Read the full article by Gareth McGrath (Wilmington-Star News)
“The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has announced plans to delay the rollout of new regulations for some ‘forever chemicals’ like GenX. The move comes as the Trump administration moves quickly to reduce the size and the regulatory scope of the EPA, an agency that many Republicans think is a shackle on businesses and impedes economic growth.
But the decision has hit many in the Cape Fear region hard, considering Southeastern North Carolina has been the epicenter of the national pollution crisis since the StarNews first reported in 2017 the presence of manmade chemicals in municipal drinking water systems and groundwater wells that couldn’t be filtered out. Decades of uncontrolled dumping of the chemical compounds into the environment, including into waterways and groundwater that serve as drinking sources for millions, and their widespread use, including in fire-fighting foam, has seen contamination and health concerns from the per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), including GenX, proliferate across the country. The substances are often called forever chemicals because they do not easily break down in nature or the human body.” …