Your drinking water, unprotected
EPA moves to rollback limited drinking water protections from PFAS
Welcome to the The Environmental Health Brief—by Lindsay Dahl—a nationally awarded activist and author of Cleaning House (HarperCollins). This newsletter gets into complex topics through a lens of credible peer-reviewed science (no pseudoscience folks), my experience as a lobbyist (I’ve helped pass over 30 laws on toxic chemical pollution), and today’s wild, weird, wellness culture (“clean wars” and beyond).
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Last week, the EPA confirmed what environmental health scientists and advocates like myself have been warning about for months: the agency is moving to roll back federal drinking water limits for four types of PFAS—the class of persistent chemicals often referred to as “forever chemicals.” At the same moment, the EPA’s own new testing data revealed that roughly 176 million Americans are now exposed to forever chemicals in their tap water, four million more than the agency’s previous count.
Let that tension sit for a moment. The contamination of our drinking water is getting worse. And the protections we’ve spent decades building are being quietly dismantled. Will we let these rollbacks live in the quiet, or will you join me in getting loud?
Here’s what’s actually happening, what the science says about why it matters, and what you can do right now.
What Are PFAS, and Why Are They Everywhere?
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances are a family of more than 12,000 synthetic chemicals that have been used in manufacturing since the 1940s. They appear in nonstick cookware, stain-resistant carpet, waterproof clothing, food packaging, firefighting foam, and countless other products. The carbon-fluorine bond at the heart of their chemistry is one of the strongest in nature, which is precisely what makes them so useful in manufacturing—and so dangerous everywhere else.
They don’t break down in the environment. They don’t break down in your body. They accumulate. (Known as PBTs, persistent, bioaccumulative, and toxic. Code = the worst of the worst).
The EPA’s own risk assessment confirms that PFAS exposure is associated with increased risk of some cancers including prostate, kidney, and testicular cancers; reduced ability of the immune system to fight infections; interference with the body’s natural hormones; and increased cholesterol levels and risk of obesity.
Those aren’t speculative associations. The cancer links in particular have been studied extensively in peer-reviewed literature which you can find in the bibliography and Chapter 5 of Cleaning House. A 2023 systematic review and meta-analysis published in the top tier, high impact journal Environmental Health Perspectives found an association between overall PFAS exposure and the risk of kidney cancer, and at high-level exposure, people faced a substantially elevated risk of both kidney and testicular cancer.
The National Cancer Institute has conducted some of the largest studies to date on PFAS and kidney cancer, finding that higher kidney cancer incidence and mortality have been observed among individuals with high PFOA exposures from employment in a PFAS-producing chemical plant or from residence in the surrounding community with contaminated drinking water.
Simply put: this isn’t “fear mongering” pseudoscience, the science on PFAS health harms is substantial, peer-reviewed, and growing.
Details on the PFAS drinking water rollback
The 2024 Biden-era rule set federally enforceable Maximum Contaminant Levels (MCLs) for six PFAS compounds in drinking water. The two best-studied—PFOA and PFOS which you may remember from my book or the film Dark Waters—were limited to 4 parts per trillion, a level based in part on the EPA’s own immunotoxicity data.
Erik Olson, Senior Strategic Director of Health for NRDC summarized it perfectly,
“There is good reason to be concerned about toxic PFAS and microplastics in drinking water, but the EPA’s actions speak louder than its words. The Trump EPA is trying to scrap key PFAS standards and just two weeks ago said it wouldn’t issue any new protections for toxins in drinking water. So, which is it?”
The Trump administration is now moving two PFAS rollbacks simultaneously
First, it is seeking to rescind the drinking water standards for four other PFAS compounds: GenX, PFBS, PFNA, and PFHxS. Leaving those chemicals unregulated in tap water, even though the EPA’s own toxicity assessments found that exposure to even extremely small doses could pose serious health risks.
Second, it is pushing to extend the compliance deadline for PFOA and PFOS from 2029 to 2031, giving water utilities two additional years before they’re required to meet even the standards that remain.
The EPA’s plan to reverse these four limits may also contradict an anti-backsliding provision in the Safe Drinking Water Act, which requires any revision to a federal drinking water standard to maintain or provide greater protection of human health (legal challenges are already underway).
The administration has stated it remains committed to addressing PFAS. But the gap between verbal commitments (polite way of saying lipservice) and the regulatory actions underway is significant.
To me it’s clear the administration is hoping to continue to appease and capitalize on the strong bipartisan support for addressing toxic chemicals ahead of the midterm elections, while also appeasing the chemical industry through rollbacks hoping we don’t notice.
We’re too smart for that though right?
How this connects to rollbacks on TSCA
The drinking water rollback is one piece of a larger picture. The Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) is the federal law governing chemical safety across our homes and consumer products. It was meaningfully strengthened in 2016 with bipartisan support—a story of a 10 year journey I write about in Cleaning House. TSCA since then has delivered real protections: a more meaningful ban on asbestos, restrictions to dangerous paint strippers, and guardrails preventing some new PFAS from entering the market at all.
Now, with TSCA’s fee authority set to expire in September 2026, Congress is weighing bills that would overhaul the law more broadly—changes that environmental advocates say could weaken the EPA’s power to restrict harmful chemicals. A House Republican discussion draft released in January would push the EPA toward narrower, weaker risk determinations—increasing the likelihood that federal actions would block stronger state chemical protections.
In states like California, Maine, Minnesota, and New York, where PFAS bans on textiles and other consumer products are already law, this could mean those protections are preempted by a weaker federal standard.
Not. Cool.
As my colleague Liz Hitchcock of Toxic-Free Future put it in a January statement: this proposal reflects “a chemical lobby wish list.”
More than 250 health and environmental groups have formally urged Congress not to reopen the law. The outcome of this fight will shape the chemical landscape in American homes for decades.
What You Can Do Now
The regulatory picture is sobering, but there are real, evidence-based steps you can take to reduce your family’s PFAS exposure from drinking water today.
HIGHEST IMPACT ACTION
Call your Members of Congress. 202-224-3121 and let your Senators and House Representative know you oppose ALL rollbacks to existing toxic chemical laws, including TSCA.
If calling is intimidating to you, send this email action from Toxic Free Future that is pre-drafted. Insert language about how you area also disappointed to see the drinking water rules on PFAS rolled back.
Find out what’s in your water. The EPA’s PFAS drinking water testing data is publicly available and searchable. Contact your water utility to request their most recent testing results, or use the EWG Tap Water Database to look up your zip code. I also love MyTapScore which I feature in my book as a great way to learn about what’s in your tap water before buying a filter. (Reminder, filtered tap water is better than bottled water for most communities.)
Invest in the right filter. Not all water filters remove PFAS. The two technologies with the strongest evidence are reverse osmosis systems and activated carbon filters certified to NSF/ANSI Standard 58 (for reverse osmosis) or Standard 53 (for activated carbon). A pitcher filter alone is generally not sufficient for PFAS.
Look beyond the tap. PFAS enter our bodies through more than drinking water. Nonstick cookware, stain-resistant upholstery, microwave popcorn bags, and fast food wrappers are all common sources. For readers who want a deeper look at reducing the overall chemical burden in their homes—not just from water—I have a section at the end of Cleaning House.
Watch your state legislature. States are expected to continue advancing PFAS laws in 2026, with a focus on product bans, remediation requirements, and public health studies. Visit saferstates.org to see what is happening in your state and how to get involved.
The good news is that this fight isn’t over. States are moving. Lawsuits are pending. And informed citizens are the most durable protection we have.
Next Friday [paid], I’ll be publishing a state-by-state guide to where PFAS protections stand right now—which states have the strongest bans, where to check your own water, and what’s on the legislative calendar. Paid subscribers get the full resource. [Upgrade here.]
Take Action: Let Congress Know You’re Paying Attention
to Rollbacks on Toxic Chemical Protections