The Trump administration announced Wednesday that the administration plans to cancel and postpone rules aimed at reducing the nation’s “forever chemicals” polluting drinking water.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), exposure to PFA is a highly toxic, long-lasting compound, also known as "forever chemicals" - associated with cancer, reduced fertility in women, developmental effects in children, immune system problems, natural hormones that interfere with the body, and more. It is estimated that at least 45% of U.S. tap water has one or more types of PFA.
Last year, former President Joe Biden set an all-time limit on PFAS, requiring water utilities to start reducing contamination levels in six PFAS chemicals while simultaneously restricting each 10 trillion parts for two of them, PFOA and PFOS.
Despite the pthora of research warning against the dangers of forever chemicals in water, the EPA said that while it will uphold the limits for those two types of PFAS, it will extend a deadline requiring water utilities to meet those limits to 2031. The EPA also said it plans to eliminate and reconsider the limits for the other four chemicals — PFHxS, PFNA, HFPO-DA, and PFBS — listed.
“We are following the agency’s national standards to protect Americans from PFOA and PFO waters,” EPA administrator Lee Zeldin said in a statement. “At the same time, we will work to provide common sense flexibility in the form of additional time. This will support water systems across the country, including small systems in rural communities as they work to address these pollutants.”
President Donald Trump and his allies have escalated attacks on clean water protection measures. Through EPA relaxation and cuts, Supreme Court rulings, enforcement orders and Congressional bills, Trump and conservatives are systematically eroding rules designed to provide Americans with clean, healthy water.
Zeldin said he hopes to significantly reduce most waterways, such as wetlands, rivers and streams, protected by the Clean Water Act, a 1972 law that regulates the emission of pollutants in water.
Trump's Office of Management and Budget respectively withdraws proposed EPA rules in January to set restrictions on permanent chemical emissions in wastewater. The president's administration has frozen all ongoing regulations in a day one executive order, pending review.
“This deregulation agenda, this agenda, allows the federal government to rule the federal government, remove the federal government, eliminate the core functions of the government, eliminate these protections, is just an ideology,” Mary Grant Rolling stones. “And they don’t care how it affects it and how it affects our chances of accessing safe water.”