In 1980, the federal government enacted the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), commonly known by most as the “Superfund.” This enterprise remains our nation’s most ambitious and significant step in cleaning up contaminated toxic waste sites, for example, the infamous Love Canal in Niagara, N.Y. Now, the Environmental Protection Agency is deploying the Superfund to protect Americans from the next great chemical threat: dental floss.
In a move fitting for “Ripley’s Believe It or Not,” the EPA is in the process of crafting a new regulation under CERCLA that, because of the presence of a widely used chemical component, could require Americans to use special disposal practices for such daily household items as dental floss, shampoo, non-stick cookware, carpeting, rain and fire-retardant clothing, and countless other everyday products.
Regular trash bins for these items would be a no-no, and a violation may lead to criminal charges. Worse still, American manufacturers, product distributors and municipalities’ waste management and water treatment facilities that handle these components would be under the microscope and forced to spend billions to comply with the EPA’s new rule. The proposed regulation is a massive undertaking that will leave an enormous footprint across our entire economy. Yet, by every measure, the path necessary to implement this rule in a sound, efficient and scientific manner has yet to be paved.
The specific targets of EPA’s proposal are a handful of chemicals with long names, which are generally referred to as PFAS, or as some have dubbed them “forever chemicals” because they have been categorized as not breaking down over time. The EPA wants PFAS and its adjacents classified as hazardous chemicals under CERCLA. This designation would burden every business and consumer with obligations that the EPA has yet to sort out or provide the slightest bit of guidance.
Astoundingly, EPA is pushing an immensely costly and burdensome rule while acknowledging it has no answers to basic questions concerning PFAS, such as how to detect them, their level of harm to humans, and how to manage and dispose of them. This is the hallmark of rushed and shortsighted bureaucratic overreach. As one indication, federal agency rules submitted to the Office and Management and Budget are typically reviewed within 60 days. Still, nine months after the EPA sent its proposed PFAS rule to OMB, it has yet to receive a response, a clear sign of a problem with the rule’s workability.
The EPA’s agenda lacks a properly reviewed scientific foundation, a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis, and workable methods to comply with the rule. As just one example: There currently exists a considerable dearth of disposal methods for PFAS, a formidable obstacle that will not be overcome simply by the EPA writing a new rule commanding they be disposed of “properly and safely.”
Comedian Steven Wright told a joke about chemists who created an acid so strong that it could eat through anything. The problem was they couldn’t find anything to store it in. Ironically, this quip is analogous to the issue with PFAS, as there are no readily available methods to comply with the rule EPA proposes. The science, as it were, is lagging. As written, the regulation sets standards for handling PFAS without providing businesses, municipalities and consumers the faintest idea of how to comply with these goals.
Fortunately, some members of Congress seem to agree. Recently, senators Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Gary Peters, D-Mich., introduced legislation to improve coordination and communication between federal and local governments regarding the handling of PFAS.
A growing chorus of diverse interests ranging from the business community to environmentalists and municipalities is now warning the EPA that an incoherent and half-baked regulation will make identifying, containing and disposing of PFAS exceptionally costly and fail to improve public health.
The Sierra Club, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Clean Water Agencies are just some of the dozens of organizations and coalitions that have all implored EPA to pull back on this rule until more data is collected, more scientific research is completed, and logistical obstacles to meeting the rule’s stringent requirements are addressed.
As with any agency rule that exceeds $100 million in costs, the EPA’s PFAS rule is subject to public comment, presenting an ideal opportunity for more voices to be heard and — it is hoped — for reason to prevail. PFAS comes in so many forms, in so many products and in so many different concentrations that it would be beyond reckless to create a rule that paints all uses of PFAS with one broad brush.
Much more information is needed before the EPA is equipped to formulate a sensible PFAS regulation. As it stands, the science backing up their current proposal is thinner than dental floss.
