State lawmakers considering ban on ‘forever chemicals’

PROVIDENCE — Even as state health officials say they are within months of releasing draft regulations on the so-called “forever chemicals” found in firefighting foam, cookware and food packaging, legislators are considering their own measures to crack down on the substances that have contaminated drinking water supplies across the nation.

In recent weeks, House and Senate committees have held hearings on legislation that would ban the use of food packaging in Rhode Island that contain compounds in the per- and polyfluoroalkyl substance, or PFAS, family. There have also been hearings on a bill that would restrict levels of the substances found in drinking water systems in the state.

Sen. Adam Satchell, the West Warwick Democrat who introduced the food packaging legislation in the Senate, said that action needs to be taken now to regulate the chemicals.

“People talk about them as an emerging threat,” he said Thursday at a hearing before the Senate Committee on Health and Human Services. “But these things are here already.”

Invented in the 1930s and prized for their ability to repel oil, water and grease, fluorinated compounds have been used in such common consumer products as Teflon, Scotchgard and GORETEX. But in recent decades they have been shown to cause developmental disorders in children, raise the risk of cancer, interfere with hormonal production and increase cholesterol levels.

The chemicals are water-soluble, don’t break down in the environment, and can accumulate in human bodies over time. Although they can be breathed in through dust and, to a limited extent, absorbed through the skin, the highest risk comes through food and drink consumption.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is studying the risks of PFAS chemicals, but it has yet to adopt federal rules that include a nationwide drinking water standard. The agency has instead recommended a “health advisory level” for concentrations in drinking water of the two most common substances in the family of 70 parts per trillion. (One part per trillion is about equal to a grain of sand in an Olympics-size swimming pool.)

Critics, however, say the recommendation is not legally enforceable, that the level is too high and that it fails to account for a large number of related substances.

In the absence of strong federal action, the Conservation Law Foundation and other environmental groups have been pushing the Rhode Island Department of Health for more than a year to come up with an enforceable drinking water standard for the compounds. Last February, the foundation together with the Toxics Action Center unsuccessfully petitioned the Health Department to immediately adopt a standard of 20 ppt for five of the substances.

The department has been testing water systems for the chemicals in recent years. Every major drinking water system and every school in the state has been tested since 2013. At least one PFAS compound was found in 44 percent of the 87 systems that were tested and 12 systems had levels above 20 ppt for the five chemicals highlighted by the foundation and the toxics center.

Only one system, the Oakland Association, in Burrillville, had numbers exceeding the EPA advisory level. The state Department of Environmental Management traced the contamination in the well that served some 35 homes and a half-dozen smaller wells back to firefighting foam that leached into the ground from the Oakland-Mapleville Fire District. A new water line to supply the neighborhood was completed last summer.

Even though the Health Department turned down the petition to immediately take action, it convened an advisory group that started meeting last July to consider a drinking water standard. The group, which includes representatives of the DEM and local water systems as well as experts from Brown University and the University of Rhode Island, is also looking at engineering costs that will be required to bring systems into compliance if a standard goes into effect and the ratepayer impacts.

The department said last fall that it was working on maximum contaminant levels for the chemicals and was aiming to release draft regulations this month. At a hearing before the House Environment and Natural Resources Committee earlier this month, Seema Dixit, the department’s chief of environmental health, said the rules would be presented to the governor’s office in early to mid-March and be ready for the public to see by May 15.

“We know where PFAS is in the state. We know which chemicals we are going to work with. We know the health risks associated with different levels and we have the engineering capital costs and operating costs,” Dixit said. “Based on all of that, we are planning to make a recommendation for what we believe would be the ideal value for regulating PFAS.”

It’s unclear what level the department will recommend. The legislation under consideration in the General Assembly would mirror last year’s petition and set the standard at 20 ppt for five PFAS compounds.

At the Senate committee hearing on Thursday, URI toxicologist Angela Slitt said that the science around the health effects of the chemicals is still developing but she said it’s clear that the best way to reduce potentially harmful PFAS levels in the human body is to restrict their use.

“We know that when we withdraw those chemicals from the market, it affects everyone,” she said.

The Rhode Island Food Dealers Association and the American Chemistry Council both registered opposition to the legislation. Joan Milas, a lobbyist for the council, said its members are amenable to working with both federal and state agencies to regulate their products.

“We prefer science-based evidence,” she said.

Sen. Erin Lynch Prata, D-Warwick, who introduced the drinking water legislation in the Senate, said Rhode Island and other states can’t count on the federal government to regulate the chemicals.

“I don’t think there’s a lot of hope that this administration is going to do anything about this in the near future,” she said. akuffner@ providencejournal.com

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