hazardous waste,” and regulate them stringently from cradle to grave.
Artificial Turf. Currently, there are an estimated 18,000 synthetic turf sports fields in the U.S., with more than a thousand new installations each year. All brands of artificial turf tested contain PFAS in carpet grass fibers. Besides the direct human exposure, PFAS is leaching off these fields into nearby surface and groundwater, some of which are sources of drinking water,
In addition, there is growing evidence that the PFAS on these surfaces is rubbing off on players’ skin with worrisome consequences. Yet, EPA has yet to even look at this exposure vector.
The environmental and public health challenges posed by PFAS are immense. EPA needs to do much more than it is doing. If the agency will not help abate exposures, it should at least get out of the way and allow states and NGOs to stop this contamination crisis.
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Lawsuit Accuses EPA of Hiding Critical Data About Harms of 'Forever Chemicals'
"By sitting on this critical information, EPA is advancing the private interests of a corporate violator and shirking its public health responsibilities," said one plaintiff's attorney.
Feb 15, 2024
A federal lawsuit filed Thursday by a pair of environmental advocacy groups accuses the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency of "wrongfully withholding test data and other vital information" regarding the presence of so-called "forever chemicals" in millions of fluorinated plastic containers.
The lawsuit—filed in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) and the Center for Environmental Health (CEH)—argues that the EPA is violating Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) disclosure requirements by improperly classifying health and safety data as trade secrets.
Referring to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances—commonly known as forever chemicals because they do not biodegrade and accumulate in the human body—the suit also accuses the EPA of "denying the public access to the results of testing showing the levels of PFAS in fluorinated plastic containers and their contents along with the identities of the products in which these toxic materials are present."
PEER and CEH said that after they filed a Freedom of Information Act request "for documents shedding light on the health risks associated with PFAS in fluorinated containers," the EPA granted trade secret protection sought by Inhance Technologies, LLC.
Fluorination involves the high-temperature application of fluorine gas to plastic containers to make them more resistant to discoloration and permeation by solvents.
As PEER explained:
PFAS chemicals are formed during the fluorination of high-density polyethylene plastic containers by Inhance Technologies, LLC of Houston, Texas. Inhance is the sole U.S. company conducting this type of fluorination. Studies by EPA, independent researchers, and Inhance itself show that PFAS leaches from the walls of containers into their contents, thus exposing millions of people to PFAS without their knowledge...
Inhance fluorinates 200 million containers a year which are used to package diverse products ranging from fuels to foodstuffs, cosmetics, and cleaning products which consumers and workers use on a daily basis.
"EPA has found that these containers constitute a public health threat, a long-awaited determination that also should encompass the public's right to know," CEH counsel Bob Sussman, who is also a former senior EPA official, said in a statement announcing the new lawsuit.
Used in a broad range of products from clothing to nonstick cookware to firefighting foam, PFAS is linked to cancers of the kidneys and testicles, low infant weight, suppressed immune function, and other adverse health effects. It is found in the blood of 99% of Americans and a similar percentage of people around the world.
"Given the unquestionably major public health stakes, EPA should be stepping up and maximizing access to health and safety data, but the agency is disclosing vital information only grudgingly and with lingering secrecy even though disclosure is mandated by TSCA," Sussman lamented.
Colleen Teubner, PEER's litigation and policy attorney, asserted that "the cloak of confidential business information cannot be used to hide health and safety studies as EPA is currently doing."
"By sitting on this critical information, EPA is advancing the private interests of a corporate violator and shirking its public health responsibilities," she added.
The new lawsuit follows a December 2022 court filing by PEER and CEH seeking to stop Inhance from generating forever chemicals during the manufacture of plastic containers.
Thousands of PFAS-related lawsuits have been launched in U.S. courts over recent decades.
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Biden’s Imploding Scientific Integrity Initiative
It is difficult to see what about this administration's policy would prevent a return to the reign of “alternative facts” should Trump be reelected.
Oct 06, 2023
Following the tumultuous Trump years when scientific fact and fiction often clashed, President Joe Biden resolved to strengthen federal protections against suppression or alteration of government science. Just days after his inauguration, he issued an all-agency directive to bolster the scientific integrity policies that had proven so useless in stemming the abuses of Trump and his appointees.
This effort was launched under the hopeful banner of “Restoring Trust in Government Through Scientific Integrity.” Now, months behind schedule, the first revamped scientific integrity policy crafted under this initiative is rolling out. Unfortunately, it leaves a lot to be desired.
If finalized, this revised policy would cover thousands of scientists and technical analysts working within the behemoth $1.7 trillion Department of Health & Human Services (HHS), which spans a dozen divisions and includes nine separate public health agencies, such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, and Food & Drug Administration.
It will also likely serve as the template for new policies that are supposed to be adopted in all other federal agencies doing scientific work. Distressingly, among other shortcomings, this draft policy:
- Fails to prevent political interference with no provision for independent investigation of allegations of misconduct or sanctions for meddling by political appointees;
- Lacks any meaningful legal protections for scientists doing controversial work that may conflict with an agency’s political agenda;
- Contains few safeguards against scientific work being altered or suppressed, such as defined clearance procedures for approving technical publications or presentations;
- Does not apply to grantees and, in agencies such as the NIH, much of the scientific work is done under grants; and
- Does not allow public scrutiny of conflict of interest waivers granted to industry members of federal advisory committees, allowing these key scientific bodies to be stacked with little outside scrutiny. First Biden Scientific Integrity Policy Falls Well Short (peer.org)
Under this proposed policy, every aspect of enforcing scientific integrity principles would remain a captive of the political process inside the agencies. Thus, it is difficult to see what about this policy would prevent a return to the reign of “alternative facts” should Trump be reelected. Moreover, in the unlikely event that it did prove restrictive, a reelected Trump could simply rescind it, just as he did so many other Obama-era policies.
One core problem was the White House “framework” for this policy, issued earlier this year. Ths framework was composed largely by the same agency scientific integrity officers who presided over the Obama-era policies which had proven so ineffectual under Trump.
As a result, the organizing principle behind both the HHS draft and the White House framework appears to be bureaucratic self-protection. That explains the lack of transparency pervasive throughout the draft HHS policy which, tellingly, stipulates that “all descriptions of investigations and appeals will be anonymized.”
How is public trust in the credibility of government science supposed to be enhanced by closed-door investigations overseen by officials named by political appointees and reported to the public only in “anonymized” versions?
Perhaps one reason for these disappointing results is that it was overseen by the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy. Before the work had barely begun, the OSTP Director was forced to resign for bullying his staff. That left the reins for this project of an OSTP Deputy Director who last year was sanctioned by the National Academy of Sciences for misconduct and barred from participating in its publications and activities for five years.
Consequently, agencies were allowed to write scientific integrity rules in the most self-serving fashion possible. This, in turn, means that agencies will invoke scientific integrity principles only when it is politically convenient—an arrangement that defeats the entire purpose of this elaborate scientific integrity policy formulation effort.
Preventing this unfolding implosion propelled by institutional self-interest will require that the Biden brain trust radically change course. Rather than pursuing this murky agency-by-agency approach, the White House should impose government-wide rules that would:
- Create uniform interagency review and appeal processes for scientific misconduct allegations, such that individual agencies can no longer control investigations and sequester the results.
- Set uniform penalties for scientific integrity violations and require that political appointees found responsible for violations be publicly identified.
- Establish uniform clearance policies so that scientific material cannot be withheld from publication for other than technical reasons with enforceable appeal procedures to prevent research papers from being held in extended limbo.
There is no plausible reason why scientists in different agencies should be treated differently or have different rights. These government-wide rules would not only drive significant change but would also surmount the bureaucratic strategies where ground-breaking science is often strangled. Further, it may encourage Congress to codify these safeguards so that they may not be wiped summarily wiped out by a succeeding president.
Simply put, restoring trust in government science requires the ability of the public to verify that its trust is merited.
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