“Forever chemicals” are toxic, they’re everywhere and they don’t break down. The problem can be solved, however, according to health experts and scientists, if the government bans the substances in household products.
On Tuesday, the US Environmental Protection Agency proposed tough limits for six per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in drinking water.
This is the first time that the government has gone to regulate PFASa class of thousands of chemicals used in everything from dental floss and toilet paper to common furniture treatments and food packaging.
PFAS, aka “eternal chemicals”, take many years to leave the human bodywhich is a major problem as they are linked to multiple cancers, thyroid disease, liver damage, decreased fertility, asthma, allergies and reduced vaccine response in children.
Chemicals are prolific in everyday human environments – in our water, our food, our air and even the dust of our homes.
The EPA’s proposal to limit PFAS in drinking water is a step in the right direction, but it addresses only one source of daily exposure.
“I think this is a great first step,” Elsie Sunderland, an environmental chemistry professor who leads environmental contaminants research at Harvard, told Insider.
But we still have a long way to go.
Given the enormity of the problem, the EPA’s drinking water proposal “just doesn’t go far enough,” Carmen Messerlian, professor of environmental reproductive epidemiology at TH Chan School, told Insider. of Public Health from Harvard.
“The government needs to hold these companies strictly accountable to the highest level possible and say, ‘No more PFAS, we ban them,'” said Messerlian, who studies the impacts of PFAS on reproductive health.
The Dangers of PFAS Production
PFAS have been detected in Antarctica, in Arctic sea ice, on Mount Everest, in all oceans and in rainwater and soil across the planet.
While PFAS are linked to a multitude of diseases and conditionschemicals may not cause health problems for everyone, but they increase the risk that some people will.
“There’s probably a lot more impact. We just haven’t been able to do the science to be able to show it,” Messerlian said.
Last year, the EPA assessed published science, to establish a baseline for future regulations: what level of certain PFAS in drinking water would have no health impact, even for people particularly vulnerable?
For PFOA, the agency determined the safe amount in drinking water to be 0.004 parts per trillion (ppt), and for PFOS it was 0.02 ppt.
These are below levels that modern labs can reliably detect. So basically, in the eyes of the EPA, a safe level of these two PFAS chemicals is zero.
Tuesday’s proposed regulations are two orders of magnitude higher than those ideal-world guidelines, at 4 ppt for PFOA and PFOS. This is at least a level at which labs can reliably detect substances, according to the EPA.
Filtration systems can remove these chemicals from drinking water to meet these new rules, but that doesn’t stop all PFAS from entering your body through food, furniture, and clothing.
“You can’t just regulate drinking water, not go to the other side,” Sunderland said, referring to the countless US companies selling PFAS-laden products.
It should be noted that PFOA and PFOS have been phased out of production in the United States since the 2000s. But thousands of other PFAS are still being manufactured. This means that more and more of them are enter the environment – and drinking water – every day.
Ban chemicals forever to “turn off the tap”
The next big step for the US government should be to remove PFAS from household items that don’t need it — especially materials that touch food, experts told Insider.
“Obviously you want to turn off the tap, turn off the tap,” Ian Cousins, an environmental chemist who studies PFAS at Stockholm University, told Insider.
The European Union has already propose a ban of 10,000 PFAS. The cousins said it would make sense to do so in the United States as well, although some “necessary uses” of PFAS may continue, such as in electrical wiring or for medical devices.
Most likely, some PFAS are not toxic, but a precautionary approach would treat them all as dangerous until they can be proven safe.
“In the future, we might start thinking about regulating them as a class,” Sunderland said.
The root of the problem is a fatal flaw in US regulations
Even if the government completely cuts out and cleans up PFAS, it will happen again with other chemicals if we don’t address a larger problem, Sunderland said.
The root of the problem is that US regulations do not require new chemicals to be carefully vetted for safety or human health risks.
Chemical companies are “innocent until proven guilty”, Sunderland said, and the burden of proof lies with communities who sue these companies for health problems they suspect have been caused by new chemical products.
Until this system changes, manufacturers can simply keep inventing new compounds with unknown effects on the human body.
At the very least, Messerlian said, companies should be required to disclose the contents of their products so consumers can make informed decisions.
“Can I stop myself from using anything under the sun that contains PFAS? It would be very, very difficult. Even for someone who is an expert in this field like me,” she said.
“What we need above all is top-down approaches that hold these companies strictly accountable for what they put into our bodies.”
This article was originally published by Business Intern.
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