Read the full article by Rob Billot (Taft PFAS Insights)

“As the world grapples with the staggering costs to human health and the global economy arising from decades of contamination of human drinking water supplies with per- and polyfluoroalkylated substances (‘PFAS’), it is sobering to realize how close we had actually come to filtering the bulk of these ‘forever chemicals’ out of our nation’s drinking water almost 50 years ago: but lost that opportunity after the most basic information about the very existence of these toxins in our environment was withheld and covered up. In particular, I am referring to a proposal by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (‘EPA’) back in 1978 that would have required installation of the same type of public water filtration systems that are now being installed globally to filter the most prevalent PFAS out of our drinking water; but which ultimately was scrapped by the Agency before the EPA and the public were ever told these PFAS were in our water.

Although the first PFAS chemicals were invented in the United States around the time of World War II, and were being used and released into the environment in massive quantities by the late 1970s, EPA and the rest of the public were not told what was known about the toxic effects of these completely man-made organic chemicals or the extent of the population being exposed to them, including through drinking water, until decades later. Nevertheless, by February of 1978, EPA was already seeing very troubling scientific evidence of serious risks to human health, including cancer, arising from the presence of the mix of ‘synthetic organic contaminants’ that already were in the nation’s drinking water, even if EPA could not identify what each of those specific chemicals were at the time. Thus, in an effort to prioritize protection of public health and hopefully prevent further harm before it occurred, EPA recommended that public water systems install granular activated carbon (‘GAC’) filtration systems to begin immediately removing the mix of synthetic organic contaminants, even though the full nature and extent of the threat was not yet confirmed, the specific chemicals causing the harm were not yet identified, and it might take much more time to definitively prove the public health impacts.”…