EPA’s Exclamation that PFAS Are Unsafe in Minute Concentrations Is Turning Out To Have Serious Ramifications for Many, Including EPA

By Jeffrey R. Porter | The National Law Review | July 26, 2024

Read the full article by Jeffrey R. Porter (The National Law Review)

"Lara Beaven of Inside PFAS Policy reports that Maine farmers have joined litigation against the Environmental Protection Agency for not yet regulating the presence of PFAS in sewage sludge. The plaintiffs in that litigation allege that sewage sludge contains PFAS, a relatively uncontroversial proposition, and that the “biosolids” created from that sludge can also contain PFAS. In some cases, the concentrations of PFAS in those biosolids are staggering compared to the concentrations of PFAS that EPA has determined present a threat to human health and the environment.

The plaintiffs allege that “EPA has failed to identify as existing in sewage sludge at least eighteen toxic PFAS that available scientific evidence shows are present in sewage sludge in concentrations which may adversely affect public health or the environment, in violation of 33 U.S.C. § 1345(d)(2).”

The “available scientific evidence” certainly seems to show that at least some of these PFAS are present in sewage sludge. And EPA's identification of two of those PFAS as “hazardous substances” under CERCLA, the Federal Superfund statute, was based on a determination that when they are released into the environment (which would include land application) they “may present substantial danger to the public health or welfare or the environment.”

This content provided by the PFAS Project.