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The Environmental Protection Agency announced Wednesday that the “forever chemicals” found in drinking water are more dangerous than previously assumed and slashed the levels of what is considered to be safe consumption.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the announcement came a day after the Biden administration announced that it will spend $1 billion to address chemicals known as perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances.
The EPA issued nonbinding health advisories that set health risk thresholds for PFOA and PFOS to near zero. In 2016, the guidelines were set at 70 parts per trillion.
The agency did not announce any new enforcement measures and the advisory was simply intended to give state agencies more information about drinking water contamination. The chemicals are believed to be in drinking water for more than 200 million people in the U.S.
Public health advocates praised the EPA’s move, but The Guardian pointed out that the agency is just focused on four of the nealy 9,000 PFAS compounds, and they called on the EPA to regulate the entire chemical class.
“There’s no safe level for PFAS and science is telling us they don’t belong in our tap water,” Emily Donovan, director of the Clean Cape Fear advocacy group, told the newspaper. “There are still thousands of other PFAS out there. It’s time to regulate these ‘forever chemicals’ as a class and set an enforceable [limit] at 1 ppt.”
The paper said the new limits may have “significant financial consequences” for polluters that include the U.S military, 3M, DuPont, and Chemours.
The American Chemistry Council industry group—whose members include 3M and DuPont—accused the EPA of rushing the notices, Reuters reported. The agency is accused of not waiting for a review by the agency’s Science Advisory Board.
The group, according to the report, said it is concerned that the process for developing the advisories was “fundamentally flawed.”
The chemicals are not regulated so municipalities are not required to test for them in their systems. Scott Faber, the senior vice president of the Environmental Working Group, said there are nearly 2,000 public water supplies in the U.S. that have some level of PFOS and PFOA.
“This will set off alarm bells for consumers, for regulators, and for manufacturers, who thought the previous (advisories) were safe. I can’t find the words to explain what kind of moment this is…The number of people drinking what are, according to these new numbers, unsafe levels of PFAS, is going to grow astronomically.”
TRENDPOST: The Trends Journal has reported extensively on these forever chemicals and the negative impact they have on the public’s health. But these chemicals, which could impact the health of millions of Americans, don’t get nearly the attention that COVID-19 received. (See “DEADLY ‘FOREVER CHEMICALS’ IN U.S. WATER,” 13 Apr 2021 and “HEALTHY INDIVIDUALS COULD DEVELOP LIVER DISEASE DUE TO ‘FOREVER CHEMICALS’ FOUND IN NON-STICK PANS, TAKEOUT CONTAINERS,” 10 May 2022.)
We reported in 2020 that besides the chemicals, pesticides, and industrial poisons pumped and sprayed into the earth, water, air, and food, the Defense Department has cited 401 bases in the U.S. that release the firefighting foam-containing chemical perfluoroalkyls (PFAS), toxic chemicals that are in drinking water in cities and suburbs across America… including some of the country’s largest metropolitan areas.
PFAS are a group of over 4,000 synthetic chemicals that have been produced by industries since the 1940s. They are primarily used in fire retarding foams, non-stick cookware, water repellents, waterproof clothes, carpets, textiles, and take-out containers.
These toxic chemicals do not break down naturally and accumulate over time in humans, animals, and the overall environment. But their most common source is groundwater.
Because they take such a long time to break down and are so difficult to destroy, PFAS are often referred to as “forever chemicals.”
The Journal’s report said these “forever chemicals” are linked to kidney and testicular cancers, thyroid disease, and high cholesterol. Health officials believe that 99 percent of Americans have at least some PFAS in their blood.
TRENDPOST: For well over two years, the mainstream media massively scared the hell out of the world’s population with its COVID War and the non-scientific political science draconian mandates they imposed on citizens across the globe.
Yet, there is little mention of extremely deadly PFAS levels in commonly used products as well as the deadly chemicals, pesticides, preservatives, artificial ingredients and other deadly poisons massively injected into the air, earth, water and what we eat and drink.