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pfoa
WHO Drops Weak PFAS Guidelines and Starts Anew After Criticism Over Industry Influence
"This is unprecedented, but the WHO got unprecedented criticism," an expert said after the agency changed course on drinking water guidelines.
Aug 14, 2024
The World Health Organization has scrapped its draft guidelines for "forever chemicals" in drinking water and restarted scientific review following criticism that its previous process was unduly influenced by industry-linked science, The Guardianreported Wednesday.
Leading scientists and public health experts from around the world had for the last two years called on the WHO to reverse course after the organization released draft guidelines they deemed to be far too weak to protect human health. Regulators in the United States and the European Union now have much stricter standards for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) than those the WHO was proposing.
WHO guidelines are consequential because regulators in many countries use them to set standards, and they can be cited in industry-backed lawsuits that argue that a national or subnational regulatory standard is too strict.
The WHO's reversal was highly unusual and showed the level of scrutiny its PFAS process was under, experts said.
"This is unprecedented, but the WHO got unprecedented criticism," Betsy Southerland, the former director of science and technology at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Office of Water, told The Guardian.
Southerland herself was one of the leading critics. Last year, she and Linda Birnbaum, the former director of the U.S. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, wrote a commentary in Environmental Science & Technology, a peer-reviewed journal, in which they called the WHO's approach "stunning" and argued for extensive revision of the guidelines.
In November 2022, a group of more than 100 scientists wrote an open letter to the WHO calling for a reconsideration of the guidelines to include the raft of research on the dangers of PFAS to human health, more transparency about the process, and better enforcement of the organization's conflict-of-interest policy.
PFAS are a class of roughly 16,000 synthetic compounds that were developed by the chemical industry, including companies such as 3M and DuPont, in the mid-20th century. The compounds, which are called forever chemicals because they break down only very slowly, are found in many household and industrial products and are now found in the blood of most humans, raising public health concerns because their links to many types of cancer and other diseases.
Two of the most well-known and well-studied PFAS are perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonate(PFOS), and it's these two compounds that have been the focal point of the WHO rulemaking process. The WHO proposed guidelines of limits of 100 parts per trillion for the two compounds—well above the 4 ppt the EPA recently instituted, based on research showing there was "no safe level of exposure" to the contaminants—citing unclear research and inadequate filtration systems for PFOA and PFOS removal at very low levels.
Critics said those arguments came from flawed reasoning and research. For example, the WHO had, in a key document, repeatedly cited the work of Michael Dourson, a controversial toxicologist whom then-President Donald Trump had named to lead the EPA's chemical safety division in 2017 but who ultimately ended up in another position, due to criticism over his ties to industry. The New York Times that year published emails Dourson had exchanged with the American Chemistry Council, a lobby group, that showed a close relationship.
Dourson told The Guardian that the work that he and other scientists whom the WHO cited in its 2022 draft guidelines did was independent of industry influence and that the guidelines had been sound, given the uncertainty about PFAS science.
But Birnbaum told the newspaper that invoking uncertainty and casting doubt on the science is an industry tactic. That's one of the approaches being used in legal challenges to the EPA's stricter rules.
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California Regulator Praised for 'Landmark' Proposal to List 'Forever Chemicals' as Carcinogenic
"The damage to communities nationwide from PFOA-contaminated drinking water and exposure through everyday consumer products is almost unimaginable, but California's action underscores the urgency of addressing the crisis."
Mar 24, 2021
A public health watchdog on Wednesday praised California's proposal to add one of the so-called "forever chemicals" PFOA to the state's list of chemicals known to cause cancer.
PFOA, or perfluorooctanoic acid, was formerly used to make DuPont's Teflon and other products. It's part of a group of chemicals called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). Dubbed forever chemicals because they don't break down and can accumulate in the human body, PFAS contamination is widespread. Humans can be exposed through workplace environments, groundwater contamination, or household products.
The U.S. EPA says there's evidence PFOA can cause adverse health effects including reproductive and developmental, liver and kidney, and immunological harm.
The proposed listing decision was announced last Friday by the California Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA). It said products with PFOA should carry a warning label that the chemical is known to the state to cause cancer under the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986, or Proposition 65. That determination, said OEHHA, is based on findings from the National Toxicology Program.
PFOA has been phased out of production in the U.S., but public health watchdogs says there remain concerns about ongoing contamination, existing stockpiles, imported products, and the fact that some replacement chemicals present health dangers of their own.
PFOA is already on the Proposition 65 list, but for reproductive toxicity.
The public comment period on the new proposed listing ends May 3.
Adding the cancer warning to PFOA would be good news for public health, says the Environmental Working Group (EWG), because such labeling "historically has pushed manufacturers to remove listed chemicals from their products."
EWG president Ken Cook, in a statement Wednesday, welcomed the California regulator's move as a "landmark decision" that "underscores the state's longstanding commitment to protecting its citizens from cancer-causing chemicals like PFOA."
"The damage to communities nationwide from PFOA-contaminated drinking water and exposure through everyday consumer products is almost unimaginable," said Cook, "but California's action underscores the urgency of addressing the crisis."
The proposal also drew praise from environmental attorney and Right Livelihood laureate Robert Bilott, who, following a two-decade legal battle, helped reach a $671 million settlement in class-action lawsuit against DuPont on behalf of thousands of people who said their drinking water was contaminated by the corporation.
Bilott said in a statement that the "more information and scientific data that is uncovered and revealed, the more concerned scientists and regulators all over the planet become."
"The current action in California is just the latest within the scientific and regulatory community to reject the manufacturers' claims that these forever chemicals present 'no risk' to humans," said Bilott.
Public health experts and legal observers say PFAS-making companies knew of the chemicals' harm for decades but continued their production, leaving some affected residents to feel they "collateral damage" while companies try to dodge accountability.
PFOA has been phased out of production in the U.S., but public health watchdogs say there remain concerns about ongoing contamination, existing stockpiles, imported products, and the fact that some replacement chemicals present health dangers of their own.
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Dear Joe Biden: Are You Kidding Me?
The president-elect has tapped a former DuPont consultant to join his Environmental Protection Agency transition board.
Nov 18, 2020
For years, I've been trying to impart a simple concept that Superman is not coming.
Dare I say, I had hopes that this new administration would usher in the dawning of a new day. As picks for President-elect Joe Biden's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) transition team were announced, I felt concerned and disheartened about a chemical industry insider being on the list. Are you kidding me?
Michael McCabe, a former employee of Biden and a former deputy Environmental Protection Agency administrator, later jumped ship to work as a consultant on communication strategy for DuPont during a time when the chemical company was looking to fight regulations of their star chemical perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) also known as C8. The toxic manmade chemical is used in everything from waterproof clothes, stain-resistant textiles and food packaging to non-stick pans. The compound has been linked to lowered fertility, cancer and liver damage. The Guardian reported this week that Harvard school of public health professor Philippe Grandjean, who studies environmental health, warns that PFAS chemicals, of which PFOA is one, might reduce the efficacy of a Covid-19 vaccine.
This smells of the dawn of the same old. To quote the Who: meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
It should go without saying that someone who advised DuPont on how to avoid regulations is not someone we want advising this new administration.
PFOA pollutes the blood of nearly every American and can pass from mother to unborn child in the womb. This toxic product of industry is a stable compound not easily broken down in the environment or in the human body, giving it the nickname "forever chemical". Scientists have found it in living beings across the globe - from animals living in the depths of the sea to birds on remote islands.
The Environmental Protection Agency has set no enforceable national drinking water limits for perfluorinated chemicals, including PFOA. Tens of thousands of community drinking water systems across the country have never even tested for these contaminants.
McCabe started managing DuPont's communications with the EPA about the toxic chemical in 2003, according to an article in the Intercept. This was the time in which DuPont faced a barrage of litigation after the company dumped 7,100 tons of PFOA-filled waste in West Virginia, which made its way into the drinking water of 100,000 people. Countless members of the community faced debilitating illnesses as a result. The legal battle with the company was turned into the film Dark Waters in 2019.
Mind you, DuPont suspected that their product was harmful since the 1960s - experiments they conducted in 1961 showed that PFOS affected the livers of dogs and rabbits. McCabe's work inevitably contributed to staving off costly clean-up and additional regulation headaches for the company.
Are we the people supposed to trust a former DuPont man in a transition team tasked with reviewing the Chemical Safety Board? Is this how the newly elected leadership wants to start what is supposed to be a healing and unifying administration? Are we already falling back on the old and antiquated, hide-and-seek, conceal, dodge and deny leadership or are you going to come out and be the change and the hope needed when it comes to the environment?
I don't see how picking someone from industry is moving us toward that goal.
The science is in. Research has linked exposure to this chemical to the following illnesses: kidney and testicular cancer, ulcerative colitis, thyroid disease, pregnancy-induced hypertension and high cholesterol.
What will it take to get our leadership to work with the people?
This newly elected president says we need to listen to the science. Are you really listening to the science or are you listening to an industry insider, who is controlling the message?
With a lack of federal guidance on these dangerous chemicals, states have been left to create their own rules to enforce guidance and regulations. This chemical, and others like it, have been poisoning us for decades. Now is the time to act.
This is not about being rightwing or leftwing. It doesn't matter what side of the aisle you are on. We cannot keep making picks from this inside, leaving we the people, once again on the outside.
What will it take to get our leadership to work with the people?
Stop working against and separately from your communities. Put your transition team on the ground and make them talk with those affected by these chemicals. Go out and see for yourself, learn and hear from those who you represent about what the heck is happening to them on the ground - those living and breathing in the toxic mess we have created.
It is time to keep your promise and give the people a voice and a seat the table in order to find a meaningful solution for the environment and for the people. Don't close the door on us again.
We are in this mess because we continue to do the same old thing.
Let us not forget where these chemicals came from and who is responsible for putting them in our environment. Let us not bring the fox back into the hen house. DuPont executives should have no place in the Environmental Protection Agency.
I call on Joe Biden to do the right thing.
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