SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
safe drinking water act
Trump EPA Seeks to Reverse Rules Protecting Drinking Water From Carcinogenic 'Forever Chemicals'
One environmental attorney said that the EPA proposal "prioritizes chemical industry profits and utility companies' bottom line over the health of children and families across the country."
Sep 12, 2025
Public health and environment defenders on Friday condemned the Trump administration's announcement that it will no longer uphold Environmental Protection Agency rules that protect people from unsafe levels of so-called "forever chemicals" in the nation's drinking water.
In addition to no longer defending rules meant to protect people from dangerous quantities of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)—called forever chemicals because they do not biodegrade and accumulate in the human body—the EPA is asking a federal court to toss out current limits that protect drinking water from four types of PFAS: PFNA, PFHxS, GenX, and PFBS.
The EPA first announced its intent to roll back limits on the four chemicals in May, while vowing to retain maximum limits for two other types of PFAS. The agency said the move is meant to “provide regulatory flexibility and holistically address these contaminants in drinking water.”
However, critics accuse the EPA and Administrator Lee Zeldin—a former Republican congressman from New York with an abysmal 14% lifetime rating from the League of Conservation Voters—of trying to circumvent the Safe Drinking Water Act's robust anti-backsliding provision, which bars the EPA from rolling back any established drinking water standard.
"In essence, EPA is asking the court to do what EPA itself is not allowed to do," Earthjustice said in a statement.
"Administrator Zeldin promised to protect the American people from PFAS-contaminated drinking water, but he’s doing the opposite,” Earthjustice attorney Katherine O'Brien alleged. “Zeldin’s plan to delay and roll back the first national limits on these forever chemicals prioritizes chemical industry profits and utility companies’ bottom line over the health of children and families across the country."
Jared Thompson, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), said that "the EPA’s request to jettison rules intended to keep drinking water safe from toxic PFAS forever chemicals is an attempted end run around the protections that Congress placed in the Safe Drinking Water Act."
"It is also alarming, given what we know about the health harms caused by exposure to these chemicals," Thompson added. "No one wants to drink PFAS. We will continue to defend these commonsense, lawfully enacted standards in court."
PFAS have myriad uses, from nonstick cookware to waterproof clothing to firefighting foam. Increasing use of forever chemicals has resulted in the detection of PFAS in the blood of nearly every person in the United States and around the world.
Approximately half of the U.S. population is drinking PFAS-contaminated water, “including as many as 105 million whose water violates the new standards,” according to the NRDC, which added that “the EPA has known for decades that PFAS endangers human health, including kidney and testicular cancer, liver damage, and harm to the nervous and reproductive systems.”
Betsy Southerland, a former director of the Office of Science and Technology in the EPA's Office of Water, said in a statement Friday:
The impact of these chemicals is clear. We know that this is significant for pregnant women who are drinking water contaminated with PFAS, because it can cause low birth weight in children. We know children have developmental effects from being exposed to it. We know there’s an increased incidence of cardiovascular disease and cancer with these chemicals.
Two of the four chemicals targeted in this motion are the ones that we expect to be the most prevalent, and only increasing contamination in the future. With this rollback, those standards would be gone.
Responding to Thursday's developments, Environmental Advocates NY director of clean water Rob Hayes said that "the EPA’s announcement is a big win for corporate polluters and an enormous loss for New York families."
"Administrator Zeldin wants to strip clean water protections away from millions of New Yorkers, leaving them at risk of exposure to toxic PFAS chemicals every time they turn on the tap," he added. "New Yorkers will pay the price of this disastrous plan through medical bills—and deaths—tied to kidney cancer, thyroid disease, and other harmful illnesses linked to PFAS."
While Trump administration officials including Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have claimed they want to "make America healthy again" by ending PFAS use, the EPA is apparently moving in the opposite direction. Between April and June of this year, the agency sought approval of four new pesticides considered PFAS under a definition backed by experts.
“What we’re seeing right now is the new generation of pesticides, and it’s genuinely frightening,” Nathan Donley, the environmental health science director at the Center for Biological Diversity, told Civil Eats earlier this week. “At a time when most industries are transitioning away from PFAS, the pesticide industry is doubling down. They’re firmly in the business of selling PFAS.”
Keep ReadingShow Less
EPA Finds at Least 26 Million People in US Have Toxic 'Forever Chemicals' in Their Drinking Water
"The new testing data shows that escaping PFAS is nearly impossible," said one campaigner. "The EPA has done its job, and the Biden White House must finalize drinking water standards this year."
Aug 17, 2023
Environmental justice advocates on Thursday renewed calls for the Biden administration to finalize drinking water standards after the Environmental Protection Agency published data showing 26 million people in hundreds of U.S. communities have toxic "forever chemicals" in their water supply.
The EPA released data from an initial round of testing that confirmed per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)—called forever chemicals because they do not biodegrade and accumulate in the human body—in 431 water systems at levels above minimum reporting limits. The Safe Drinking Water Act requires U.S. utilities to test drinking water for 29 different PFAS compounds and publish results every five years.
The findings—which are far more conservative than those of the U.S. Geological Survey and some nongovernmental research—come after the EPA in March proposed limits on the amounts of certain PFAS compounds in drinking water.
"The initial data indicate that multiple forever chemicals are being detected in public water systems, with two specific PFAS (PFOS and PFOA) concentrations above the proposed maximum contaminant levels (the highest levels of a contaminant that is allowed in drinking water) in over 150 systems," said Elizabeth Southerland, a former EPA water specialist now with the advocacy group Environmental Protection Network. "It is critically important that EPA continue to release this data every quarter so the public can see as quickly as possible if their drinking water has PFAS levels of concern."
Katie Pelch, a scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), said in a statement that "the PFAS testing results suggest that there is extensive contamination of tap water."
"Our concern remains that these testing results significantly underreport the presence of PFAS in tap water, potentially misleading communities about the safety of their drinking water," Pelch added. "This is because only a fraction of the PFAS that may be present in drinking water are monitored for, and utilities are not required to report PFAS detected, but at levels below the reporting limits."
Erik Olson, NRDC's senior strategic director for health, asserted that "the focus needs to remain on people in our communities who deserve to know if their drinking water is contaminated with harmful PFAS chemicals."
"Federal, state, and local governing bodies must act swiftly to stop contamination, clean up polluted water, and safeguard the health of everyday people," he added.
Forever chemicals have myriad uses, from nonstick cookware to waterproof clothing to firefighting foam. According to the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, 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.
The EPA's findings follow a 2020 Environmental Working Group (EWG) study that found more than 200 million Americans could have PFAS in their drinking water. The advocacy group maintains an interactive map showing more than 2,800 PFAS-contaminated sites in all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and multiple U.S. territories.
"For decades, millions of Americans have unknowingly consumed water tainted with PFAS," EWG senior vice president for government affairs Scott Faber said in a statement. "The new testing data shows that escaping PFAS is nearly impossible. The EPA has done its job, and the Biden White House must finalize drinking water standards this year."
Melanie Benesh, EWG's vice president of government affairs, said that "the PFAS pollution crisis threatens all of us. The EPA's proposed limits also serve as a stark reminder of just how toxic these chemicals are to human health at very low levels."
"The agency needs to finalize its proposal and make the limits for PFAS in water enforceable," she added.
The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law signed by President Joe Biden in 2021 allocated $9 billion to invest in communities where drinking water is contaminated with PFAS and other toxins.
However, other bills to limit PFAS have died in Congress under intense lobbying from the chemical industry, which has long known—and conspired to conceal—the health and environmental dangers of forever chemicals.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Want Babies? Maybe Move Away From Fracking Country, New Studies Suggest
Research 'may have implications for the fertility of men living in regions with dense oil and/or natural gas production'
Oct 15, 2015
From decreased sperm count to messed up hormones to premature births, exposure to fracking chemicals could lead to long-term reproductive health consequences, according to a pair of studies published this month.
Research that appears Thursday in the journal Endocrinology shows that "23 commonly used oil and natural gas operation chemicals can activate or inhibit the estrogen, androgen, glucocorticoid, progesterone, and/or thyroid receptors, and mixtures of these chemicals can behave synergistically, additively, or antagonistically in vitro."
"These findings may have implications for the fertility of men living in regions with dense oil and/or natural gas production."
--Susan Nagel, University of Missouri
Furthermore, the study found that prenatal exposure among males to those 23 endocrine-disrupting chemicals, or EDCs, "caused decreased sperm counts and increased testes, body, heart, and thymus weights and increased serum T in male mice, suggesting multiple organ system impacts. " The study was conducted on mice with wastewater samples from Garfield County, Colorado fracking sites.
In other words, said Susan Nagel of the University of Missouri, the study's senior author: "It is clear EDCs used in fracking can act alone or in combination with other chemicals to interfere with the body's hormone function." Hormones regulate cell activity and biological processes such as metabolism, reproduction, growth, and digestion.
Fracking companies use a mix of pressurized water, sand, and chemicals to unlock hydrocarbon reserves deep in shale rock. However, due to the "Halliburton Loophole," which exempts fracking operations from key provisions of the Safe Drinking Water Act, it is often difficult to ascertain what chemicals are being used and in what concentration.
Still, Nagel stated, "This study is the first to demonstrate that EDCs commonly used in fracking, at levels realistic for human and animal exposure in these regions, can adversely affect the reproductive health of mice. In addition to reduced sperm counts, the male mice exposed to the mixture of chemicals had elevated levels of testosterone in their blood and larger testicles. These findings may have implications for the fertility of men living in regions with dense oil and/or natural gas production."
The Huffington Post points out:
Hormone-disrupting chemicals have become the subject of increasing scientific scrutiny. In a statement published last month, the Endocrine Society, a professional medical organization, described the potentially widespread health threats posed by the class of chemicals. Even at very small concentrations--say, a couple of tablespoons in an Olympic-size swimming pool--exposures to these chemicals early in life have been shown capable of derailing normal brain and sexual development, diminishing the immune system's ability to fight disease, among other effects. Combine these chemicals, the society warned, and the risks may become all the more unpredictable and worrisome--and potentially costly. An analysis published in March attributed more than $200 billion a year in health care expenses and lost earning potential to hormone-disruptor exposures in the European Union.
Meanwhile, other new research out this month from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health showed that expectant mothers who live near active natural gas wells operated by the fracking industry in Pennsylvania are at an increased risk of giving birth prematurely and for having high-risk pregnancies.
"The growth in the fracking industry has gotten way ahead of our ability to assess what the environmental and, just as importantly, public health impacts are," said study leader Brian Schwartz, a Department of Environmental Health Sciences professor at the Bloomberg School. "More than 8,000 unconventional gas wells have been drilled in Pennsylvania alone, and we're allowing this while knowing almost nothing about what it can do to health. Our research adds evidence to the very few studies that have been done in showing adverse health outcomes associated with the fracking industry."
That small and growing body of research, however, is already telling a story. As Schwartz told Tribune News Service in early October, " Four studies have now looked at various aspects of reproductive health in relation to this industry, and all have found something."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular