Forever Chemicals

From popcorn bags to waterproof clothing, your clients have been exposed to forever chemicals, and so have you — for years. Two weeks ago, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced it will designate the two most commonly detected toxic “forever chemicals,” which have not only been linked to cancer, but have also been found in everything from drinking water to furniture, as hazardous substances under Superfund regulations.

The proposed rule is one of the most significant actions the EPA has ever taken on perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl compounds (known commonly as PFAS). The EPA now requires companies to assess and report to the government when these chemicals seep into water or soil, a big step in finally making the offending companies responsible for any cleanup costs. This is a big deal.

Forever chemicals, as the name suggests, take a long time to break down. They bleed into water and soil, eventually finding their way into the blood of people and animals. New research suggests the substances are far more dangerous to human health than previously thought, with links to heart issues, cancers, and immune problems.

“Communities have suffered far too long from exposure to these forever chemicals,” EPA administrator Michael Regan said in a statement. The new rule will “both help protect communities from PFAS pollution and seek to hold polluters accountable for their actions.” The EPA may also regulate other PFAS chemicals in the future, saying it will issue a notice of advanced rulemaking later this year to invite comments about designating other compounds as hazardous.

Activists have praised the new designation, but Republicans have expressed concerns that it unfairly burdens manufacturers and businesses because of the high number of products PFAS are found in. It’s kind of like thinking: Well, there are just too many potential problems here, so let’s just not think about it at all. It’s messy. And it is messy — as in extremely dangerous for people. In fact, earlier this year, the EPA found there is NO safe level of these chemicals, lowering the health risk thresholds close to zero, replacing 2016 guidelines that had set them at 70 parts per trillion.

“I am concerned about the uncertainty and unintended consequences that the FDA proposal could have,” said Shelley Moore Capito, a Senator from West Virginia and the leading Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, which oversees the EPA. She called on the agency to prioritize technology that can remove and destroy the compounds rather than put the pressure on manufacturers. FDA officials said the reporting requirements will give the federal government “improved data and the option to require cleanups and recover cleanup costs to protect public health and encourage better waste management.”

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce reacted to the proposed rule, issuing a statement saying it and a coalition of more than a dozen trade groups representing clothing and footwear manufacturers, oil companies and the paper and packing industries oppose the rule. “It would slow current cleanups, impose significant liability and compliance costs, and lead to unintended consequences, without effectively addressing the challenges presented by PFAS,” the Chamber said.

Environmental activists said the regulation is overdue. Mark Ruffalo, the Hulk actor turned activist, issued a statement saying the move will hold chemical polluters accountable. “We have all paid for decades — in the forms of higher health care costs and higher drinking water bills — for one of the greatest environmental crimes in history,” he said. He neglected to mention the deaths from cancer, heart issues, or other immune problems that PFAS can solve, but that too is messy.

There is, however, a potential answer to the PFAS health problem that both sides could like. There is a newly discovered chemical process that can break down some forever chemicals into harmless component parts, just using inexpensive and common products. The new research, published last month in the journal Science, is a big step forward in understanding how these compounds react. Using just a little bit of heat and supplies that can be found in a high school chemistry lab (sodium hydroxide, lye, and a solvent called DMSO), the researchers were able to take one type of concentrated PFAS and break it up into smaller, non-toxic compounds. The lab chemicals were heated together with the PFAS to between 176 and 248 Fahrenheit, and after four hours, nearly 80 percent of the PFAS was gone. After 12 hours, more than 90 percent of it disappeared — replaced by benign carbon byproducts like oxalate, which is in many of the vegetables we eat, or glycolic acid, which is commonly used in skincare products.

As much as we might want it to be true, this simple technique is not yet a silver bullet answer. The method only works on some PFAS. There are over 5,000 unique PFAS compounds out there, two of the biggest classes are known as either carboxylates or sulfonates. This new method successfully got rid of almost all of the carboxylates in a solution, but it doesn’t work for the sulfonates, or any of the other PFAS for that matter. 

“For now, this is not a general solution,” said William Dichtel, a chemist at Northwestern and one of the researchers. “The biggest gap in what we have today versus what is needed is that we really would like to degrade sulfonates, as well.” And it’s not as if the researchers can dump lye and DMSO into our water supply to get rid of PFAS there. “That would really not be good either.” Nothing like a scientist with a good sense of humor. The way I see it is that this while this move by the EPA is not universally applauded, anything that keeps humans, animals, and our planet safer is worth striving for. What say you?