Pa. to begin its own process of setting health limit for two PFAS chemicals

As the EPA launches national PFAS plan, Pennsylvania says its people "can’t wait" for the federal government.

Displayed is an Environmental Protection Agency report ahead of a news conference in Philadelphia, Thursday, Feb. 14, 2019. Under strong pressure from Congress, the EPA said Thursday that it will move ahead this year with a process that could lead to setting a safety threshold for a group of highly toxic chemicals in drinking water. (Matt Rourke/AP Photo)

Displayed is an Environmental Protection Agency report ahead of a news conference in Philadelphia, Thursday, Feb. 14, 2019. Under strong pressure from Congress, the EPA said Thursday that it will move ahead this year with a process that could lead to setting a safety threshold for a group of highly toxic chemicals in drinking water. (Matt Rourke/AP Photo)

Pennsylvania will begin the process of setting its own health limits for two toxic PFAS chemicals because it’s unclear when the federal government will set national standards, the Department of Environmental Protection said late Thursday.

Responding to Thursday’s announcement by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that it will begin the process of setting maximum contaminant limits (MCLs) for PFOA and PFOS this year, the DEP committed for the first time to laying the groundwork for a statewide standard for the chemicals.

“Pennsylvania will begin the process to set an MCL for PFOS and PFOA,” DEP spokesman Neil Shader wrote in an email. “To that end, the Department of Environmental Protection will be moving forward with a Request for Proposals to hire a consulting toxicologist to evaluate existing health studies with the ultimate goal of establishing a protective MCL for the state.”

The email welcomed what it called the EPA’s “first steps” toward setting a federal health limit but said Pennsylvania would move ahead with establishing its own MCL because “the people of Pennsylvania cannot wait on the federal government.”

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Although the administration of Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf set up an “Action Team” of state officials to respond to PFAS contamination last September, it did not say then that setting a MCL would be part of the team’s mandate, and has not publicly set that goal until now.

Advocates for stricter limits on PFAS chemicals in drinking water say that MCLs are essential to protecting public health, and have questioned why Wolf’s team did not name the establishment of those limits as its primary goal.

DEP’s Shader said the timing of the emailed statement, on the same day as the EPA’s announcement of its own plan to curb the chemicals, was just a coincidence. Critics of the EPA plan said it offered no immediate way of cleaning up contaminated water supplies, and represented another delay from an agency that has been widely criticized for failing to set enforceable national health limits for the chemicals.

In Pennsylvania, the new plan includes obtaining laboratory equipment and training personnel in order to do in-house testing for PFAS chemicals, the DEP said. It will also finalize a sampling plan in coming weeks, and plans to begin monitoring “other” water systems for contamination in May or June.

The DEP previously said it was monitoring 20 sites around the state for PFAS contamination.

Shader did not immediately respond to questions on what Pennsylvania’s MCL might be, how long it would take to implement, or whether the DEP would draw on PFAS science already developed by other states such as New Jersey.

PFAS chemicals including PFOA and PFOS were once used in consumer products like nonstick cookware and flame-retardant fabrics. They are no longer made or used in the U.S. but persist in public and private water systems as well as soil in some places because they don’t break down in the environment. The EPA says the chemicals are linked to some forms of cancer and other illnesses including elevated cholesterol, low birth weights, and thyroid problems.

In Pennsylvania, concern has focused on the Horsham/Warrington/Warminster area of Bucks and Montgomery Counties where high PFAS levels have been found in public and private water systems near two former military bases that used the chemicals in firefighting foam for decades. Although some towns there have now removed PFAS chemicals from public water supplies, the bases remain a source of contamination, threatening to taint local ground water.

In January, a New Jersey landfill canceled an agreement to take 4,500 tons of PFAS-contaminated soil from the Willow Grove base at Horsham where the Navy is trying to remove the most polluted soil.

Growing evidence of the PFAS risk to public health and the EPA’s longstanding failure to set national MCLs has prompted some states including New Jersey to set their own limits that are much stricter than the EPA’s current health advisory level of 70 parts per trillion for PFOA and PFOS combined.

Pennsylvania currently uses the EPA’s health advisory level as its public health benchmark, but campaigners say that’s not strict enough to protect public health.

Delaware Riverkeeper Network, a Pennsylvania-based environmental group that has long campaigned for the state to set MCLs for PFAS chemicals, welcomed the DEP’s statement but said it will keep pressing DEP to ensure it actually sets a limit.

“It is good news to finally hear that PA DEP is saying they are ‘beginning the process’ but we have heard promises before without results,” said DRN’s deputy director, Tracy Carluccio. “We will be watchdogging the next steps by PA DEP.”

She said DRN petitioned Pennsylvania’s Environmental Quality Board in May 2017 to set an MCL for PFOA, and the petition was accepted but no MCL was set.

Mark Cuker, an environmental attorney, and member of the grassroots group Buxmont Coalition for Safer Water, says Pennsylvania should act quickly by consulting the science produced by New Jersey’s Drinking Water Quality Institute, a panel of scientists that advises the state’s DEP. The DWQI recommended a much lower safety standard for PFAS chemicals than the EPA’s current advisory of 70 parts per trillion. That recommendation includes a maximum contaminant level of 14 ppt for PFOA and 13 ppt for PFOS and PFNA, which has been adopted by other states.

Cuker says there’s no reason to reinvent the wheel.

“New Jersey did comprehensive scientific analyses by top-flight people,” said Cuker. “Large compendiums of hundreds and hundreds of pages. It was good enough for California, it was good enough for New York. It should be good enough for Pennsylvania. This is not action, this is just words.”

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