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The new standards will protect thousands of Mainers

Defend Our Health applauds the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) announcement of a first-ever national safe drinking water standard for PFAS. The new health-protective standards are significantly lower than Maine’s interim 20 parts per trillion (ppt) PFAS standard and will extend further protection to more than 134,000 Mainers who are living with exposure to PFAS in their drinking water. The new national standards of 4 parts per trillion (PPT) for PFOA and PFOS, along with the 10 PPT for PFNA, PFHxS, and GenX, will also expand protection from PFAS in drinking water to the residents of the 40 US states who still have no state-level drinking water limits. 

“In 2022, EPA told us that there was no safe level of certain PFAS in drinking water, and today, the federal government is protecting communities all over the country living with ongoing exposure,” said Sarah Woodbury, Vice President of Programs and Policy. “We are grateful to the EPA and the Biden Administration for taking this important step to protect public health by setting such strong standards for drinking water systems. We are also grateful that there is one billion dollars in grant funding for those with residential wells to help test and remediate their wells. However, even one billion dollars is not enough to cover the cost of all PFAS-impacted wells across the U.S., so we urge the Maine legislature to pass LD 1006, “An Act to Ensure Access to Safe Drinking Water from Household Wells in Rural Areas by Expanding Testing” and make sure that Maine is funding water testing for income-eligible Mainers so all Mainers can access clean drinking water. Access to clean drinking water is a basic human right.”

Today’s announcement fulfills one of EPA’s promises to protect communities through its PFAS Roadmap, released in 2021. According to the US Centers for Disease Control, 97% of the US population has been exposed to these PFAS at levels that the National Academy of Science, Engineering, and Medicine identifies as presenting an increased risk of kidney and testicular cancer, hypertension, preeclampsia, and immune system impacts. In 2022, the EPA announced lifetime health advisory levels for PFAS, which were below the commercially available detection level. While the newly announced maximum contaminant levels (MCLs) are higher than the lifetime health advisory levels, they still represent significant progress towards lowering a dangerous level of PFAS exposure across the population.

An analysis of Maine DHHS’s data on PFAS levels in public water systems by Defend Our Health reveals that one in ten Mainers rely on a public drinking water supply that has been contaminated at levels that Maine’s current standards do not yet require filtration, but which EPA now deems unsafe. The 134,035 at-risk Mainers include the residents of large municipal water supplies like the urban residents of Waterville, Brunswick, Topsham, Augusta, and Sanford. The Maine DHHS data also shows that more than 14,000 students and staff at 60 Maine schools, daycares, and colleges are drinking contaminated water that falls between EPA’s new safe drinking water limit and Maine’s interim limits. The disproportionately low-income residents of 10 mobile home parks in Maine will gain new protections from PFAS with the latest EPA limits, as will the residents of numerous apartments, retirement communities, and assisted living facilities.   

EPA’s new safe drinking water limits will offer limited protection to people who use residential wells.  Maine DEP has identified 661 residential wells contaminated above Maine’s now outdated limit of 20 ppt, and sources close to the DEP investigation anticipate that the number of identified residential wells needing filtration will double under EPA’s new standard.  DEP provides free water filtration for contaminated wells identified through the department’s sludge investigation or its uncontrolled sites program. However, outside of DEP’s investigations, Mainers who rely on wells are currently left to their own devices to test their water supplies and invest in filtration.