EPA sets stricter standards for GenX, other 'forever chemicals' in NC drinking water

The EPA announced new stricter health standards for GenX and two other so-called "forever chemicals" that are polluting North Carolina's water. Those new standards could lead to cleaner, safer water in your home and across the country.

At a national conference Wednesday in Wilmington, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency administrators unveiled the new federal health advisory goal.

PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are considered emerging contaminants. They’re called “forever” chemicals because they break down very slowly in the environment, so they persist in the air, water and soil. They’re used in everything from fast-food wrappers to raincoats to firefighting foam.

The EPA’s new limit for GenX in drinking water is just 10 parts per trillion. That’s 14 times lower than the limit the state first set, 140 parts per trillion, in 2018 when scientists were just beginning to study the compound. The 140 ppt limit was the basis for the state's legal settlement with Chemours years ago.

In the years since then, environmental attorney Geoff Gisler says studies have shown GenX and other PFAS chemicals are toxic even in tiny amounts, especially to the human kidney and liver. "It can suppress your immune system, causing immune disorders," he said. "And then it also has a range of other health effects that get connected to various different cancers like thyroid cancer, and can cause developmental delays."

Gisler, senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, says the ultimate solution to this problem is "using the existing laws to require industries upstream to disclose their pollution, and to install technology to capture it."

"We know there are effective technologies to control PFAS," he said. "And if we can do that, then we can save a whole lot of money for utilities and ratepayers downstream, and a whole lot of the costs that you can't measure—the agony, the distress, the illness."

Environmental advocates have been pushing the EPA to regulate the chemicals. They say as many as 55,000 different compounds are in use commercially. Manufacturers don’t have to report discharging most of them because they’re not on the EPA’s list of known dangerous substances.

GenX is a PFAS made by the Chemours Co., a Delaware-based manufacturer with a large plant on the Cape Fear River near Fayetteville. In 2016, Dr. Detlaf Knappe and his team at North Carolina State University discovered that the chemical had contaminated the river and surrounding groundwater. The state ordered the manufacturer to stop the contamination and provide water filtration systems to households whose wells were contaminated.

The new limit is “advisory,” which means it’s not legally enforceable. But Erin Carey with the NC Sierra Club said it's still very significant as the first step the EPA has taken toward addressing PFAS compounds.

"A health advisory is non-regulatory, it's non-binding, but it absolutely gives state governments like ours guidance on where they can start setting reasonable health advisories of our own," Carey said. "This is a huge step in the right direction, for sure."

Advisory or not, the change appears likely to impact Chemours. According to the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality, the consent order it entered into with Chemours requires the company “to provide whole house filtration for private drinking water wells with Gen-X concentrations above a health advisory.”

According to a news release from DEQ, the federal health advisory will now replace the state health goal in that agreement, which means that “more than 1,700 additional private well users will now be eligible for whole house filtration or connection to a public water supply. DEQ is directing Chemours to proceed with the implementation of the health advisory."

DEQ spokeswoman Sharon Martin said at present, under the terms of the state's legal settlement with Chemours, 270 homes are already eligible for whole-house filtration because their wells are at or above the state's provisional safety level of 140 ppt of GenX. She said 6,411 more homes had GenX contamination that didn't reach 140 ppt, but were still eligible for reverse osmosis drinking-water filtration.

With the change in standards to the new EPA guidelines, DEQ estimates more than 1700 of those who initially qualified for reverse osmosis will now be eligible for whole-house filtration.

Chemours says it's considering suing the EPA over the advisory level, which the company claims is not grounded in valid science.

"At Chemours, we support government regulation based on the best available science," the company said in a statement. "While the EPA claims it followed the best available science in its nationwide health advisory on HFPO-Dimer Acid, that's not the case. Nationally recognized toxicologists and other leading scientific experts across a range of disciplines have evaluated the EPA's underlying analysis and concluded that it's fundamentally flawed."

The company said the EPA disregarded relevant data and issued a health advisory "contrary to the agency's own standards and this administration's commitment to scientific integrity."

The EPA is also working on new limits for two other forever chemicals—PFOA and PFOS—that are found in the Haw River. The contaminants, coming from wastewater systems in the Triad, have been a big problem for the city of Pittsboro, which draws its water from the Haw. The proposed new limits would require those chemicals to be undetectable.