Read the full article by Francis Ofori-Awuku (Rockefeller Institute of Government)

“As the Rockefeller Institute of Government’s research has previously outlined, there have been growing public health and policy concerns about per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) over the last decade. PFAS, sometimes colloquially referred to as forever chemicals, are synthetic chemicals that have been widely produced and used in the United States and internationally since the 1940s for their resistance to heat, water, grease, and oil. These properties are due to their strong carbon-fluorine bonds and nonpolar nature (meaning they do not interact strongly with either water or oils). However, they also make PFAS highly persistent in the environment and the human body, contributing to known and potential long-term health impacts. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has identified over 4,700 PFAS-related substances, although broader structural definitions suggest that PFAS may encompass far more compounds than this number reflects. Despite this, only a small fraction of these compounds are routinely monitored in drinking water or evaluated for human health effects.

In the United States, drinking water is one of the major pathways of human exposure to PFAS. PFAS exposures are associated with many adverse human health outcomes, including ulcerative colitis, thyroid disease, high cholesterol, pregnancy-induced hypertension, testicular cancer, prostate cancer, and kidney cancer, as well as associations with immunosuppression, vaccine suppression, and reduced infant and fetal growth. Moreover, these drinking water exposures can involve multiple PFAS or co-occurring PFAS compounds. Most regulatory frameworks in the United States, on the other hand, evaluate potential contaminants—including PFAS—individually. However, studies suggest that PFAS may exhibit dose-additive or biologically interacting effects, meaning that when people are exposed to more than one PFAS, the chemicals may combine or interact in ways that increase their overall effects. Consequently, evaluating PFAS compounds individually may result in underestimating the additive and cumulative exposures (repeated exposure over time) that communities may experience when drinking water contamination involves mixtures of PFAS. Recent state policies and federal regulatory proposals have begun to address such mixtures, even as ongoing legal challenges and regulatory shifts may complicate that.”…