This article was originally published by Grist. The weekly Grist newsletter you can subscribe here.
The Trump administration has announced what it calls “a significant step forward” in the fight against a class of toxic chemicals called PFAS – short for per- and polyfluorinated alkyl compounds. Prolonged exposure to PFAS, often referred to as “forever chemicals” because they can persist indefinitely in the environment, has been linked to various cancers, autoimmune diseases and other health effects.
Last week, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. praised Donald Trump as the first president “fully committed” to eliminating forever chemicals – substances that have been detected at concerning levels in the tap water of about 80 percent of all congressional districts and are found in the blood of 97 percent of Americans.
What Kennedy sees as progress looks like a significant step backwards to most experts who have been following the issue for years. The Trump administration is repealing key parts of the PFAS limits that Joe Biden’s administration passed in 2024 – the first and so far only regulations in the country’s history that limit PFAS in drinking water. Restrictions on four substances in the PFAS class will be completely lifted, while water utilities will be given two additional years to comply with limits on two additional substances. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) signaled its intention to make these changes last year, a few months after Trump took office. The changes will take effect after a 60-day public comment period.
Kennedy’s questionable praise
Secretary Kennedy, known for his promise to Make America Healthy Again, instead focused attention on the EPA’s recent announcement of $1 billion in funding for small and disadvantaged communities to detect and clean up PFAS. “We have a president who has made a greater financial commitment than any other president in U.S. history,” Kennedy said. However, it wasn’t really Trump’s doing: The billion comes from a budget item that Congress approved in 2021 – when Joe Biden was president.
PFAS have been used for decades in a variety of products, including industrial firefighting foams. In light of growing evidence of the health harm caused by these substances, many manufacturers have developed new types of PFAS that last comparatively shorter periods of time in the environment. But this new generation of chemicals, which includes thousands of compounds, can also be harmful to health.
“The Biden administration had set health-protective limits for at least six of these chemicals, out of literally thousands approved for market use,” said John Rumpler, director of clean water at the environmental nonprofit Environment America. “Now the EPA is reversing even this small step to protect our drinking water.”
Withdrawal for flimsy reasons
The week before last, the administration tried to justify the planned rollbacks by saying that the Biden-era PFAS limits were rushed through, leaving them vulnerable to ongoing lawsuits. Water utilities and chemical companies have sued the EPA over its PFAS rules, arguing the rules are procedurally flawed, financially burdensome and set too tight a deadline.
But the EPA has undermined the limits themselves since Trump took office last year: In the fall, it asked a federal appeals court to summarily overturn the Biden time limits on four types of PFAS. Since then, the EPA has stopped defending the standards in court.
“It’s about being realistic,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said at a joint event with Kennedy last Monday. “A deadline that you physically cannot meet is not a protection of public health.” He noted that technology to remove the chemicals is evolving and costs for utilities that have to filter PFAS from tap water could fall in the long term.
Industry prevails
In a statement to Grist, the EPA said “the previous administration’s rule set deadlines that many water utilities simply could not meet – risking costly violations that penalize communities without removing a single part per trillion from any faucet.”
The EPA has so far been unable to offer a regulatory replacement for the abolished limits. “I don’t see anything new here,” said Jared Thompson, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group that is among the groups defending the Biden-era limits in ongoing lawsuits by chemical companies.
“It appears that they have largely adopted the positions of challengers from the chemical and water sectors who claim that these standards are not adequate,” he added.
Legal challenges are looming
Zeldin assured that the EPA will “get it right” this time, and the EPA statement to Grist said it is “quite possible that the result will be more stringent requirements” once the four PFAS substances whose limits are being lifted are reviewed a second time.
But some independent experts are convinced that Zeldin is already doing it wrong. The Safe Drinking Water Act, which Congress passed in 1974, contains a provision that once established, the EPA cannot weaken drinking water standards.
“There will be legal challenges,” said Richard L. Revesz, dean emeritus of the New York University School of Law and former head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs under Biden. “The authority will have to provide justifications – and these will most likely not hold up.”
Editor’s note: The Natural Resources Defense Council is a Grist advertiser. Advertisers have no influence on Grist’s editorial decisions.
______________________________________________________________
Why does Campino think that sometimes it’s good to just keep your mouth shut? Why does he sometimes feel like a drinks delivery man? He provides the answer in our cover story about the Toten Hosen’s big farewell, exclusively in issue 06/26. And that’s not all: the magazine includes the world exclusive 7-inch single “Always just loved” – on which Sven Regener from Element of Crime also contributed. You can easily order the ROLLING STONE edition here.