EPA Backtracks on Claim US Has Phased Out Toxic Pfoa and Pfos

The Environmental Protection Agency has quietly altered language on its website that said two of the most dangerous Pfas compounds, Pfoa and Pfos, had been phased out in the United States. The revision came in response to a complaint filed by the nonprofit Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (Peer), which argued the agency was allowing Pfoa production while telling the public otherwise. In a response dated 18 September, EPA assistant administrator for chemical safety and pollution prevention Douglas Troutman wrote that the agency was updating its websites in response to Peer's request.

The agency's site previously stated that the manufacture and import of Pfoa had been phased out in the United States. It now says that quantities of Pfoa may be produced, imported and used by companies, and notes that Pfos remains in production for some limited, ongoing uses. According to the Guardian, both chemicals have in fact been produced in the US throughout, at levels that independent science suggests are quite high. The change was made under the Information Quality Act, which requires that information published by federal agencies be complete and accurate.

The original phase-out dates to 2015, when the EPA reached an agreement with eight Pfas producers to stop making Pfoa and Pfos, a similar chemical produced by 3M. The deal followed documents made public during landmark litigation in the early 2000s over DuPont's Pfas pollution in West Virginia, which exposed the chemicals' dangers. Though the agency stopped short of an outright ban, officials repeatedly described the compounds as phased out, giving the impression they were no longer produced or used in the US.

At the center of the dispute is Inhance, a Houston-based company that makes up to 200m plastic containers a year for use across the US economy. The EPA has found that Pfoa leaches from those containers at high levels into their contents, while Inhance has denied the chemical leaches out in measurable amounts and told the Guardian that any Pfoa in its products is an impurity. Kyla Bennett, a former EPA scientist now serving as science policy director at Peer, said the containers present an ongoing serious threat to public health.

The website reversal is the latest turn in a six-year legal battle. The EPA appeared unaware that Pfas were being added to plastic containers until late 2020 testing by Peer found high levels in pesticides stored in Inhance bins; a subsequent agency investigation uncovered wide-scale contamination and prompted a subpoena. The EPA ordered Inhance to cease production in March 2022 and again in December 2023, but the later ban was overturned by a federal appeals court, and a Peer lawsuit was dismissed after a judge ruled the group lacked standing. Inhance chief operating officer Patricia van Ee said the company had made adjustments to cut Pfoa impurities by 90% and cited third-party risk assessments concluding that estimated exposure does not present an unreasonable risk.

The EPA considers virtually no level of exposure to Pfoa or Pfos in drinking water to be safe, and the International Agency for Research on Cancer classifies Pfoa as carcinogenic to humans and Pfos as possibly carcinogenic. An epidemiological panel convened during the West Virginia DuPont case found the chemicals were likely causes of cancer, heart disease, liver disease and kidney disease, and its findings formed the scientific basis for the phase-out. Bennett said the reversal underscores why phase-outs are inadequate and bans are needed, arguing that a chemical with no safe level should not be manufactured at all. The EPA did not immediately provide a comment to the Guardian, and Inhance stressed in its statement that no ban was ever in place and that it was not among the eight companies that agreed to stop producing Pfoa.