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U.S. imposes first-ever national drinking water limits on PFAS

631 points by geox 3y ago

jongjong 3y ago
[flagged]
defrost 3y ago
From the apnews.com link: PFAS is a broad family of chemical substances, and the new rule sets strict limits on two common types — called PFOA and PFOS — at 4 parts per trillion. Three other types that include GenEx Chemicals that are a major problem in North Carolina are limited to 10 parts per trillion. Water providers will have to test for these PFAS chemicals and tell the public when levels are too high. Combinations of some PFAS types will be limited, too. From a 2024 Guardian article: Australia among hotspots for toxic ‘forever chemicals’, study of PFAS levels finds Australia’s PFOA limit is 560 nanograms per litre, while PFOS and PFHxS is limited to 70n/gl. Canada limits all PFAS to 30 ng/l, and the US limits PFOS and PFOA to four ng/l. “Australia has much higher limits than the US, but the question is why,” O’Carroll said. “Both health bodies would have different reasoning for that, and there’s not a really strong consensus here.” ~ https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/apr/09/australia-among-hotspots-for-toxic-forever-chemicals-study-of-pfas-levels-finds https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/apr/09/austr... Study referenced (Nature Geoscience 08 April 2024): Underestimated burden of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances in global surface waters and groundwaters https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-024-01402-8 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-024-01402-8
- harimau777 3y ago
  Does that mean that they just have to tell people that the levels are too high but don't have to do anything about it? Basically just "sorry, your drinking water isn't safe; oh well"?
  - defrost 3y ago
    > Does that mean If by "that" you refer to "Three other types that include GenEx Chemicals that are a major problem in North Carolina are limited to 10 parts per trillion. Water providers will have to test for these PFAS chemicals and tell the public when levels are too high." then "they" (the water providers that detect high levels of any of the three sub types that are not strictly limited) will be obliged to advise customers. > Basically just "sorry, your drinking water isn't safe; oh well"? that the water supplied has levels of not strictly limited inclusion exceeding notification level, yes. Whether the customers are drinking that water and whether the level past notification is unsafe is unknown to myself. This interpretation is, of course, based on my reading of The Guardian reporting, the actual obligations, precise chemical variations, toxicologies, etc, can probably be found as an exercise for concerned readers by looking up the actual rulings and referenced papers.
- fransje26 3y ago
  > “Australia has much higher limits than the US, but the question is why,” Because the local industry has lobbied harder for less stringent measures, that is why. It's not rocket science.
LeifCarrotson 3y ago
Wow, 4 ppt is much more aggressive than the previous limit. My well water was contaminated by Wolverine/3M to 90 ppt, we got a settlement because it was greater than 70 ppt. They installed GAC filters in my home to limit the contamination to 10 ppt. Here are the old limits: https://www.michigan.gov/pfasresponse/drinking-water/mcl https://www.michigan.gov/pfasresponse/drinking-water/mcl
- wcunning 3y ago
  The Gelman plume near Ann Arbor had wells way over that limit and this is probably going to affect the city water supply since the plume is getting close to the Huron River where Ann Arbor draws water from. That's part of why I moved towards Detroit when I bought instead of west of town. Now I should get my water tested in Oakland County, since I'm still on a well and who knows what's going on this close to I-696. Do you know if there's testing resources?
  - infecto 3y ago
    Beyond testing, I would recommend installing a reverse osmosis filter for your drinking water. I install RO filters for all my drinking water regardless if I am in the Bay Area (The Bay Area can have some pretty freaky hot zones of contamination), well, city water, other parts of the country.
    - navi0 3y ago
      Any concerns about the nanoplastics that commercial RO filters appear to create [0]? [0] https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2300582121 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2300582121
      - infecto 3y ago
        Concerns yes but the better of two evils. I have not tested this consistently but I have leaned towards rather having the plastic contaminants from the RO system than whatever was upstream of the RO. It might be the wrong choice but after living the Bay Area I became too aware of how easy it is for contaminated water to show up from local hot spots. Edit: What I would add is I often ponder how much additional nanoplastics are getting added compared to what is being removed. I know some of the test suggest RO is adding more but I am not sure if it accounts for the complete life cycle in a bottling plant. For the near term I have just settled that nanoplastics are the lesser evil to me than PFAS and other chemicals within the water. It is scare mongering but I look at how that town in Oregon I believe had has wide spread PFAS contamination in ground water from the airport fire foam.
florid 3y ago
[dead]
discordance 3y ago
How about 0?
- incomingpain 3y ago
  The reason is that industrial scale filtering to 0 is virtually impossible. This move by the Biden admin has been coming for 15-20 years. Multiple other presidents have wanted to do this but it's just not practical. This implies they have figured out a solution(ideal) or they are very worried about november.
  - smt88 3y ago
    Municipal water utilities are saying it's too expensive to be feasible, so seemingly it's not about any technology breakthrough.
_xnmw 3y ago
Are there any easy at-home test kits to test for this and other toxins?
- smt88 3y ago
  Just skip the test and get a filter for your drinking/cooking water. They're not particularly expensive. I have one for my kitchen sink that removes PFAS.
  - nozzlegear 3y ago
    I'd still be very interested to know what might be in the local drinking water, so that I can educate other people in my town.
    - smt88 3y ago
      In my own research, I found that home testing was not always great. If you wanted an accurate and broad test, you had to send samples out to a lab. It wasn't massively expensive ($50-100), but it was close enough to the cost of a filtration system that it's probably not worth it for an individual. If you want to do it for your town, that's great! Perhaps your local news station would be interested, too.
  - apexalpha 3y ago
    If you don't test how do you know the filter works?
    - smt88 3y ago
      The filters are independently tested (officially by certification companies and unofficially by product reviewers). One of the brands, Berke, actually resisted independent testing and was removed from a lot of reviewers' lists of recommendations.
  - mderazon 3y ago
    Any one you recommend specifically?
_heimdall 3y ago
> “Reducing PFAS in our drinking water is the most cost effective way to reduce our exposure,” said Scott Faber, a food and water expert at Environmental Working Group. “It’s much more challenging to reduce other exposures such as PFAS in food or clothing or carpets.” This says nothing of how impactful the different types of exposures may be, or if a partial reduction is meaningful when we still have other known exposures that we think are just too hard to deal with. Sunken costs can be a bitch, but I really don't get the argument that removing exposures that we are adding into food, for example, can be hard. Just stop using PFAS chemicals, period. Its not hard or expensive, just stop using them and companies will stop manufacturing them. Removing PFAS chemicals that are already out there, like in our water supply, is the difficult and likely expensive change. Giving up any process or product that creates more PFAS contamination is the easy one, and would make a huge dent in the contamination problem as part of the issue is that we continue to add even more chemicals into the environment at a faster rate than nature can deal with.
- bagels 3y ago
  Re: just stop using them and companies will stop manufacturing them Why can't we have the government we pay for with taxes help all of us with this? I don't know what products have/don't have PFAS in them, as it's disclosed almost nowhere. Why not just have them all banned and fined instead of me having to setup a laboratory to test every product I bring in to my house for lead, pfas, asbestos, radioactive isotopes, etc?
  - _heimdall 3y ago
    Because governments are terrible at actually implementing such rules, and the whole point of free (or somewhat free) markets is for us to have the power to decide for ourselves. With regards to labelling, I 100% agree companies should be making it clear what is in the stuff we buy. Again, though, that can be done by consumers if we actually care enough. Sticking with natural materials is a great start, whole foods instead of processed foods and wool or cotton instead of plastic/petroleum clothing, for example.
    - 3y ago
JackMorgan 3y ago
I switched to a home water still, and the distilled water it produces is amazing. It tastes so silky, nothing like the gross distilled water from the store (probably because I store it in glass bottles only). I highly recommend it. After each batch, all the residue that remains in the boiling chamber is revolting. It smells absolutely vile. I can't believe I used to drink that. I went with this instead of a filter after finding out most filters use plastic mesh screens, that actually increase the amount of plastic in the output water.
- navi0 3y ago
  I’ve concluded that this is likely the only solution despite the energy required. Are you able to share any information about your setup for those who might be interested in replicating?
  - JackMorgan 3y ago
    This is the device I'm using. https://www.h2olabs.com/p-54-white-baked-enamel-model-300-water-distiller-with-glass-carafe.aspx https://www.h2olabs.com/p-54-white-baked-enamel-model-300-wa... I don't do anything but drink the water as it comes out.
- poidos 3y ago
  Do you have to remineralize it or add salts to it? If so, what do you add?
  - JackMorgan 3y ago
    No I don't, the studies I've seen indicate the missing magnesium, calcium, and sodium are pretty trace and I'm eating tons of vegetables, so I'm not worried about missing those.
- voisin 3y ago
  What brand?
- nrml_amnt 3y ago
pvaldes 3y ago
(Some years into the future) "Obesity pandemic decreases mysteriously in US".
- Someone1234 3y ago
  The "Obesity pandemic" is almost directly attributable to increases in corn subsidies and processes to turn it into cheap sugar. Processed foods, which is the majority, have consistently removed more expensive fats/proteins and replaced them with less expensive sugar. Sugar has low satiation, so you can consume a lot of it before feeling full (unlike, again, fats/proteins). This was of course worsened by the anti-fat/pro-sugar movement in the 1990s (which is a whole topic itself). Unfortunately there is no mystery to obesity. We've being systematically poisoned by our own food supply. If they either removed the corn-subsidies OR added a corn-sugar tax to offset the subsidies, food prices would increase, but obesity would decrease. It isn't politically realistic though to make food taste less good (i.e. less sweet) and increase prices, nor is it politically realistic to remove corn subsidies or create sugar taxes. So we're stuck here for the foreseeable.
  - pvaldes 3y ago
    As we had discovered since Leptin research, things that seemed simple and dumb and claimed with loud firm voices were more complex and smart that it seemed in retrospective. Europe has not the same ratio of extreme obesity, while eating basically the same products, How would you explain that? Some cities in US have much more overweight people than other similar cities, both eat basically the same corn subsidized and distributed by the entire territory. why? It seems that low places down the river have more overweight people than high places up the river, why? > It isn't politically realistic though to make food taste less good (i.e. less sweet) and increase prices, nor is it politically realistic to remove corn subsidies or create sugar taxes. Other countries did it all the time. It was a more realistic goal for them (or they just didn't knew that it can't be done and did it anyway)?
    - Someone1234 3y ago
      > Europe has not the same ratio of extreme obesity, while eating basically the same products, How would you explain that? They aren't the same products, since sugar is more expensive in Europe, they add less of it to the products. Add aggressive labeling laws on top of that and sugar taxes on top of that. You can directly corroborate population sugar consumption with population BMI. You can also track the increase in BMI against the cost of sugar (i.e. lower it goes, the higher BMI goes) from 1970 to today.
zug_zug 3y ago
Great news. > Roughly 16% of utilities found at least one of the two strictly limited PFAS chemicals at or above the new limits. These utilities serve tens of millions of people. The Biden administration, however, expects about 6-10% of water systems to exceed the new limits. Wow. Seems like a small but meaningful step toward better health, which seems like one of the best uses of technology. Curious if people on wells can get their water tested somehow.
dc_ist 3y ago
Fully expect this iteration of SCOTUS to rule against the EPA
reducesuffering 3y ago
"Tap water is perfectly fine" people threw a lot of shade at people who only drink bottled water, but both should be using Reverse Osmosis filtration right now. Think of it as verifying the response you got from the API is correct...
- wouldbecouldbe 3y ago
  Yeah the plastic bottles are also not great: https://time.com/6553165/microplastics-in-bottled-water-study/ https://time.com/6553165/microplastics-in-bottled-water-stud... Just sad we made such a mess.
  - wahnfrieden 3y ago
    There'll be no technology solution for this that scales globally for any means and usability
    - _factor 3y ago
      How about glass bottles and reusing them like we used to.
      - wahnfrieden 3y ago
        Probably higher skill and cost throughout the full integration that there's no business/market incentive toward it and we can't rely on the state to check and curb every business toward radical ecological change It's easy to dream up rules and government mandates or budget items, which would be more directly interesting if we lived in an actual democracy (no matter what country on earth today) but rather we have to understand why state and business as we've enabled them to operate structurally would ever work toward those directives, and not just to an appeasingly greenwashed extent. And then think what other tools are available to us besides voting and waiting, given all that. Don't we all know devops here? Where's the structural analysis and systemically-impacting follow-up discussion? Instead people talk about the quality of individual masters and operators
    - 3y ago
semicolon_storm 3y ago
No paywall: https://web.archive.org/web/20240410092221/https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/10/climate/epa-pfas-drinking-water.html https://web.archive.org/web/20240410092221/https://www.nytim...
candiddevmike 3y ago
Without any curtailing of their usage, aren't we just shifting costs to taxpayers?
- Lammy 3y ago
  > taxpayers Relevant: “How to Make Tap Water” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvIky3B661s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvIky3B661s
- thomasahle 3y ago
  How much are people currently spending on bottled water, that they could save if the tap water was safer?
  - nox101 3y ago
    Is tap water unsafe?
    - dylan604 3y ago
      Hi. Welcome to the conversation. The title of the article being discussed is "EPA Says 'Forever Chemicals' Must Be Removed from Tap Water (nytimes.com)"
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - spacephysics 3y ago
      I’d get an RO under sink filter that remineralizes the water and call it a day Even if the water treatment plant does everything right, the pipes from there to your house typically have contaminates as well
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
sp332 3y ago
Looks like most of the people saying it's too expensive are talking about filtering the stuff out of water at or near the point of use. What's the cost to reduce the amount of these chemicals getting into the water in the first place?
- dudus 3y ago
  They are already in the water, and they are not going away, hence the name.
- NewJazz 3y ago
  What's the cost of even identifying all the ways these chemicals are getting out, or what all these chemicals are? I heard recently that but and seed butters often have elevated amounts of this crap... One hypothesis floated was that machinery used in the processing of this food is being coated in the stuff.
  - nonrandomstring 3y ago
    We know where a lot of it came from. Emphasis because it's an historical problem: Military and civil air fire-fighting foam. About a million tons of perfluoroalkyl was put into the environment between 1970 and 2000. It's very mobile, so it quickly got into groundwater and rivers. By comparison the leach from Teflon pans is probably a small percentage.
    - NewJazz 3y ago
      Oh I definitely agree that Teflon pans are low on the list of pollution sources. But firefighting foam doesn't explain wtf happened (is happening?) to Cape Fear.
  - hunter2_ 3y ago
    Food packaging is full of this stuff. Think about how a greasy sandwich or stick of butter is wrapped in a magic piece of paper that somehow doesn't get completely saturated with grease/sauce... that's PFAS.
thallium205 3y ago
[flagged]
- adamredwoods 3y ago
  Which city? Tap water quality varies between cities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis
  - ch4s3 3y ago
    You'll notice that Flint's water is safe to drink as of 2 years ago[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis#2022 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis#2022
    - hackyhacky 3y ago
      I notice that the page you link does not mention PFAS at all.
      - iAMkenough 3y ago
        Which to me means "Tap water is safe and effective" is a broad statement that doesn't consider pollutants outside of PFAS, which vary depending on the regional water treatment system and how they are operated from region to region. "safe" and "effective" means different things between different regulating bodies.
      - ch4s3 3y ago
        That's not really what people are referring to when they mention Flint.
        hackyhacky 3y ago
        If "safe and effective" does not include testing for chemicals known to be dangerous, then the label "safe and effective" is not accurate.
non-chalad 3y ago
[flagged]
- bobmcnamara 3y ago
  This is no place for hydrologic snarkery.
- TylerE 3y ago
  You gonna defend asbestos yet? PFAS is, like, actually carcinogenic and stuff.
  - non-chalad 3y ago
    Did I defend PFAS? Nope. Why should I defend asbestos, when there are more deadly chemicals in our water!?
laluser 3y ago
Can anyone recommend a good reverse osmosis filtration that is actually certified and made by a company you can actually trust? I have one now, but not sure that it filters some of the PFOS/PFAS chemicals. There are so many clearly scammy companies claiming different types of certifications.
- danfromjapan 3y ago
  I'm also curious about this - particularly about filter membrane materials and nanoplastics
  - wahnfrieden 3y ago
    Make sure you have good air filtration too.
- kccqzy 3y ago
  I use Coway, a Korean brand for my water filtration needs. They are a good brand and actually certified but looking closely at the product manual, they do not make the claim that they filter PFAS (defined as having a fully fluoridated methyl or methylene group): indeed they only claim to filter several chlorinated substances including tetrachloroethene.
- blackeyeblitzar 3y ago
  > not sure that it filters some of the PFOS/PFAS chemicals Just to clarify the terminology: PFOA, PFOS, PTFE, and thousands of other chemicals are all examples that are part of a larger group of (mostly) problematic chemicals called PFAS. Here is the EPA’s guidance on filtration standards and how to identify filters that are effective for PFAS: https://www.epa.gov/system/files/documents/2024-04/water-filter-fact-sheet.pdf https://www.epa.gov/system/files/documents/2024-04/water-fil... That PDF has links to products certified by various certification bodies, and suggests looking for products certified against NSF 53, NSF 58, or both. but the EPA also notes the following: > It's important to note that the current certification standards for PFAS filters (as of April 2024) do not yet indicate that a filter will remove PFAS down to the levels EPA has now set for a drinking water standard. EPA is working with standard-setting bodies to update their filter certifications to match EPA’s new requirements. In the meantime, remember that reducing levels of PFAS in your water is an effective way to limit your exposure. EWG has a list of recommended filters: https://www.ewg.org/research/getting-forever-chemicals-out-drinking-water-ewgs-guide-pfas-water-filters https://www.ewg.org/research/getting-forever-chemicals-out-d...
jeremy151 3y ago
I live in a city that was a hot zone for this type of contamination in the drinking water due to industrial waste from leather processing buried in the 60’s (shoe scraps treated with scotchgard.) We now have GAC filtering at the municipal supply level that is quite effective and not that expensive. The large beds of carbon last quite a while if I recall correctly. Despite regular testing, everyone I know RO filters their water regardless. For me, it’s because I have no idea what new previously “unknown” contamination will be next discovered, and would rather get out as much as is reasonable. When the information began to surface I found it interesting the letters on public record going back to the 60’s with people warning that allowing this kind of dumping was a bad idea. Of course being the primary employer to the entire city, the economics won at the time. Since, the cost of cleanup and lawsuits to that company have been massive.
- datascienced 3y ago
  RO is cheap enough for middle class or above (order of magnitude is ~ what you might spend on uniforms and excursions for a kid in a state primary school). Assuming a self install. So it is a good option if you can afford it. Maybe RO becoming part of the standard set of things you buy (washing machine, vacuum cleaner etc.) is the way. You have to keep up to date with filter changes though. RO typically needs a post filter. Hopefully that doesn’t add any bad chemicals. But you need it as pure water is desperate to bind, so you can either bind it to something you choose, or bind it to whatever pipe work / tanks are beyond the filter. Also you might want a higher ph. Maybe some disruption to make a nice looking, compact and cheap and zero install RO unit would be good and some subsidy for people without the means to buy one who live in risk areas. Plus subsidy for maintenance. If the design is like a printer where you pull out and push in new cartridges and have warning lights it will make maintenance easy.
  - silisili 3y ago
    I feel like safe, clean water is the job of the municipal system that we pay so much for. Even the poors should have the same cleanliness as the middle class, but that's rather beside the point.
  - 3y ago
BenFranklin100 3y ago
[flagged]
- airstrike 3y ago
  That's not a logical conclusion
- yongjik 3y ago
  Acid rain "scare" went away because people were rightfully scared, they told the government to fix it, and the government told the industry to fix it (or else!), and the industry did fix it. It would be GREAT ACHIEVEMENT if PFAS went the same way. https://www.statista.com/statistics/501303/volume-of-sulfur-dioxide-emissions-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/501303/volume-of-sulfur-...
- manfre 3y ago
  This is more likely to be similar to leaded gasoline. In a few decades we'll start to see the impact they caused after we successfully filter it out.
  - scottyah 3y ago
    DDT is another example of bad things going on for decades that had severe repercussions. There's definitely something going on with wheat from America too, though I don't think it's been discovered/publicized.
  - Freedom2 3y ago
    What was the impact of leaded gasoline?
    - aatharuv 3y ago
      Lowered IQ, impulse control, and increased levels of aggression.
- clarity20 3y ago
  The downvotes came! And it's not like you said something bad ...
peterbecich 3y ago
The California DWR has this map: locations of potential sources of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) https://gispublic.waterboards.ca.gov/portal/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=4feba1766c224dc99eadea06ef3bd019 https://gispublic.waterboards.ca.gov/portal/apps/webappviewe...
- jjtheblunt 3y ago
  Does California specify which water mains are old asbestos cement pipes? That famously caused ecological disasters in the Bay Area 20+ years ago, but they didn't (in newspaper articles i saw) show the extent of such.
  - peterbecich 3y ago
    I'm not aware of that. I doubt asbestos cement water mains are a significant health risk to the end user. I think any asbestos that could become airborne is a risk. To the workers who installed those pipes, certainly.
    - jjtheblunt 3y ago
      Asbestos is implicated in gastrointestinal cancers too. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4856305/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4856305/
    - armatav 3y ago
      Luckily we can use common sense and intuit that razor sharp microglass embedded in the colon will cause cancer via immune response. Do you work for an asbestos company?
_heimdall 3y ago
Removing it from tap water seems like a great first step for mitigation. But what about preventing them in water in the first place? We shouldn't be using these chemicals. Period. Sure we're hooked on them now, but sunken cost is a terrible reason to continue down a bad path. We use these chemicals largely because industry kept finding more and more ways to use manufacturing byproducts. In theory that's great and all, but we avoid questioning if we should change that manufacturing process instead. A little pain now can avoid a mountain of pain later if we're actually willing to think ahead and question what we have today rather than focusing on what the next step forward is without ant context of how or why we got here.
DantesKite 3y ago
A few years ago, the PPM in my town's water was over 850 PPM, well above the recommended guidelines. Worse than that, it had a distinct sulfur-like smell. So naturally we got a reverse osmosis water filter system and while the tap water has improved since then, I'm always reminded of the occasional accidents that can occur (e.g., lead, excessive chlorination, plain old entropy). Plus it makes the water taste significantly better. Even if tap water was always perfectly safe to drink, I'd get one just for the taste alone. Brondell Circle RO systems are my favorite because the filters are the easiest to change and when you have the same system for years, that ends up being the labor you repeat the most.
- michael9423 3y ago
  Is Brondell just selling a white-labeled Coway product with their Circle RO system?
- jjcon 3y ago
  The funny thing about most of these systems is that they are all made of plastic. For towns with bad water quality I understand it but for most towns with limited or no PFAS I feel like there is the risk that you could be making the water worse
VelesDude 3y ago
When it comes large scale stuff... Cheesecake for everyone. Easy to say, difficult to do. The best move is prevention rather than correction.
j45 3y ago
I wonder if this kind of regulation exists in another country near or far.
DueDilligence 3y ago
[dead]
anigbrowl 3y ago
Meddling bureaucrats, it's my right to get cancer or some weird life-changing medical condition and the woke mob wants to take it away from me.
- dang 3y ago
  Please don't do this.
rgrieselhuber 3y ago
Toxic waste such as fluoride should be removed too.
29athrowaway 3y ago
Reminder: - The waterproof tape you used for your plumbing is made of PFAS. - Your floss too - Microwave popcorn and cupcakes - Contact lenses - Tampons
- ars 3y ago
  That's not true. Teflon is not a PFAS because it's missing the "tail" that makes it active. Teflon's predecessor PFOA is a PFAS, but there's not normally any remaining in the final produce. There is a valid concern with manufacturing of course, but not with use.
  - mensetmanusman 3y ago
    Teflon is a subset of pfas. The discussion around this issue is just as unsophisticated as sating 'nuclear bad.'
  - jjcon 3y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polytetrafluoroethylene https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polytetrafluoroethylene > Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) is a synthetic fluoropolymer of tetrafluoroethylene. It belongs to the per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)) and has numerous applications. The commonly known brand name of PTFE-based composition is Teflon by Chemours, a spin-off from DuPont, which originally discovered the compound in 1938.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - ars 3y ago
      Quoting Wikipedia doesn't actually change the nature of the chemical at hand. Would it help if I edited Wikipedia to clarify things? PTFE is inert, it is not chemically active like a PFAS. The fact that it has a related chemical structure is interesting, but also not relevant.
      - 3y ago
aaronbrethorst 3y ago
I bet this gets trashed when the Supreme Court reverses the Chevron doctrine this summer. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loper_Bright_Enterprises_v._Raimondo https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loper_Bright_Enterprises_v._...
- cogman10 3y ago
  Probably not immediately, but yeah. The EPA is about to be completely neutered. Every corporation out there is going to challenge it's authority when they get busted polluting.
- jorblumesea 3y ago
  or if trump wins in 2024 and he guts the epa himself. crazy how many structural forces US citizens need to fight just to get clean drinking water.
Sporktacular 3y ago
I remember first reading as a kid about DDT and thinking, wow, we really dodged a bullet with that one. Never could have imagined we wouldn't learn but go on to make and under-regulate hundreds of toxic substances in its place.
99112000 3y ago
"First ever" has been used very leniently here. Maybe it's the first ever for any state in America but the rest of the world definitely already has limits on it.
- ShamelessC 3y ago
  "_U.S._ imposes first-ever _national_ drinking water limits" emphasis mine.
  - zamadatix 3y ago
    Using emphasis doesn't help bring clarity since the problem is the headline has multiple valid interpretations regardless if said words are emphasized or not. Adding something like "imposes its" helps highlight the intended interpretation.
  - mort96 3y ago
    Can be read as "U.S. imposes its first-ever national drinking water limits" or "U.S. imposes world's first-ever national drinking water limits". There's a missing word and it's not clear from context what it's meant to be.
- cgh 3y ago
  Note: 1 ppt == 1 ng/L. The EU limits are 500 ng/L for the sum of all PFAS in drinking water. Canada has an "objective" of 30 ng/L but I don't know how well it's enforced. The US proposal is for 4 ng/L for each PFAS but I'm not sure how they calculate the combined amounts. If it's simple addition, then it's 38 ng/L according to the article.
  - 99112000 3y ago
    Fair enough, at least the limits they proposed are among the best in the world. Credit where credit is due!
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
gjs4786 3y ago
Why should I have to pay money to a avoid incuring an incurable disease? I can understand, possibly, possibly, fronting the cost. But, only while they sort out the details with the installers. The first contaminant to make it through on a federally recognized level...9 billion dollars in funding. Holy shit. And this is just getting started. This, after looking just now ( https://www.google.com/search?q=pfas+funding+sources&oq=pfas+funding https://www.google.com/search?q=pfas+funding+sources&oq=pfas... ), Seems to be in addition to a 10 billion dollars that was earmarked in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of '21, and 2 billion from the EPA. That's in addition to the up to 12.5 billion that 3M has agreed to pay directly to water providers through 2036. I didn't know there was a tort case, either. It finished last year. 33.5 billion dollars. I can't wrap my head around this. Seems like a significant amount for an equally significant problem that most people have never heard about. And this is likely not nearly enough. This is shaping up to be a 100 billion dollar public health crisis / 3M offset. Surely, I am missing several more broad funding allotments, this is just just getting started. When I can't understand the scale of something, I tend to look at the size of the response. It's not perfect, but it's a start
- jrmg 3y ago
  33.5 billion dollars. I can't wrap my head around this Given the US population of just over 333 million, its a but over $100 per person.
  - nickjj 3y ago
    > Given the US population of just over 333 million, its a but over $100 per person. That's true but not everyone lives in their own complex. A family of 3 will benefit from 1 installation. An apartment complex with 500 people could benefit from 1 installation assuming the benefit comes from something installed at the base of the unit and then applies to all inner-building plumbing.
CatWChainsaw 3y ago
Forever chemicals, forever fines. Seems fair.
hereme888 3y ago
If the president and his cabinet set such a rule, and water companies' reply is "people will complain it's expensive", it makes me think something seriously bad was happening with these PFAS and the industry is running from accountability for deaths from cancer and the like. Never outsource your personal health to others. Filter your drinking water.
- s3p 3y ago
  I'm confused because many water supply companies and municipal governments already use filter media that clean PFAS. My city for instance, upon looking tonight I see they use GAC filter media which is biologically active. Activated carbon filters are the industry standard for removing PFAS from the water supply.
  - hereme888 3y ago
    Good to know. But most people don't know, and I still wouldn't drink tap water for the many other contaminants present in "safe" amounts.
wouldbecouldbe 3y ago
How about 0. Those who made the mess pay for cleaning it.
probably_jesus 3y ago
Isn't Flint's water still all messed up? When is the US government going to realize that nobody believes anything they say because they in fact do nothing. Just a bunch of blah blah blah with no action items or results of their meaningless words. Uncle Sam is like a drunk uncle at at Thanksgiving, it talks day in and day out each word more meaningless than the one it follows.
- snowwrestler 3y ago
  The Flint water crisis has been resolved. “After $400 million in state and federal spending, Flint has secured a clean water source, distributed filters to all who want them, and laid modern, safe, copper pipes to nearly every home in the city.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis
datadeft 3y ago
Given the track record of the US enforcing these laws and managing water infrastructure I doubt that it makes a difference. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis
greenie_beans 3y ago
this is gonna cost so much money. they better give money to all the small towns without much money, if they're gonna force them to do this.
- JoshTko 3y ago
  Cost is relative, presumably preventing everyone from getting cancer is less expensive than just clean water regulation.
  - greenie_beans 3y ago
    of course. i'm not against this, lord knows. i'm just saying that they better give these small towns money if they're gonna force them to do this.
ThinkBeat 3y ago
As the article notes there are still a substantial amount of lead pipes polluting drinking water. We have known about the dangers there for a long time and still it has not been solved. Unless this comes with a few trillion USD I dont see how it will make much of a difference. Perhaps shutting off water entirely in regions?
uconnectlol 3y ago
> Health advocates praised the Environmental Protection Agency which ones? which ones didn't? just 2 days ago i heard PFAS is still in the rumor stage. > Water providers are entering a new era with significant additional health standards that the EPA says will make tap water safer i thought you already said it's safe? i have plenty of health issues caused by just about everything, everything has 10 billion perfumes for no reason, and new kinds of experimental plastics in every single possible thing you can buy, that smell terrible and unsurprisingly make you feel awful, just walking in a city and coming in fills my face with irritants and can ruin my day. this is a small difference in comparison. i doubt the PFAS thing is any more than a typical fad and way for gov to make money as usual. nobody actually cares about this stuff, they just pretend.
hanniabu 3y ago
I guess this funding will go towards affluent communities first?

631 points by geox 3y ago

[flagged]

From the apnews.com link: PFAS is a broad family of chemical substances, and the new rule sets strict limits on two common types — called PFOA and PFOS — at 4 parts per trillion. Three other types that include GenEx Chemicals that are a major problem in North Carolina are limited to 10 parts per trillion. Water providers will have to test for these PFAS chemicals and tell the public when levels are too high. Combinations of some PFAS types will be limited, too. From a 2024 Guardian article: Australia among hotspots for toxic ‘forever chemicals’, study of PFAS levels finds Australia’s PFOA limit is 560 nanograms per litre, while PFOS and PFHxS is limited to 70n/gl. Canada limits all PFAS to 30 ng/l, and the US limits PFOS and PFOA to four ng/l. “Australia has much higher limits than the US, but the question is why,” O’Carroll said. “Both health bodies would have different reasoning for that, and there’s not a really strong consensus here.” ~ https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/apr/09/australia-among-hotspots-for-toxic-forever-chemicals-study-of-pfas-levels-finds https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/apr/09/austr... Study referenced (Nature Geoscience 08 April 2024): Underestimated burden of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances in global surface waters and groundwaters https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-024-01402-8 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-024-01402-8

harimau777 3y ago
Does that mean that they just have to tell people that the levels are too high but don't have to do anything about it? Basically just "sorry, your drinking water isn't safe; oh well"?
- defrost 3y ago
  > Does that mean If by "that" you refer to "Three other types that include GenEx Chemicals that are a major problem in North Carolina are limited to 10 parts per trillion. Water providers will have to test for these PFAS chemicals and tell the public when levels are too high." then "they" (the water providers that detect high levels of any of the three sub types that are not strictly limited) will be obliged to advise customers. > Basically just "sorry, your drinking water isn't safe; oh well"? that the water supplied has levels of not strictly limited inclusion exceeding notification level, yes. Whether the customers are drinking that water and whether the level past notification is unsafe is unknown to myself. This interpretation is, of course, based on my reading of The Guardian reporting, the actual obligations, precise chemical variations, toxicologies, etc, can probably be found as an exercise for concerned readers by looking up the actual rulings and referenced papers.
fransje26 3y ago
> “Australia has much higher limits than the US, but the question is why,” Because the local industry has lobbied harder for less stringent measures, that is why. It's not rocket science.

LeifCarrotson 3y ago

Wow, 4 ppt is much more aggressive than the previous limit. My well water was contaminated by Wolverine/3M to 90 ppt, we got a settlement because it was greater than 70 ppt. They installed GAC filters in my home to limit the contamination to 10 ppt. Here are the old limits: https://www.michigan.gov/pfasresponse/drinking-water/mcl https://www.michigan.gov/pfasresponse/drinking-water/mcl

wcunning 3y ago
The Gelman plume near Ann Arbor had wells way over that limit and this is probably going to affect the city water supply since the plume is getting close to the Huron River where Ann Arbor draws water from. That's part of why I moved towards Detroit when I bought instead of west of town. Now I should get my water tested in Oakland County, since I'm still on a well and who knows what's going on this close to I-696. Do you know if there's testing resources?
- infecto 3y ago
  Beyond testing, I would recommend installing a reverse osmosis filter for your drinking water. I install RO filters for all my drinking water regardless if I am in the Bay Area (The Bay Area can have some pretty freaky hot zones of contamination), well, city water, other parts of the country.
  - navi0 3y ago
    Any concerns about the nanoplastics that commercial RO filters appear to create [0]? [0] https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2300582121 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2300582121
    - infecto 3y ago
      Concerns yes but the better of two evils. I have not tested this consistently but I have leaned towards rather having the plastic contaminants from the RO system than whatever was upstream of the RO. It might be the wrong choice but after living the Bay Area I became too aware of how easy it is for contaminated water to show up from local hot spots. Edit: What I would add is I often ponder how much additional nanoplastics are getting added compared to what is being removed. I know some of the test suggest RO is adding more but I am not sure if it accounts for the complete life cycle in a bottling plant. For the near term I have just settled that nanoplastics are the lesser evil to me than PFAS and other chemicals within the water. It is scare mongering but I look at how that town in Oregon I believe had has wide spread PFAS contamination in ground water from the airport fire foam.

florid 3y ago

[dead]

discordance 3y ago

How about 0?

incomingpain 3y ago
The reason is that industrial scale filtering to 0 is virtually impossible. This move by the Biden admin has been coming for 15-20 years. Multiple other presidents have wanted to do this but it's just not practical. This implies they have figured out a solution(ideal) or they are very worried about november.
- smt88 3y ago
  Municipal water utilities are saying it's too expensive to be feasible, so seemingly it's not about any technology breakthrough.

_xnmw 3y ago

Are there any easy at-home test kits to test for this and other toxins?

smt88 3y ago
Just skip the test and get a filter for your drinking/cooking water. They're not particularly expensive. I have one for my kitchen sink that removes PFAS.
- nozzlegear 3y ago
  I'd still be very interested to know what might be in the local drinking water, so that I can educate other people in my town.
  - smt88 3y ago
    In my own research, I found that home testing was not always great. If you wanted an accurate and broad test, you had to send samples out to a lab. It wasn't massively expensive ($50-100), but it was close enough to the cost of a filtration system that it's probably not worth it for an individual. If you want to do it for your town, that's great! Perhaps your local news station would be interested, too.
- apexalpha 3y ago
  If you don't test how do you know the filter works?
  - smt88 3y ago
    The filters are independently tested (officially by certification companies and unofficially by product reviewers). One of the brands, Berke, actually resisted independent testing and was removed from a lot of reviewers' lists of recommendations.
- mderazon 3y ago
  Any one you recommend specifically?

_heimdall 3y ago

> “Reducing PFAS in our drinking water is the most cost effective way to reduce our exposure,” said Scott Faber, a food and water expert at Environmental Working Group. “It’s much more challenging to reduce other exposures such as PFAS in food or clothing or carpets.” This says nothing of how impactful the different types of exposures may be, or if a partial reduction is meaningful when we still have other known exposures that we think are just too hard to deal with. Sunken costs can be a bitch, but I really don't get the argument that removing exposures that we are adding into food, for example, can be hard. Just stop using PFAS chemicals, period. Its not hard or expensive, just stop using them and companies will stop manufacturing them. Removing PFAS chemicals that are already out there, like in our water supply, is the difficult and likely expensive change. Giving up any process or product that creates more PFAS contamination is the easy one, and would make a huge dent in the contamination problem as part of the issue is that we continue to add even more chemicals into the environment at a faster rate than nature can deal with.

bagels 3y ago
Re: just stop using them and companies will stop manufacturing them Why can't we have the government we pay for with taxes help all of us with this? I don't know what products have/don't have PFAS in them, as it's disclosed almost nowhere. Why not just have them all banned and fined instead of me having to setup a laboratory to test every product I bring in to my house for lead, pfas, asbestos, radioactive isotopes, etc?
- _heimdall 3y ago
  Because governments are terrible at actually implementing such rules, and the whole point of free (or somewhat free) markets is for us to have the power to decide for ourselves. With regards to labelling, I 100% agree companies should be making it clear what is in the stuff we buy. Again, though, that can be done by consumers if we actually care enough. Sticking with natural materials is a great start, whole foods instead of processed foods and wool or cotton instead of plastic/petroleum clothing, for example.
  - 3y ago

JackMorgan 3y ago

I switched to a home water still, and the distilled water it produces is amazing. It tastes so silky, nothing like the gross distilled water from the store (probably because I store it in glass bottles only). I highly recommend it. After each batch, all the residue that remains in the boiling chamber is revolting. It smells absolutely vile. I can't believe I used to drink that. I went with this instead of a filter after finding out most filters use plastic mesh screens, that actually increase the amount of plastic in the output water.

navi0 3y ago
I’ve concluded that this is likely the only solution despite the energy required. Are you able to share any information about your setup for those who might be interested in replicating?
- JackMorgan 3y ago
  This is the device I'm using. https://www.h2olabs.com/p-54-white-baked-enamel-model-300-water-distiller-with-glass-carafe.aspx https://www.h2olabs.com/p-54-white-baked-enamel-model-300-wa... I don't do anything but drink the water as it comes out.
poidos 3y ago
Do you have to remineralize it or add salts to it? If so, what do you add?
- JackMorgan 3y ago
  No I don't, the studies I've seen indicate the missing magnesium, calcium, and sodium are pretty trace and I'm eating tons of vegetables, so I'm not worried about missing those.
voisin 3y ago
What brand?
nrml_amnt 3y ago

pvaldes 3y ago

(Some years into the future) "Obesity pandemic decreases mysteriously in US".

Someone1234 3y ago
The "Obesity pandemic" is almost directly attributable to increases in corn subsidies and processes to turn it into cheap sugar. Processed foods, which is the majority, have consistently removed more expensive fats/proteins and replaced them with less expensive sugar. Sugar has low satiation, so you can consume a lot of it before feeling full (unlike, again, fats/proteins). This was of course worsened by the anti-fat/pro-sugar movement in the 1990s (which is a whole topic itself). Unfortunately there is no mystery to obesity. We've being systematically poisoned by our own food supply. If they either removed the corn-subsidies OR added a corn-sugar tax to offset the subsidies, food prices would increase, but obesity would decrease. It isn't politically realistic though to make food taste less good (i.e. less sweet) and increase prices, nor is it politically realistic to remove corn subsidies or create sugar taxes. So we're stuck here for the foreseeable.
- pvaldes 3y ago
  As we had discovered since Leptin research, things that seemed simple and dumb and claimed with loud firm voices were more complex and smart that it seemed in retrospective. Europe has not the same ratio of extreme obesity, while eating basically the same products, How would you explain that? Some cities in US have much more overweight people than other similar cities, both eat basically the same corn subsidized and distributed by the entire territory. why? It seems that low places down the river have more overweight people than high places up the river, why? > It isn't politically realistic though to make food taste less good (i.e. less sweet) and increase prices, nor is it politically realistic to remove corn subsidies or create sugar taxes. Other countries did it all the time. It was a more realistic goal for them (or they just didn't knew that it can't be done and did it anyway)?
  - Someone1234 3y ago
    > Europe has not the same ratio of extreme obesity, while eating basically the same products, How would you explain that? They aren't the same products, since sugar is more expensive in Europe, they add less of it to the products. Add aggressive labeling laws on top of that and sugar taxes on top of that. You can directly corroborate population sugar consumption with population BMI. You can also track the increase in BMI against the cost of sugar (i.e. lower it goes, the higher BMI goes) from 1970 to today.

zug_zug 3y ago

Great news. > Roughly 16% of utilities found at least one of the two strictly limited PFAS chemicals at or above the new limits. These utilities serve tens of millions of people. The Biden administration, however, expects about 6-10% of water systems to exceed the new limits. Wow. Seems like a small but meaningful step toward better health, which seems like one of the best uses of technology. Curious if people on wells can get their water tested somehow.

dc_ist 3y ago

Fully expect this iteration of SCOTUS to rule against the EPA

reducesuffering 3y ago

"Tap water is perfectly fine" people threw a lot of shade at people who only drink bottled water, but both should be using Reverse Osmosis filtration right now. Think of it as verifying the response you got from the API is correct...

wouldbecouldbe 3y ago
Yeah the plastic bottles are also not great: https://time.com/6553165/microplastics-in-bottled-water-study/ https://time.com/6553165/microplastics-in-bottled-water-stud... Just sad we made such a mess.
- wahnfrieden 3y ago
  There'll be no technology solution for this that scales globally for any means and usability
  - _factor 3y ago
    How about glass bottles and reusing them like we used to.
    - wahnfrieden 3y ago
      Probably higher skill and cost throughout the full integration that there's no business/market incentive toward it and we can't rely on the state to check and curb every business toward radical ecological change It's easy to dream up rules and government mandates or budget items, which would be more directly interesting if we lived in an actual democracy (no matter what country on earth today) but rather we have to understand why state and business as we've enabled them to operate structurally would ever work toward those directives, and not just to an appeasingly greenwashed extent. And then think what other tools are available to us besides voting and waiting, given all that. Don't we all know devops here? Where's the structural analysis and systemically-impacting follow-up discussion? Instead people talk about the quality of individual masters and operators
  - 3y ago

semicolon_storm 3y ago

No paywall: https://web.archive.org/web/20240410092221/https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/10/climate/epa-pfas-drinking-water.html https://web.archive.org/web/20240410092221/https://www.nytim...

candiddevmike 3y ago

Without any curtailing of their usage, aren't we just shifting costs to taxpayers?

Lammy 3y ago
> taxpayers Relevant: “How to Make Tap Water” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvIky3B661s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvIky3B661s
thomasahle 3y ago
How much are people currently spending on bottled water, that they could save if the tap water was safer?
- nox101 3y ago
  Is tap water unsafe?
  - dylan604 3y ago
    Hi. Welcome to the conversation. The title of the article being discussed is "EPA Says 'Forever Chemicals' Must Be Removed from Tap Water (nytimes.com)"
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - spacephysics 3y ago
    I’d get an RO under sink filter that remineralizes the water and call it a day Even if the water treatment plant does everything right, the pipes from there to your house typically have contaminates as well
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

sp332 3y ago

Looks like most of the people saying it's too expensive are talking about filtering the stuff out of water at or near the point of use. What's the cost to reduce the amount of these chemicals getting into the water in the first place?

dudus 3y ago
They are already in the water, and they are not going away, hence the name.
NewJazz 3y ago
What's the cost of even identifying all the ways these chemicals are getting out, or what all these chemicals are? I heard recently that but and seed butters often have elevated amounts of this crap... One hypothesis floated was that machinery used in the processing of this food is being coated in the stuff.
- nonrandomstring 3y ago
  We know where a lot of it came from. Emphasis because it's an historical problem: Military and civil air fire-fighting foam. About a million tons of perfluoroalkyl was put into the environment between 1970 and 2000. It's very mobile, so it quickly got into groundwater and rivers. By comparison the leach from Teflon pans is probably a small percentage.
  - NewJazz 3y ago
    Oh I definitely agree that Teflon pans are low on the list of pollution sources. But firefighting foam doesn't explain wtf happened (is happening?) to Cape Fear.
- hunter2_ 3y ago
  Food packaging is full of this stuff. Think about how a greasy sandwich or stick of butter is wrapped in a magic piece of paper that somehow doesn't get completely saturated with grease/sauce... that's PFAS.

thallium205 3y ago

[flagged]

adamredwoods 3y ago
Which city? Tap water quality varies between cities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis
- ch4s3 3y ago
  You'll notice that Flint's water is safe to drink as of 2 years ago[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis#2022 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis#2022
  - hackyhacky 3y ago
    I notice that the page you link does not mention PFAS at all.
    - iAMkenough 3y ago
      Which to me means "Tap water is safe and effective" is a broad statement that doesn't consider pollutants outside of PFAS, which vary depending on the regional water treatment system and how they are operated from region to region. "safe" and "effective" means different things between different regulating bodies.
    - ch4s3 3y ago
      That's not really what people are referring to when they mention Flint.
      - hackyhacky 3y ago
        If "safe and effective" does not include testing for chemicals known to be dangerous, then the label "safe and effective" is not accurate.

non-chalad 3y ago

[flagged]

bobmcnamara 3y ago
This is no place for hydrologic snarkery.
TylerE 3y ago
You gonna defend asbestos yet? PFAS is, like, actually carcinogenic and stuff.
- non-chalad 3y ago
  Did I defend PFAS? Nope. Why should I defend asbestos, when there are more deadly chemicals in our water!?

laluser 3y ago

Can anyone recommend a good reverse osmosis filtration that is actually certified and made by a company you can actually trust? I have one now, but not sure that it filters some of the PFOS/PFAS chemicals. There are so many clearly scammy companies claiming different types of certifications.

danfromjapan 3y ago
I'm also curious about this - particularly about filter membrane materials and nanoplastics
- wahnfrieden 3y ago
  Make sure you have good air filtration too.
kccqzy 3y ago
I use Coway, a Korean brand for my water filtration needs. They are a good brand and actually certified but looking closely at the product manual, they do not make the claim that they filter PFAS (defined as having a fully fluoridated methyl or methylene group): indeed they only claim to filter several chlorinated substances including tetrachloroethene.
blackeyeblitzar 3y ago
> not sure that it filters some of the PFOS/PFAS chemicals Just to clarify the terminology: PFOA, PFOS, PTFE, and thousands of other chemicals are all examples that are part of a larger group of (mostly) problematic chemicals called PFAS. Here is the EPA’s guidance on filtration standards and how to identify filters that are effective for PFAS: https://www.epa.gov/system/files/documents/2024-04/water-filter-fact-sheet.pdf https://www.epa.gov/system/files/documents/2024-04/water-fil... That PDF has links to products certified by various certification bodies, and suggests looking for products certified against NSF 53, NSF 58, or both. but the EPA also notes the following: > It's important to note that the current certification standards for PFAS filters (as of April 2024) do not yet indicate that a filter will remove PFAS down to the levels EPA has now set for a drinking water standard. EPA is working with standard-setting bodies to update their filter certifications to match EPA’s new requirements. In the meantime, remember that reducing levels of PFAS in your water is an effective way to limit your exposure. EWG has a list of recommended filters: https://www.ewg.org/research/getting-forever-chemicals-out-drinking-water-ewgs-guide-pfas-water-filters https://www.ewg.org/research/getting-forever-chemicals-out-d...

jeremy151 3y ago

I live in a city that was a hot zone for this type of contamination in the drinking water due to industrial waste from leather processing buried in the 60’s (shoe scraps treated with scotchgard.) We now have GAC filtering at the municipal supply level that is quite effective and not that expensive. The large beds of carbon last quite a while if I recall correctly. Despite regular testing, everyone I know RO filters their water regardless. For me, it’s because I have no idea what new previously “unknown” contamination will be next discovered, and would rather get out as much as is reasonable. When the information began to surface I found it interesting the letters on public record going back to the 60’s with people warning that allowing this kind of dumping was a bad idea. Of course being the primary employer to the entire city, the economics won at the time. Since, the cost of cleanup and lawsuits to that company have been massive.

datascienced 3y ago
RO is cheap enough for middle class or above (order of magnitude is ~ what you might spend on uniforms and excursions for a kid in a state primary school). Assuming a self install. So it is a good option if you can afford it. Maybe RO becoming part of the standard set of things you buy (washing machine, vacuum cleaner etc.) is the way. You have to keep up to date with filter changes though. RO typically needs a post filter. Hopefully that doesn’t add any bad chemicals. But you need it as pure water is desperate to bind, so you can either bind it to something you choose, or bind it to whatever pipe work / tanks are beyond the filter. Also you might want a higher ph. Maybe some disruption to make a nice looking, compact and cheap and zero install RO unit would be good and some subsidy for people without the means to buy one who live in risk areas. Plus subsidy for maintenance. If the design is like a printer where you pull out and push in new cartridges and have warning lights it will make maintenance easy.
- silisili 3y ago
  I feel like safe, clean water is the job of the municipal system that we pay so much for. Even the poors should have the same cleanliness as the middle class, but that's rather beside the point.
- 3y ago

BenFranklin100 3y ago

[flagged]

airstrike 3y ago
That's not a logical conclusion
yongjik 3y ago
Acid rain "scare" went away because people were rightfully scared, they told the government to fix it, and the government told the industry to fix it (or else!), and the industry did fix it. It would be GREAT ACHIEVEMENT if PFAS went the same way. https://www.statista.com/statistics/501303/volume-of-sulfur-dioxide-emissions-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/501303/volume-of-sulfur-...
manfre 3y ago
This is more likely to be similar to leaded gasoline. In a few decades we'll start to see the impact they caused after we successfully filter it out.
- scottyah 3y ago
  DDT is another example of bad things going on for decades that had severe repercussions. There's definitely something going on with wheat from America too, though I don't think it's been discovered/publicized.
- Freedom2 3y ago
  What was the impact of leaded gasoline?
  - aatharuv 3y ago
    Lowered IQ, impulse control, and increased levels of aggression.
clarity20 3y ago
The downvotes came! And it's not like you said something bad ...

peterbecich 3y ago

The California DWR has this map: locations of potential sources of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) https://gispublic.waterboards.ca.gov/portal/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=4feba1766c224dc99eadea06ef3bd019 https://gispublic.waterboards.ca.gov/portal/apps/webappviewe...

jjtheblunt 3y ago
Does California specify which water mains are old asbestos cement pipes? That famously caused ecological disasters in the Bay Area 20+ years ago, but they didn't (in newspaper articles i saw) show the extent of such.
- peterbecich 3y ago
  I'm not aware of that. I doubt asbestos cement water mains are a significant health risk to the end user. I think any asbestos that could become airborne is a risk. To the workers who installed those pipes, certainly.
  - jjtheblunt 3y ago
    Asbestos is implicated in gastrointestinal cancers too. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4856305/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4856305/
  - armatav 3y ago
    Luckily we can use common sense and intuit that razor sharp microglass embedded in the colon will cause cancer via immune response. Do you work for an asbestos company?

_heimdall 3y ago

Removing it from tap water seems like a great first step for mitigation. But what about preventing them in water in the first place? We shouldn't be using these chemicals. Period. Sure we're hooked on them now, but sunken cost is a terrible reason to continue down a bad path. We use these chemicals largely because industry kept finding more and more ways to use manufacturing byproducts. In theory that's great and all, but we avoid questioning if we should change that manufacturing process instead. A little pain now can avoid a mountain of pain later if we're actually willing to think ahead and question what we have today rather than focusing on what the next step forward is without ant context of how or why we got here.

DantesKite 3y ago

A few years ago, the PPM in my town's water was over 850 PPM, well above the recommended guidelines. Worse than that, it had a distinct sulfur-like smell. So naturally we got a reverse osmosis water filter system and while the tap water has improved since then, I'm always reminded of the occasional accidents that can occur (e.g., lead, excessive chlorination, plain old entropy). Plus it makes the water taste significantly better. Even if tap water was always perfectly safe to drink, I'd get one just for the taste alone. Brondell Circle RO systems are my favorite because the filters are the easiest to change and when you have the same system for years, that ends up being the labor you repeat the most.

michael9423 3y ago
Is Brondell just selling a white-labeled Coway product with their Circle RO system?
jjcon 3y ago
The funny thing about most of these systems is that they are all made of plastic. For towns with bad water quality I understand it but for most towns with limited or no PFAS I feel like there is the risk that you could be making the water worse

VelesDude 3y ago

When it comes large scale stuff... Cheesecake for everyone. Easy to say, difficult to do. The best move is prevention rather than correction.

j45 3y ago

I wonder if this kind of regulation exists in another country near or far.

DueDilligence 3y ago

[dead]

anigbrowl 3y ago

Meddling bureaucrats, it's my right to get cancer or some weird life-changing medical condition and the woke mob wants to take it away from me.

dang 3y ago
Please don't do this.

rgrieselhuber 3y ago

Toxic waste such as fluoride should be removed too.

29athrowaway 3y ago

Reminder: - The waterproof tape you used for your plumbing is made of PFAS. - Your floss too - Microwave popcorn and cupcakes - Contact lenses - Tampons

ars 3y ago
That's not true. Teflon is not a PFAS because it's missing the "tail" that makes it active. Teflon's predecessor PFOA is a PFAS, but there's not normally any remaining in the final produce. There is a valid concern with manufacturing of course, but not with use.
- mensetmanusman 3y ago
  Teflon is a subset of pfas. The discussion around this issue is just as unsophisticated as sating 'nuclear bad.'
- jjcon 3y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polytetrafluoroethylene https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polytetrafluoroethylene > Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) is a synthetic fluoropolymer of tetrafluoroethylene. It belongs to the per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)) and has numerous applications. The commonly known brand name of PTFE-based composition is Teflon by Chemours, a spin-off from DuPont, which originally discovered the compound in 1938.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - ars 3y ago
    Quoting Wikipedia doesn't actually change the nature of the chemical at hand. Would it help if I edited Wikipedia to clarify things? PTFE is inert, it is not chemically active like a PFAS. The fact that it has a related chemical structure is interesting, but also not relevant.
    - 3y ago

aaronbrethorst 3y ago

I bet this gets trashed when the Supreme Court reverses the Chevron doctrine this summer. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loper_Bright_Enterprises_v._Raimondo https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loper_Bright_Enterprises_v._...

cogman10 3y ago
Probably not immediately, but yeah. The EPA is about to be completely neutered. Every corporation out there is going to challenge it's authority when they get busted polluting.
jorblumesea 3y ago
or if trump wins in 2024 and he guts the epa himself. crazy how many structural forces US citizens need to fight just to get clean drinking water.

Sporktacular 3y ago

I remember first reading as a kid about DDT and thinking, wow, we really dodged a bullet with that one. Never could have imagined we wouldn't learn but go on to make and under-regulate hundreds of toxic substances in its place.

99112000 3y ago

"First ever" has been used very leniently here. Maybe it's the first ever for any state in America but the rest of the world definitely already has limits on it.

ShamelessC 3y ago
"_U.S._ imposes first-ever _national_ drinking water limits" emphasis mine.
- zamadatix 3y ago
  Using emphasis doesn't help bring clarity since the problem is the headline has multiple valid interpretations regardless if said words are emphasized or not. Adding something like "imposes its" helps highlight the intended interpretation.
- mort96 3y ago
  Can be read as "U.S. imposes its first-ever national drinking water limits" or "U.S. imposes world's first-ever national drinking water limits". There's a missing word and it's not clear from context what it's meant to be.
cgh 3y ago
Note: 1 ppt == 1 ng/L. The EU limits are 500 ng/L for the sum of all PFAS in drinking water. Canada has an "objective" of 30 ng/L but I don't know how well it's enforced. The US proposal is for 4 ng/L for each PFAS but I'm not sure how they calculate the combined amounts. If it's simple addition, then it's 38 ng/L according to the article.
- 99112000 3y ago
  Fair enough, at least the limits they proposed are among the best in the world. Credit where credit is due!

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gjs4786 3y ago

Why should I have to pay money to a avoid incuring an incurable disease? I can understand, possibly, possibly, fronting the cost. But, only while they sort out the details with the installers. The first contaminant to make it through on a federally recognized level...9 billion dollars in funding. Holy shit. And this is just getting started. This, after looking just now ( https://www.google.com/search?q=pfas+funding+sources&oq=pfas+funding https://www.google.com/search?q=pfas+funding+sources&oq=pfas... ), Seems to be in addition to a 10 billion dollars that was earmarked in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of '21, and 2 billion from the EPA. That's in addition to the up to 12.5 billion that 3M has agreed to pay directly to water providers through 2036. I didn't know there was a tort case, either. It finished last year. 33.5 billion dollars. I can't wrap my head around this. Seems like a significant amount for an equally significant problem that most people have never heard about. And this is likely not nearly enough. This is shaping up to be a 100 billion dollar public health crisis / 3M offset. Surely, I am missing several more broad funding allotments, this is just just getting started. When I can't understand the scale of something, I tend to look at the size of the response. It's not perfect, but it's a start

jrmg 3y ago
33.5 billion dollars. I can't wrap my head around this Given the US population of just over 333 million, its a but over $100 per person.
- nickjj 3y ago
  > Given the US population of just over 333 million, its a but over $100 per person. That's true but not everyone lives in their own complex. A family of 3 will benefit from 1 installation. An apartment complex with 500 people could benefit from 1 installation assuming the benefit comes from something installed at the base of the unit and then applies to all inner-building plumbing.

CatWChainsaw 3y ago

Forever chemicals, forever fines. Seems fair.

hereme888 3y ago

If the president and his cabinet set such a rule, and water companies' reply is "people will complain it's expensive", it makes me think something seriously bad was happening with these PFAS and the industry is running from accountability for deaths from cancer and the like. Never outsource your personal health to others. Filter your drinking water.

s3p 3y ago
I'm confused because many water supply companies and municipal governments already use filter media that clean PFAS. My city for instance, upon looking tonight I see they use GAC filter media which is biologically active. Activated carbon filters are the industry standard for removing PFAS from the water supply.
- hereme888 3y ago
  Good to know. But most people don't know, and I still wouldn't drink tap water for the many other contaminants present in "safe" amounts.

wouldbecouldbe 3y ago

How about 0. Those who made the mess pay for cleaning it.

probably_jesus 3y ago

Isn't Flint's water still all messed up? When is the US government going to realize that nobody believes anything they say because they in fact do nothing. Just a bunch of blah blah blah with no action items or results of their meaningless words. Uncle Sam is like a drunk uncle at at Thanksgiving, it talks day in and day out each word more meaningless than the one it follows.

snowwrestler 3y ago
The Flint water crisis has been resolved. “After $400 million in state and federal spending, Flint has secured a clean water source, distributed filters to all who want them, and laid modern, safe, copper pipes to nearly every home in the city.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis

datadeft 3y ago

Given the track record of the US enforcing these laws and managing water infrastructure I doubt that it makes a difference. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis

greenie_beans 3y ago

this is gonna cost so much money. they better give money to all the small towns without much money, if they're gonna force them to do this.

JoshTko 3y ago
Cost is relative, presumably preventing everyone from getting cancer is less expensive than just clean water regulation.
- greenie_beans 3y ago
  of course. i'm not against this, lord knows. i'm just saying that they better give these small towns money if they're gonna force them to do this.

ThinkBeat 3y ago

As the article notes there are still a substantial amount of lead pipes polluting drinking water. We have known about the dangers there for a long time and still it has not been solved. Unless this comes with a few trillion USD I dont see how it will make much of a difference. Perhaps shutting off water entirely in regions?

uconnectlol 3y ago

> Health advocates praised the Environmental Protection Agency which ones? which ones didn't? just 2 days ago i heard PFAS is still in the rumor stage. > Water providers are entering a new era with significant additional health standards that the EPA says will make tap water safer i thought you already said it's safe? i have plenty of health issues caused by just about everything, everything has 10 billion perfumes for no reason, and new kinds of experimental plastics in every single possible thing you can buy, that smell terrible and unsurprisingly make you feel awful, just walking in a city and coming in fills my face with irritants and can ruin my day. this is a small difference in comparison. i doubt the PFAS thing is any more than a typical fad and way for gov to make money as usual. nobody actually cares about this stuff, they just pretend.

hanniabu 3y ago

I guess this funding will go towards affluent communities first?