The U.S. EPA’s most up-to-date progress report on PFAS actions highlights a 12 months of great new regulatory and analysis updates, a few of which can proceed to have long-term impacts on the waste and recycling trade.
The third annual progress report compiles 2024 updates associated to laws, analysis and different actions to curb well being and security impacts of the chemical substances. It is available in the previous couple of months of President Joe Biden’s administration, which in 2021 created its PFAS Strategic Roadmap meant as a grasp to-do checklist “to confront PFAS contamination head on,” in line with the report.
The Biden administration has “taken unprecedented steps to develop the science, implement sturdy requirements, and make investments billions into options to guard all Individuals from these perpetually chemical substances,” stated EPA Administrator Michael Regan in a assertion. But the brand new report maintains that per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances are an “pressing risk,” and it requires extra work to be executed to check and regulate such chemical substances.
Listed here are the highest takeaways from the progress report and the way EPA actions affected the trade this 12 months:
The regulatory panorama continues to be evolving after notable EPA choices
The EPA stated holding polluters accountable was a significant a part of its work in 2024. That features finalizing a brand new rule to designate PFOS and PFOA as hazardous substances beneath the Complete Environmental Response, Compensation, and Legal responsibility Act, often known as CERCLA or Superfund.
The EPA, together with some environmental teams, have stated the long-awaited transfer has given the company “crucial instruments to enhance transparency and accountability for PFAS cleanups.” However the hazardous designation has lengthy involved the waste trade. It says the brand new rule may trigger unintended legal responsibility penalties for his or her amenities since they contemplate themselves “passive receivers” of PFAS-containing materials, not polluters themselves.
The EPA has stated it doesn’t intend to pursue municipal landfills, farms “the place biosolids are utilized to the land” or water utilities in its enforcement technique. The Nationwide Waste & Recycling Affiliation, together with the Recycled Supplies Affiliation, the American Chemistry Council, the American Forest & Paper Affiliation and others, have requested a federal courtroom to evaluation the rule. Oral arguments haven’t been set for the case, however a sequence of briefing schedule deadlines are set all through the spring of 2025.
In the meantime, the trade is usually supportive of the opposite main EPA regulation finalized this 12 months: the primary legally enforceable consuming water requirements for sure PFAS. Within the report, the company says it expects the consuming water requirements will “scale back PFAS publicity for about 100 million folks, stop 1000’s of deaths, and scale back tens of 1000’s of significant diseases.” Waste facility operators anticipate such requirements will affect how they strategy leachate administration, monitor groundwater and work together with wastewater remedy amenities.
Within the coming months, the EPA says it additionally expects to suggest Effluent Limitations Tips for the PFAS manufacturing sector, and plans to observe up with comparable pointers for metallic finishers and landfills, the company stated. These pointers are supposed to curb “a number of the largest sources of PFAS discharges to waterways,” it stated.
In January, the company finalized exams to detect 40 sorts of PFAS in landfill leachate, biosolids, wastewater floor water and groundwater. The EPA expects to quickly suggest a rule that may require PFAS knowledge from such exams to be reported as a part of Clear Water Act allow functions, in line with the report.
Holding PFAS out of latest merchandise may assist ease future PFAS administration efforts
Holding PFAS from getting into the surroundings via merchandise, packaging and chemical substances is one other objective of the EPA’s technique. It’s a philosophy some within the waste trade say is necessary to forestall extra PFAS-containing objects from getting into landfills, recycling facilities and water remedy amenities.
In 2024, the EPA finalized a rule to forestall inactive PFAS from reentering commerce, which is supposed to cease corporations from “beginning or resuming the manufacture or processing” of 329 kinds of PFAS “that haven’t been made or used for a few years.” Such corporations that need to use one of many named PFAS should bear an EPA evaluation and threat willpower, the company stated.
The company says it has additionally targeted on authorities buying methods. The company labored with the Common Providers Administration to minimize PFAS from authorities custodial contracts. This 12 months, the EPA additionally up to date its Safer Selection program to point that PFAS should not be deliberately added to Safer Selection-certified merchandise. This commonplace signifies merchandise and packaging which have met sure well being and environmental standards.
This spring, the EPA additionally up to date its steering on easy methods to handle destruction and disposal of current PFAS-containing waste streams. The brand new steering confirmed that landfills launch extra PFAS to the surroundings than beforehand thought.
Although the waste trade doesn’t contemplate the doc to be the ultimate phrase on PFAS administration, it provides up to date analysis on the three most “widely-used, commercially out there” strategies: landfilling, thermal remedy and deep nicely injection. The rising PFAS administration trade has additionally pointed to the doc as a useful manner for waste facility operators to navigate choices when planning for mitigation initiatives.
Some within the waste trade, particularly these with hazardous waste incinerators, are additionally trying into whether or not they can meet a more recent, extra stringent EPA testing commonplace for PFAS destruction often known as OTM-50.
Extra PFAS analysis is ongoing, however questions stay for the brand new administration
The EPA beneath the Biden administration has harassed that extra analysis have to be executed to grasp each facet of PFAS, from its well being and environmental impacts to one of the best strategies for destroying or managing the chemical substances.
Although the PFAS Strategic Roadmap solely covers exercise from 2021 to 2024, the company stated in an announcement that it has “an ongoing and rigorous analysis agenda” deliberate.
That features accumulating extra knowledge on PFAS “that can enhance scientific understanding of this massive and numerous class of chemical substances.” The EPA has additionally beforehand known as for extra analysis into how PFAS are migrating from landfills into the surroundings.
President-elect Donald Trump’s administration may change the federal authorities’s strategy to those chemical substances. The EPA beneath his administration in 2019 had its personal PFAS motion plan, which known as for establishing extra analysis and technical help for addressing PFAS as a public well being concern and known as for “understanding PFAS toxicity to develop suggestions and requirements.”
Andrew Wheeler, the latest EPA administrator of the earlier Trump administration, has stated his administration was instrumental in “shifting ahead” with a number of PFAS-related regulatory steps. However present EPA Administrator Regan touted newer strikes from the final 4 years. “Earlier than President Biden took workplace, the federal authorities wasn’t doing sufficient to deal with PFAS air pollution throughout the nation,” he stated in an announcement.
The trade is ready to see how Lee Zeldin, Trump’s decide for EPA administrator, will strategy key points together with PFAS. When he was in Congress, Zeldin did vote in favor of a number of PFAS regulation payments, together with a 2021 invoice that may have positioned some per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances beneath a Nationwide Consuming Water Customary.