It will be no surprise that polluters, long accustomed to using our air and water as dumping grounds, will likely complain and seek to escape responsibility. Many of the standards in place are badly out of date. Other chemicals that pose many of the same risks still remain in our tap water – like hexavalent chromium, for instance – because changes made to our drinking water laws in the 1990s have left all of us unprotected. The EPA has known about the risks posed by PFAS since the 1990s but consistently failed to put public health ahead of polluter profits. How to reduce PFAS in your drinking water, according to experts Unrecognizable African Girl Drinking Glass of Mineral Water At Home, Cropped Image, Panorama With Copy Space Prostock-studio/Adobe Stock It should not have taken the EPA more than two decades to act. By doing so, the EPA will help protect millions of Americans from exposure to these toxic chemicals. The agency also set a separate standard for a witches brew of four other PFAS compounds: GenX, PFBS, PFNA and PFHxS. Water utilities will soon have to meet the toughest drinking water standards, of 4 parts per trillion, or ppt, for two of the most notorious and best-studied PFAS compounds: PFOA, formerly used to make DuPont’s Teflon, and PFOS, formerly an ingredient in 3M’s Scotchgard. Thanks to Biden, the US is about to take the first step toward change. Until last week, water utilities were not required to test PFAS, much less filter them out of our drinking water. ![]() But, according to research estimates, it’s likely that more than 200 million Americans have been drinking a chemical linked to an increased risk of cancer, reproductive harm, immune system damage and other serious health problems, even at low levels. Because of their strong carbon-fluorine bond, PFAS don’t break down in the environment, and build up and stay in the human body for many years causing long-term damage, hence the name “forever” chemicals.Įxactly how many Americans have been drinking unsafe levels of these chemicals is hard to know, because our drinking water utilities were only recently required to test for their presence. ![]() PFAS are a family of more than 12,000 chemicals that repel water and oil and are used on waterproof and grease resistant coatings. ![]() Roman/Adobe StockĬhild growth and development hampered by PFAS in blood, study saysįor decades, millions of Americans have been drinking these toxic chemicals, which are used in everything from cookware to clothes to firefighting foam. playing hopscotch on playground outdoors.
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