The EPA is keeping a troubling new study on drinking water under wraps. Here's what you need to know

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Will Scott Pruitt release it ahead of next week’s summit on harmful chemicals in water?

The Environmental Protection Agency has been in the news a lot lately, thanks in large part to its administrator, Scott Pruitt, who appeared before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee Wednesday as part of the 12 ongoing federal inquiries into his spending, record-keeping, and his behavior as head of the agency. But another issue may be making the headlines soon—and it’s closer to home than it is to Washington. It’s in your tap, in fact.

By now, contamination of our water supply by perchlorates—a specific class of chemical produced in industrial settings—is a given, though until early 2011 they weren’t on the EPA’s list of drinking water contaminants. Since then, the agency has established guidelines about how much of some per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs)—namely perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoate (PFOA)—can be in drinking water before it poses a significant public health risk. But it’s muzzling another government agency whose new report gives much lower safe drinking water levels than those suggested by the EPA

This is important for a few reasons, but among them is the fact that the EPA doesn’t actually regulate the levels of PFOA and PFOS in drinking water. What it’s done is create an established “healthy advisory level” which is the same for both: 70 parts per trillion. Health advisory levels are just supposed to give information, not to actively regulate chemicals in drinking water across the country.

But there’s a strong case for regulating these two chemicals and other PFASs: a significant body of scientific research suggests that they’re bad for us, in pretty much any quantity. That’s because they stick around and accumulate in living things over time, permeating soil and water and traveling up the food chain. They’ve been associated with issues in pregnancy and birth and some cancers, but scientists are still trying to understand how precisely they impact human and environmental health, as well as what to do about it.


More: https://www.popsci.com/epa-drinking-water-chemical-study?CMPID=ene051918