PARKERSBURG — A step toward the federal regulation of a family of chemicals, of which C8 is a member, has been announced by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The preliminary determination toward regulation announced by the EPA is the last step before the agency recommends limits on PFOA (perfluorooctanoic acid) and PFOS (perfluorooctanesulfonic acid) in drinking water under the Safe Drinking Water Act.
“The U.S. leads the world in providing access to safe drinking water for its citizens, thanks in part to EPA’s implementation of the Safe Drinking Water Act,” said EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler. “Under President Trump’s leadership, EPA is following through on its commitment in the Action Plan to evaluate PFOA and PFOS under this Act.”
Public comment will be taken for 60 days by the EPA, which also requested information and data on other PFAS substances.
U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., said she has been aggressively pushing the EPA to set a standard, introducing legislation and has talked several times with Wheeler.
“I applaud the EPA and Administrator Wheeler for starting the process to finally regulate these legacy ‘forever’ chemicals and provide Americans the certainty that the water they drink, cook and wash with, and bathe in is free of these harmful compounds,” Capito said.
Besides C8 in the Mid-Ohio Valley, PFAS, also is used in fire-suppression equipment and chemicals. Contamination from fire training and responses at the Shepherd Field Air National Guard Base was discovered in 2014 in the city of Martinsburg’s Big Springs water well. The well was taken out of service in 2016 after the EPA revised the limits to 70 parts per trillion.
“West Virginia is all too familiar with the challenges of PFAS contamination, and now communities around the country are realizing they also have challenges from PFAS pollution,” Capito said. “Setting maximum contaminant levels for these two compounds is an essential step in addressing this human health and environmental issue and I look forward to continuing to work with the EPA to ensure standards are robust, scientifically-driven, and issued in a timely fashion.”
The settlement of the C8 lawsuit against DuPont in Wood County led to the creation of a science panel that studied the health data from about 70,000 residents of the Mid-Ohio Valley and found a probable link between the chemical and six diseases in people.
DuPont and its successor Chemours are also financing water filtration systems in local water supplies where C8 exceeds the .07 parts per billion limit set by the EPA.
Harry Deitzler, an attorney representing the C8 plaintiffs in the lawsuit, cautioned about how safe levels are determined.
“Past problems with the water systems in Charleston and Vienna make it clear that we must have a viable plan to resolve water contamination issues before more people are poisoned or local emergencies are forced to shut down entire systems,” he said. “EPA regulation can be an important step in the right direction, but only if the safe levels are determined by health science rather than industry economics. If industry controls the EPA, the EPA ‘safe levels’ will be used as a shield for industry rather than a protection for the public.”
Deitzler cited the C8 situation in West Virginia.
“In the C8 case here in West Virginia, we saw a worst case scenario of regulatory abuse when state regulators bowed to industry pressure in 2001. West Virginia’s C8 Assessment of Toxicity Team under the leadership of DEP team leader Dee Ann Staats, Ph.D., brazenly set a safe level for C8 in our water at 150 ppb when DuPont’s own internal ‘safe’ level was only 1 ppb,” Deitzler said. “The higher West Virginia DEP ‘safe’ level was utilized to protect industry from the claims of victims impacted by C8 carcinogenic exposure.
“It was not until 15 years later that the EPA issued the current safe level at 70 parts per trillion, more than two thousand times lower than the 150 ppb WV safe level arbitrarily set by Staats in 2001,” Deitzler said.