The Biden administration has proposed a new set of nationwide standards for drinking water, seeking to limit the levels of certain fluorinated chemicals that can build up in human body over time and have been associated with cancer.
The draft regulation, published Tuesday by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), targets six chemicals known by the abbreviations PFOA, PFOS, PFNA, PFBS, PFHxS, and GenX. They have been found in drinking water supplies across the nation.
These chemicals are among the thousands of types of PFAS, a broad class of artificial compounds often referred to as “forever chemicals” because it takes an extremely long time for them to break down in the environment. Some of them never fully break down….