EWG Proposes PFAS Standards That Fully Protect Children’s Health

In the almost 20 years since water pollution with toxic fluorinated chemicals, or PFAS, erupted as a public health issue, research has found impacts from exposure to ever-lower levels. Yet there are still no national, legally enforceable drinking water standards for any of the hundreds of PFAS compounds currently in use.

Drawing on the best available science and emerging evidence of harm from the entire class of these chemicals,* EWG is proposing drinking water and cleanup standards for all PFAS chemicals as a group. To fully protect the health of children and other especially vulnerable populations, our proposed standards are 70 times lower than the Environmental Protection Agency’s drinking water advisory levels for the two most notorious chemicals in the class, PFOA and PFOS.

Americans are exposed to PFAS in many ways: not only drinking water but also food and food packaging, a wide array of consumer products, household dust and even airborne PFAS fumes. A number of studies predict that food is a major source of exposure to PFAS, but significant uncertainty remains about exactly how people are being exposed. Ultimately, drinking water is a direct source of exposure that can be reduced through regulation, and a standard for drinking water should consider ongoing exposures from food and other sources.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s measurements of PFAS in our bodies, the average American’s combined exposure is equal to drinking water with 14 parts per trillion, or ppt, of PFOA and 36 ppt of PFOS, daily for the past few years. Those exposure levels are 14 times higher and 36 times higher, respectively, than EWG’s recommended standard for all PFAS.

PFOA, formerly used to make DuPont’s Teflon, and PFOS, formerly in 3M’s Scotchgard and firefighting foam, have been phased out in the U.S. under pressure from the EPA, although they remain widespread in drinking water. They have been linked to cancer, birth defects, thyroid disease, weakened childhood immunity and other health problems.

In 2005 and 2009, laboratory tests commissioned by Environmental Working Group,
Commonweal and Rachel’s Network found PFOA, PFOS and other PFAS chemicals in umbilical cord samples from 20 babies born in the U.S. These tests exposed the shocking truth that American babies are born pre-polluted with PFAS and other toxic chemicals, which can pass from mothers to fetuses through the umbilical cord.

In 2016, the EPA issued non-binding drinking water advisory levels for PFOA, PFOS or their combined level, of 70 ppt. The EPA has identified more than 600 chemically similar PFAS compounds in active commercial use but has set no legal limits or health advisories for those chemicals in water, air or consumer products.

The pervasiveness of these chemicals makes it imperative that states not wait on the federal government’s toothless “action plan” for regulating PFAS. To spur more state action and inspire federal leadership, EWG scientists developed health guidelines to apply to the entire group of PFAS chemicals in drinking water; they can also be used as cleanup standards for PFAS in groundwater and at other contaminated sites. The cleanup standard, consistent with the policies of the federal Superfund law, is based on the potential for PFAS chemicals to migrate through groundwater and contaminate drinking water.

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