The Trump administration has announced a plan to kill Biden-era drinking water limits on four Pfas “forever chemicals”, and to delay the implementation of standards for two other compounds.
The Environmental Protection Agency is proposing two separate rules to delay and rescind the limits. The rules must go through an approval process that can take several years, and almost certainly will be challenged in court.
The Trump administration’s plan comes just two years after the US Environmental Protection Agency set legally enforceable drinking water limits for six of the most dangerous Pfas compounds that have been studied. The chemicals include some of the most toxic substances, and are linked to a range of cancers and other serious health problems.
The new Trump plan aims to undo or delay those limits, which public health advocates say would put the nation’s health at risk. Pfas are ubiquitous in the environment and estimated to be contaminating drinking water for more than 200 million people across the US.
At the Monday press conference, EPA administrator Lee Zeldin and US health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr announced the new plan.
“The Trump EPA is committed to Make America Healthy Again by ensuring clean air, land, and water – and by taking on Pfas the right way, across the full life cycle and built to last,” Zeldin said in a statement.
PFAS are a class of at least 16,000 compounds most frequently used to make products water-, stain- and grease-resistant. They have been linked to cancer, birth defects, decreased immunity, high cholesterol, kidney disease and a range of other serious health problems. They are dubbed “forever chemicals” because they do not naturally break down in the environment.
Public health advocates in 2024 hailed “historic” limits that would dramatically improve the safety of the nation’s water, and the rules marked the first time in 27 years the EPA had put in place new drinking water limits for contaminants. But the move was fiercely opposed by industry, including those now in leadership positions at the EPA.
EPA officials said in 2024 that the limits would reduce Pfas exposure for 100 million people and help prevent thousands of illnesses, including fewer birth-weight related infant deaths, kidney-cancer deaths, bladder-cancer deaths and deaths from cardiovascular disease.
Public health advocates on Monday condemned the EPA.
“Zeldin and Kennedy are trying to sell potions out of the back of a covered wagon,” said Dr Anna Reade, director of Pfas advocacy at Natural Resources Defense Council. “The millions of Americans demanding safe drinking water are not going to fall for their hocus pocus.”
The move is widely viewed as at odds with Donald Trump’s pledge to eliminate toxic chemicals from drinking water.
Kennedy is a leader of the Make America Healthy Again (Maha) movement, of which eliminating toxic chemicals from food and water is a cornerstone. Maga and Maha have been at odds over the last year as the administration fails to follow through on many of its promises.
Kennedy defended the delay and rescission of the limits at the press conference.
“I’ve read articles in the corporate media that say we’re trying to roll back Pfas protections, but that’s not true,” Kennedy said. He said the administration was putting in place a “clean water mandate”.
The agency in 2024 under Biden set limits of 10 parts per trillion (ppt) for any combination of three Pfas compounds, including PFNA, PfHxS, and HFPO dimer acid, more commonly called GenX. For any combination of those three compounds and PFBS, the agency set a variable limit.
The administration is proposing new rules to rescind those limits and alleged that Biden’s EPA did not follow the correct legal process, moved too quickly in developing the limits, and that the limits would not survive a court challenge. The Trump EPA will “redo” the process to determine if limits should be set for the four chemicals, which Kennedy alleged would save time by avoiding litigation.
EPA science showed that no level of exposure to PFOA and PFOS in drinking water is safe, and the agency in 2022 set non-enforceable advisory health limits of 0.02 ppt and 0.004 ppt, respectively.
The Biden administration in 2024 set drinking water limits of four ppt for the two compounds, in part because that is the level at which technology can reliably detect them. The EPA said it would give utilities two extra years, until 2031, to comply with the standards.
