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Forever chemicals' broad reach


Link: https://www.politico.com/newsletters/the-long-game/2022/04/14/forever-chemicals-broad-reach-00025249?fbclid=IwAR1bo1C8GX3A4HhSxiLEOBYZN0885V9cky32EXsaxV6XRsb1i5HvF70Gqjs

 

 

 

America is just beginning to come to grips with the scale and scope of contamination from a large group of human-made chemicals known collectively as PFAS.

It’s still not entirely clear whether their mere presence is all bad — but it's clear that they're everywhere. The same properties that make them useful in items like non-stick cookware and firefighting foams are what also make them so hard to clean up when they migrate into soil and water, potentially leading to health impacts at high levels of exposure.

Research out today from the Environmental Working Group sheds new light on PFAS contamination on cropland. About 5 percent of all U.S. farm fields, or 20 million acres, could be contaminated by PFAS.

How did it get there? Largely from sludge farmers have applied to their fields as fertilizer. There’s potential for PFAS to contaminate the sludge, which is a byproduct of the wastewater treatment process, by infiltrating landfills and industrial discharges. When these chemicals then contaminate crops and animals, those products can then be unsafe to consume and farmers can suffer as a result. Two dairy farms in Maine, for instance, have been shut down due to unsafe PFAS contamination, and legislators there are looking to ban the sludge unless it has been tested.

More broadly, EWG came out last October with data showing that 2,854 additional locations across the country in all 50 states are contaminated with PFAS. Nearly 700 of those are military sites.

 

 

As the issue has gotten more attention, put on the map in recent years through investigative reporting by The Intercept and the 2019 movie “Dark Waters,” there’s been a flurry of activity at all levels of government to restrict the presence of PFAS or rule on who is liable when victims are exposed.

Shelly Oren, a policy associate at the National Conference of State Legislatures, said the group is tracking more than 200 PFAS-related bills in statehouses this year, up from 180 bills in 2020 and 76 in 2018. The number of individual companies or groups lobbying on PFAS at the federal level has jumped from just one in 2017 to 164 in 2021, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

The breadth of the usage of these chemicals is reflected in the diversity of such bills: California is considering a ban on PFAS in cosmetics, Maryland has prohibited certain PFAS chemicals in firefighting foam, and Maine passed arguably the broadest bill ending the sale of intentionally added PFAS in most products starting in 2030. A number of states have passed limits on PFAS concentrations in drinking water.

 

 

Some states are targeting chemical companies themselves, like a bill in New Hampshire that would make a plastics company pay for water remediation. Another bill poised to be signed into law in Vermont gives residents exposed to toxic chemicals the right to sue companies for medical monitoring expenses.

Efforts like these are picking up steam: Environmentalists are joining with firefighters and farmers in some instances to fight for restrictions, and many PFAS-related bills are garnering bipartisan support.

“PFAS contamination is certainly a cross-cutting issue that impacts everyone — rural communities, urban communities, farmers, hunters, indigenous communities — so there’s potential to build a diverse coalition that transcends ideological lines,” said Tricia Rouleau, the farm network director at Maine Farmland Trust.

 

 

So where do chemical companies and their lobbying arms stand on these efforts? It’s a mixed bag. The American Chemistry Council, for instance, opposes the California bill to ban PFAS in cosmetics, but “has supported state legislation to eliminate the use of PFAS in firefighting foams used during training and testing exercises,” the group wrote in a statement.

One thing the ACC, DuPont de Nemours Inc. and 3M Co. all agree on: that the EPA’s process for potentially adding certain PFAS chemicals to the agency’s list of hazardous substances under the Superfund law is unnecessary and inappropriate. Doing so could allow the EPA to force companies liable for excessive PFAS discharges to help pay for the ensuing cleanup.

The EPA is expected to announce a proposed rule in the coming month or two.

 

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