CONGRESSMAN BOYLE STATEMENT ON FIRST NATIONAL STANDARD ON PFAS/PFOA LIMITS

WASHINGTON, DC – Congressman Brendan F. Boyle (PA-2) issued the statement below, following today’s announcement by the Biden administration setting the first ever national EPA standard to limit PFAS & PFOA for drinking water. PFAS & PFOA “forever chemicals” are an urgent public health threat. PFAS are persistent, bio accumulative, and toxic. Increasingly, communities across the country continue discovering PFAS & PFOA contamination in their air, land, and water. Exposure to PFAS has been linked to deadly cancers, impacts to the liver and heart, and immune and developmental damage to infants and children.
 
“I commend the Biden administration for taking this decisive action today that builds upon the repeated and ongoing actions I have taken in Congress to regulate harmful per-and polyfluoroalkyl (PFAS) ‘forever chemicals’ in our water supply. This first-ever national and legally enforceable drinking water standard will finally give the EPA the tools it needs to protect communities like mine from exposure to these harmful chemicals. I look forward to expanding my efforts on this critical matter by reintroducing my revised Protecting Drinking Water from PFAS Act. This proposal, which I first introduced in 2019, will codify and strengthen EPA regulations and provide a roadmap for future administrative efforts to address water contamination.”
 
The new standard issued by the Biden administration is now legally enforceable with the ultimate goal of reducing our exposure to these “forever chemicals.” Water utilities will be mandated to filter out five of more than 12,000 types of individual forever chemicals — PFOA, PFOS, PFNA, PFHxS and HFPO-DA, also known as GenX chemicals. The regulations also set a limit for mixtures of any two or more of PFNA, PFHxS, PFBS and GenX chemicals.