Why the Trump Administration is delaying limits on some ‘forever chemicals’

By HPN Staff

A federal pullback on PFAS chemical rules has incentivized state legislatures and regulators to press forward with their own regulations, potentially reinforcing an existing patchwork of state-by-state drinking water and other protections.

President Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency announced that it would hold off on drinking water standards that had been decided in the last year of President Joe Biden’s administration.

The Trump EPA said it would delay standards for two chemicals in the PFAS family, pushing a planned 2029 implementation to 2031, and rolling back the Biden-era limits on four other related chemicals.

These chemicals, often collectively referred to as “forever chemicals” because they don’t break down, making them difficult to keep out of drinking water and the environment at large, were already a hotly debated topic in legislatures across the country. However, the federal pullback may spark new action.

The Washington Post reported in August that at least 250 bills have been introduced this year in 36 states.

Why it matters

There are thousands of chemicals in the PFAS family, and studies have connected them to metabolic issues, decreased fertility, developmental delays and increased risks for some cancers.

You can find some version of these chemicals essentially everywhere, including in a majority of drinking water supplies across the country, in animals and likely in your bloodstream.

They’re used in a wide variety of modern products, including nonstick cookware, stain-resistant items and firefighting foam. In the past, they’ve been used in food packaging, though the Food and Drug Administration announced last year that the practice had been eliminated in the United States.

The Biden administration set particularly tight drinking water limits for PFOS and PFOA, which the Trump administration pushed back two years, and issued requirements for four others, including GenX, that the Trump EPA will roll back. GenX became widely known during Trump’s first administration, when it was discovered in North Carolina drinking supplies downstream from a facility that makes the chemical.

The state of Wisconsin issued an advisory this month warning people to limit consumption of fish, ducks and other wildlife they catch in the state because of PFAS contamination. For some lakes, the state recommended not eating any fish at all.

The bigger picture

The administration says it’s holding off on the new standards to “provide regulatory flexibility and holistically address these contaminants in drinking water.”

Among other things, the EPA says rural water systems need more time to comply with new rules, and the Association of State Drinking Water Administrators supported this approach. The group’s executive director says systems had been “struggling with the timeframes.”

The New York Times noted chemical industry trade groups, as well as water utilities, had challenged the rules, saying they amounted to an impossible standard and would cost billions of dollars to implement.

Environmental groups bemoaned the decision, calling it a “clear victory for the trillion-dollar chemical industry, not public health.”

Additional detail

For years, water systems have sued chemical manufacturers to finance expensive upgrades needed to remove PFAS from drinking water, and in 2023, a trio of producers announced a nearly $1.2 billion settlement to resolve suits from systems “that serve the vast majority of the United States population.”