The Trump administration has announced what it calls a “major step forward” in the fight against toxic chemicals. PFASor perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances. PFAS are also called “permanent chemicals” because they can remain in the environment forever, and long-term exposure to PFAS has been linked to a variety of cancers, autoimmune diseases, and other harms.
On Monday, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. praised President Trump as the first president “fully committed” to permanently eliminating the chemical, which is found at dangerous levels in the tap water of nearly 80 percent of Congressional districts and lurks in the blood of 97 percent of Americans.
But what President Kennedy sees as progress looks like a huge step backwards to most people who have been paying attention to this issue for years. That’s because the Trump administration is figuring out key parts of the issue. The PFAS limits approved by the Biden administration in 2024 will be the first and only regulations in this country’s history to place limits on PFAS in drinking water. Restrictions on four substances in the PFAS class would be completely rescinded, while water utilities would have an additional two years to comply with limits on two other substances. The Environmental Protection Agency first signaled its intention to make these changes last year, just months after President Trump took office. Changes will be finalized after a 60-day public comment period.
Secretary Kennedy, known for his pledge to “make America healthy again,” instead noted that the EPA announced $1 billion in grants to small, disadvantaged communities to find and eliminate PFAS. “We have a president who has given more money than any other president in the history of the United States,” Kennedy said. But this promise wasn’t exactly something President Trump should have made. The $1 billion was spent by Congress in 2021 when Joe Biden was president.
PFAS have been used in a variety of products, including industrial firefighting foam, for decades. As evidence of health hazards associated with these substances increases, many manufacturers have developed new types of PFAS with relatively short lifetimes. However, this new generation of chemicals contains thousands of chemicals that can also cause adverse health effects.
“The Biden administration had established health protection standards for at least six of the literally thousands of chemicals registered for use on the market,” said John Rampler, director of clean water at the environmental advocacy nonprofit Environment America. “Now the EPA is backing away from small steps to protect drinking water.”
On Monday, the administration sought to rationalize the proposal rollback, saying the Biden administration-era PFAS limits were approved in haste, potentially leaving them vulnerable to ongoing legal challenges. Water utilities and chemical companies are suing the EPA, saying the PFAS rule is procedurally flawed, financially burdensome and requires compliance on too tight a schedule.
But the Trump administration’s EPA itself has sought to undermine those limits since Trump took office last year, asking a federal appeals court last fall to immediately invalidate Biden-era limits on four types of PFAS. EPA has since stopped defending its standards in court.
“It’s important to be realistic about this,” Zeldin said Monday at an event with Kennedy. “A deadline that cannot be physically met does not protect public health,” he said, pointing to the fact that technology that can remove chemicals is advancing and could ultimately lower costs for utilities burdened by the cost of removing PFAS from tap water.
In a statement provided to Grist, the EPA said, “The previous administration’s rules set deadlines that many water systems cannot meet, leaving them at risk of costly violations that punish communities without removing every trillionth of a trillionth from anyone’s taps.”
So far, EPA has provided few regulatory alternatives to the restrictions it is eliminating. “I don’t think there’s anything new here,” said Jared Thompson, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group. The council is one of several groups defending the Biden-era restrictions in an ongoing lawsuit brought by chemical companies.
“They seem to be primarily adopting the position of the chemical industry challengers and the water industry challengers who argue that these standards are not appropriate,” he added.
Zeldin insisted that the EPA intends to “do it right” this time, and the agency’s statement to Grist said that a second review of the four PFAS substances whose limits have been rescinded “could well result in more stringent requirements.”
But some outside experts believe Mr. Zeldin has already done something wrong. The Safe Drinking Water Act, passed by Congress in 1974, has a provision that says drinking water standards cannot be relaxed once the EPA sets them.
“There will be legal challenges,” said Richard L. Revesz, dean emeritus of New York University’s law school and former director of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs under the Biden administration. “They have to give a reason, but that reason is very likely to be insufficient.”
Editor’s note: Natural Resources Defense Council is a Grist advertiser. Advertisers have no role in Grist’s editorial decisions.
