A new study notes that technologies installed to eliminate chemicals forever from drinking water are also done by eliminating other harmful materials, including certain substances linked to certain types of cancer.
The study, published Thursday in the journal ACS ES&T WATER, comes as the Trump administration revises a rule requiring that water systems take measures to forever cleanse chemicals in drinking water.
The per- and polyfluoroalkyle (PFAS) substances, colloquially called chemicals forever, are a class of thousands of chemicals that do not deteriorate in the environment and have been linked to a disturbing series of health results, including various cancers, hormonal disorders and development times. Because they do not deteriorate, they are only omnipresent: a 2023 study of the US Geological Survey estimated that 45% of tap water in the United States could contain at least one PFAS chemical.
Last year, the Biden administration finalized a rule establishing the first legal limits of APFs in drinking water, setting strict limits for six different types of PFAS chemicals and forcing that the water services necessary to clean the drinking water under these limits by 2029. But in May, the EPA Trump said that it would be the dead line by two years. The changes come after a widespread outcry of Water Utilities, which claim that the installation costs of the PFAS filtration systems would well exceed what the agency originally estimated.
“Based on historical actions to contact the PFAS during the first Trump administration, EPA is attacking the PFAs of all our program offices, making research and tests progress, preventing the PFAs from embarking on drinking water systems, holding responsible polluters, and even more,” said Brigit Hirsch, EPA press secretary. “It is only a work fraction that the agency does on the PFA during the second term of President Trump to guarantee that the Americans look, the cleanest earth and water.”
Hirsch also stressed that, as EPA comforts standards for the four chemicals in question, “it is possible that the result is more strict requirements.”
Experts say that PFAS cleaning costs could have other advantages beyond the simple release of chemicals forever supplying Americans. The authors of the new study – All employees of the Environmental Working Group (EWG), a non -profit organization that does research on chemical security – say that the technology that gets rid of APFs can also filter a number of other harmful substances, including some that are created as by -products from the water treatment process itself.
The study examines three types of water filtration technologies that have proven to be eliminated PFA. These technologies “are really widespread, they have been used for a very long time, and they are well documented to eliminate a large number of contaminants”, explains Sydney Evans, main analyst at EWG and co -author of the report.
In the United States, most processes of routine water disinfection involve adding a chemical – generally chlorine – to water. Although this process suppresses harmful pathogens, it cannot be a leachate of PFAs or other types of contaminants, including heavy metals and elements such as arsenic.
