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The Environmental Protection Agency has set the country’s first federal limits on forms of PFAS in drinking water, a class of “forever chemicals” that have been tied to negative health outcomes and have been found in one form or another in nearly half of the US’s tap water supply.
The policy could help improve the water quality of as many as 100 million people.
Having a standardized federal policy will eventually take the pressure of monitoring drinking water off of individuals, who currently have to do so in most states. The proposal, however, falls short of calling for companies that have utilized PFAS heavily — like DuPont and 3M — to curb their usage or cover cleanup costs, a move that experts say is needed to fully address the problem of these contaminants.
“The issue and the cost and the burden of all this shouldn’t fall on communities, it shouldn’t fall on the consumer. It’s the polluter that needs to pay,” Tasha Stoiber, a senior scientist at the Environmental Working Group, told Vox last year.
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