Tell the EPA It Must Do More to Protect Communities from Toxic PFAS

From Clean Water Action (http://www.cleanwateraction.org/):

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) must do more to protect communities from toxic PFAS.

Send a message to EPA today at https://cleanwater.salsalabs.org/pfas-disposal-guidance-feb-2021/index.html.

In December 2020 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued an “Interim Guidance” for disposal and destruction of per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), also known as “forever chemicals.” Unfortunately EPA’s new guidance does not ensure that PFAS can be disposed of safely. Instead, this document outlines and exposes a long list of unknowns about what happens to PFAS sent to landfills, burned in incinerators, or injected into deep wells underground. The bottom line is this: the EPA doesn’t have the data to know if any of these three PFAS disposal methods are safe.

That’s unacceptable.

Congress required the EPA to develop guidance for the disposal and destruction of some PFAS and PFAS-containing materials. These materials include firefighting foam, filters, membranes, and other waste from water treatment; and solid, liquid, or gas wastes containing PFAS from facilities manufacturing or using PFAS. EPA was directed to ensure the guidance considers potential releases of PFAS into water, air, or on land during destruction or disposal and to consider the impact different disposal methods could have on vulnerable communities.

This guidance doesn’t do that. Tell the EPA that it must do more to protect people and communities from PFAS pollution.

The EPA must carry out more research to develop methods to manage, destroy, and dispose of PFAS safely, and must also do more to eliminate and control PFAS at the source. Current PFAS disposal practices have no scientific proof of safety, are inadequate, and can even exacerbate pollution. This is not a new issue — communities impacted by PFAS pollution have raised concerns about additional PFAS exposure from unsafe disposal practices for years.

Instead of rushing to approve unproven disposal methods, the EPA should prioritize the protection of vulnerable communities by issuing strong safeguards to address PFAS pollution. Because PFAS are so difficult to clean-up, the EPA must do everything in its power to strictly limit the use of PFAS to essential products and applications and to ensure these chemicals don’t end up in our air, water, and soil in the first place. We need to focus on prevention, not spreading contamination further.

Send a message to EPA today.