EPA Administrator Regan Announces Comprehensive National Strategy to Confront PFAS Pollution
The U.S. EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan announced the agency’s comprehensive Strategic Roadmap to mitigate per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) contamination nationwide.
The Roadmap comes after a thorough analysis conducted by the EPA Council on PFAS, which Administrator Regan established in Apr. 2021, reported EPA in a news release.
According to EPA, the Roadmap is centered on three strategies: Increasing investments in research; leveraging authorities to take action now to restrict PFAS chemicals from being released into the environment; and accelerating the cleanup of PFAS contamination.
“For far too long, families across America – especially those in underserved communities – have suffered from PFAS in their water, their air, or in the land their children play on,” said EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan in the EPA news release. “This comprehensive, national PFAS strategy will deliver protections to people who are hurting, by advancing bold and concrete actions that address the full lifecycle of these chemicals. Let there be no doubt that EPA is listening, we have your back, and we are laser focused on protecting people from pollution and holding polluters accountable.”
The Roadmap encompasses:
- Aggressive timelines to set enforceable drinking water limits under the Safe Drinking Water Act;
- A hazardous substance designation under CERCLA, to strengthen the ability to hold polluters financially accountable;
- Timelines for action on Effluent Guideline Limitations under the Clean Water Act for nine industrial categories;
- A review of past actions on PFAS taken under the Toxic Substances Control Act;
- Increased monitoring, data collection and research;
- A final toxicity assessment for GenX; And
- Continued efforts to build the technical foundation needed on PFAS air emissions to inform future actions under the Clean Air Act.
The Strategic Roadmap aims to bolster the agency’s mission to protect public health and the environment. Alongside the release of the Roadmap, the agency is announcing a new national testing strategy that requires PFAS manufacturers to provide the agency with toxicity data and information on categories of PFAS chemicals, reported EPA.
The Roadmap's approach will: consider the lifecycle of PFAS; hold polluters accountable; prioritize protection of disadvantaged communities; and ensuring science-based decision making.
The PFAS to be tested will be selected based on an approach that breaks the large number of PFAS into smaller categories based on similar features and existing data available for each category. EPA’s initial set of test orders for PFAS will be selected from more than 20 different categories of PFAS, added EPA. This set of orders will provide the agency with information on more than 2,000 other similar PFAS.
