Read the full article by Sharon Udasin (The Hill)

“Actor and activist Mark Ruffalo urged President Biden to accelerate action on ‘forever chemicals’ on Thursday, while calling out the administration’s failure to meet key regulatory deadlines.

‘When candidate Joe Biden pledged to make PFAS a priority during his campaign, communities contaminated by PFAS polluters for decades rejoiced,’ Ruffalo said, referring to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances.

Nine months after taking office, Biden launched the PFAS Strategic Roadmap — a plan that the actor described as ‘the most ambitious’ of any administration and an indicator to communities ‘that help was finally on the way.’

‘But since that announcement, the Biden administration has missed some important deadlines,’ Ruffalo said.

The actor was speaking at a webinar organized by the Environmental Working Group (EWG), during which both he and pioneering environmental attorney Rob Bilott demanded that the government make good on its commitments to regulate these toxins.

Ruffalo commended the Biden administration for its August proposal to designate two types of PFAS — PFOA and PFOS — as hazardous substances under the Superfund Law.

But he slammed the administration for missing key deadlines to set drinking water standards for these two compounds and to address releases of PFAS into the water and air.

‘None of us volunteered to have a toxic forever chemical in our blood in our bodies and in our food and in our environment,’ Ruffalo said…

…The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had stated that it would issue a proposal for National Primary Drinking Water Regulations for PFOA and PFOS — the two most common types of PFAS — by fall 2022.

Nonetheless, the proposed rule has yet to be released.

As far as setting limits on industrial discharges of the substances is concerned, the EPA revealed in January that it ‘intends to publish a proposed rule in the spring of 2024’ — postponing its initial timeline by about nine months.

The EWG Report Card likewise called out the EPA for missing a target date that involved PFAS air pollution.

The agency’s PFAS Strategic Roadmap had indicated that by fall 2022, it would evaluate a variety of mitigation options, including the possibility of listing certain types of PFAS as hazardous air pollutants. It has yet to provide updates.

‘We’ve all been victims to the polluters who hid the risks of PFAS from their workers and neighbors, and the victims of the regulators looked the other way for decades,’ Ruffalo said.”…