Washington – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) outlined a national plan Thursday to deal with public health risks of pollution caused by a family of chemicals used in many household products, including those produced by Minnesota-based 3M Co.
Acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler told reporters Thursday that the EPA initiative is moving toward classifying PFAS as a hazardous substance under the EPA’s Superfund program, allowing the EPA to clean up sites and force polluters to pay.
Environmental and consumer groups said the EPA’s plan doesn’t go far enough.
They quickly challenged Wheeler’s decision not to push immediately for a national standard or other measures that will to lower allowable amounts of PFAS in drinking and groundwater.
No mandatory national standard exists for allowable levels of PFAS, only a federal advisory level.
Wheeler said Thursday that EPA feels "70 parts per trillion is a safe level for drinking water."
But Minnesota’s limits, like the federal limits, are "advisory rules, not regulatory standards, " said Jim Kelly, the state’s manager of environmental surveillance and assessments.
Wheeler said EPA will recommend mandatory PFAS toxicity standards by the end of the year but could not say how long the process of approval and implementation would take.
PFAS were discovered in drinking water in eastern Twin Cities in 2004.
"We’re ahead of most states already," said the MPCA’s Smith.

Analysis shows Hispanic communities are disproportionately exposed More than 5.6 million Americans are potentially exposed to nitrate in drinking water at levels that could cause health problems, according to a new study.
In this first analysis of its kind, researchers found that water systems with higher nitrate levels also tend to serve communities with higher proportions of Hispanic residents.
"Because at the end of the day, everyone should have access to clean and safe drinking water regardless of your race or where you live."
Nitrate is a drinking water contaminant that can originate from multiple sources including fertilizers, sewage treatment systems, and animal manure.
Using information obtained from state agencies and online databases, Schaider and her colleagues at Silent Spring Institute and Environmental Working Group (EWG) compiled nitrate data for 39,466 public water systems serving more than 70 percent of the U.S. population.
That level is set in order to protect infants from a potentially fatal condition known as "blue baby syndrome," a decrease in the ability of blood to carry oxygen around the body.
"Nitrate is also a good marker for the presence of other contaminants in drinking water," says Schaider.
They also looked at agricultural data including the percent of land used for growing crops and the amount of livestock, since agriculture is a major source of nitrate pollution.
In other words, despite the fact that a large percentage of farmworkers are Hispanic, living in an area with lots of farms is not the only underlying factor, suggesting that other influences are contributing to higher exposures as well.
Living close to other sources of nitrate pollution such as a sewage treatment plant is one potential risk factor, she says.

According to the report, the contamination in drinking water is commonly tested when the herbicide is not in use A new report from the Environmental Working Group (EWG) found that nearly 30 million Americans in 28 states have some level of atrazine in their tap water, the second most widely used weed killer in the U.S.
The report found that 472 water utility systems in Texas tested positive in at least one detection for the chemical, according to the Texas Tribune.
EWG compared 2017 federal testing data collected at utilities in seven states with levels reported to state authorities over the same period of time.
The group concluded that for 70% of utilities analyzed tests were conducted outside periods of the atrazine spikes or reported levels below what U.S. EPA tests found.
Based off of this date, the group found that water utilities are testing for atrazine at times when farmers are not using the chemical, in order to receive results within compliance with federal regulations.
According to EWG, EPA’s limit for atrazine in drinking water is 3 ppb, however, EPA data for 2017 shows that water utilities in Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky and Ohio had atrazine spikes much higher than the federal legal limit for the chemical.
The two highest spikes were in Evansville, Ill., at 22 ppb, and Piqua, Ohio, at 16 ppb.
However, the Safe Drinking Water Act allos utilities to report only annual averages.

Newark’s drinking water contains illegal levels of a group of carcinogenic contaminants and is in violation of a federal standard, the Star-Ledger reports.
State records cited by the outlet show that Newark’s water, which is consumed by at least 500,000 people, is contaminated with excess levels of haloacetic acids, which have been linked to bladder cancer in humans and liver cancer in animals.
This isn’t the first time Newark has faced a water problem: The state is already under scrutiny for elevated levels of lead in the drinking water supply, and the city was also issued violations for haloacetic acid levels between 2003 and 2005.
Newark’s deputy director of water and sewer utilities told NJ.com that the current acid levels are not an acute public-health emergency, and that the city is working to resolve the issue.
If there was an emergency, he said, the public would have been notified in early October, when the violation was first issued.
A senior scientist for Environmental Working Group disagreed with the decision to withhold this information from the public: “If I was a consumer, I would probably want to know as soon as possible,” she said.

(Photo: Business Wire) The seeping of chemical contaminants into drinking water has grown at an alarming rate.
Making recent headlines are perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyls, known as PFAS chemicals.
PFAS’s are often a result of run-off from military bases, civilian airports, industrial plants, and fire training sites.
Yet water filters available on the market are not always effective.
No single technology addresses all contaminants that may be present.
What is required, is a hybrid approach incorporating multiple filtration technologies to address the widest possible range of contaminants.
This provides the highest proof of performance and provides consumers an effective means of comparing one filter to another.
Many contaminants are odorless and colorless.
With PFAS contamination an EPA priority, a wide-range, high-quality certified filter is well worth your health and the health of your family.
Its technology has been widely utilized by hospitals, major universities, laboratories, restaurants, foreign embassies, and millions of consumers.

View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180910005163/en/ Zachary Rice, President of Carbon Block Technology (CB TECH) a leader in the water filter manufacturing industry worldwide.
(Photo: Business Wire) The seeping of chemical contaminants into drinking water has grown at an alarming rate.
PFAS’s are often a result of run-off from military bases, civilian airports, industrial plants, and fire training sites.
Yet water filters available on the market are not always effective.
No single technology addresses all contaminants that may be present.
What is required, is a hybrid approach incorporating multiple filtration technologies to address the widest possible range of contaminants.
This provides the highest proof of performance and provides consumers an effective means of comparing one filter to another.
Many contaminants are odorless and colorless.
With PFAS contamination an EPA priority, a wide-range, high-quality certified filter is well worth your health and the health of your family.
Its technology has been widely utilized by hospitals, major universities, laboratories, restaurants, foreign embassies, and millions of consumers.

Zachary Rice, President of Carbon Block Technology (CB TECH) a leader in the water filter manufacturing industry worldwide.
(Photo: Business Wire) The seeping of chemical contaminants into drinking water has grown at an alarming rate.
Making recent headlines are perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyls, known as PFAS chemicals.
PFAS’s are often a result of run-off from military bases, civilian airports, industrial plants, and fire training sites.
Yet water filters available on the market are not always effective.
No single technology addresses all contaminants that may be present.
What is required, is a hybrid approach incorporating multiple filtration technologies to address the widest possible range of contaminants.
A high-performance carbon block filter independently certified for the removal or reduction of the widest array of contaminants is most effective.
This provides the highest proof of performance and provides consumers an effective means of comparing one filter to another.
With PFAS contamination an EPA priority, a wide-range, high-quality certified filter is well worth your health and the health of your family.

The US Environmental Protection Agency has known for decades it could have a PFAS problem on its hands, and now hundreds of communities across the US are finding the chemicals in their water.
That’s just one case; Department of Defense and Northeastern University data tally 172 known contaminated sites, and those numbers do not account for contaminated public water systems, which the Environmental Working Group estimates could add up to over 1,500 additional sites.
And they are likely contaminating the water supplies of tens of millions of people in the US.
PFAS contamination cases outside the US—particularly in Australia—are also beginning to emerge.
The health risks of PFAS exposure At this point, most people in the US have been exposed to chemicals in the PFAS family.
The compounds leach into the water supply from sites where PFAS industries dumped their manufacturing waste, or where firefighting foam is allowed to seep into the ground.
For example, Sharon Lerner at the Intercept recently reported that 3M, makers of Scotchguard and firefighting foam made from PFOS and PFOA, knew by the 1970s that the compounds were harmful to people’s health and accumulating in people’s blood, and yet continued manufacturing the compounds and withheld the information from the US Environmental Protection Agency until turning over documents and ceasing production in 2000.
Why isn’t the government doing anything about PFAS?
This year, in January, EPA and White House staffers attempted to block publication of a US Department of Health and Human Services study that showed PFAS could harm human health at exposure levels far below EPA’s current recommended thresholds.
Water supplies near at least 126 military bases across the US have been found to be highly contaminated with PFAS.

Based on information from state health agencies, testing labs, scientific researchers and water filter companies, the most effective choice for in-home treatment of PFAS-tainted tap water is a reverse osmosis filter, followed by an activated carbon filter—a slightly lower-cost option.
Some of these states have issued recommendations for water filters to remove PFOA and PFOS, including: Guidance and factsheet documents from these states recommend two types of filters for removing PFAS chemicals: activated carbon and reverse osmosis.
However, drinking water can contain other PFAS chemicals, sometimes at higher levels than PFOS and PFOA.
Filter Testing by State Agencies In 2007, the Minnesota Department of Health commissioned testing of home water filters to determine their efficacy in removing PFAS.
Six activated carbon filters and eight reverse osmosis filter types were tested.
These filters that were tested for removal of a dozen PFAS chemicals, including both long-chain and short-chain compounds.
The four reverse osmosis systems also removed between 95 and 99 percent of short-chain compounds.
Only Berkey provided EWG with test data for their carbon filters, which reported removal of nine PFAS chemicals, including PFOA and PFOS, all below the detection limit of 2 ppt.
Reverse osmosis systems remove a wider range of other contaminants from drinking water and their effectiveness can be tested at home using an electrical conductivity meter.
You can also consider an activated carbon filter that will most often provide effective removal.

Five years after Beaver Falls Municipal Authority — a water utility that serves 50,000 Pennsylvanians — discovered elevated levels of a likely human carcinogen, the utility has not taken steps to address the problem, a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette review of water records shows.
Although the utility was aware of these high levels, it did not warn residents of the potential dangers of drinking its water or take steps to reduce dioxane levels, according to multiple employees.
The utility has not tested for dioxane since then — and it has accumulated numerous other water testing violations in recent years.
In 2013 and 2014, Beaver Falls Municipal Authority was one of several water utilities required to test for the unregulated contaminant 1,4-dioxane.
*The Beaver Falls Municipal Authority average was taken from 2013 and 2014 test results.
In 2013, the EPA required all large water utilities — systems serving more than 10,000 people — to test for this substance.
Beaver Falls included the dioxane results in its 2013 drinking water quality report, but did not inform residents that the elevated levels of the chemicals could increase their risk of cancer and other health problems or tell them what the EPA’s dioxane advisory level is.
Because dioxane is “unregulated” — and, as a result, Beaver Falls’ high dioxane level did not constitute an EPA violation — the water authority didn’t have to.
Both Ms. Price, who worked at the plant in 2013, and Mr. Riggio said Mr. Stevenson never spoke to them about the high dioxane result or expressed concerns about the health problems the chemical can cause.
Under Mr. Stevenson’s leadership, the plant did not test for dioxane after 2013 and 2014 — the only years the EPA mandated testing — according to Beaver Falls water testing data, even though water utilities typically have to continue monitoring unregulated contaminants that water tests find in high quantities, according to Ms. Price.