The rule that put the first federal limits on 'forever chemicals' in drinking water is barely a year old, and the EPA is already moving to take part of it back. A proposal published in the Federal Register in May would rescind the drinking-water standards for four PFAS compounds - PFHxS, PFNA, GenX, and a mixture of these plus PFBS - and delay enforcement of the limits on the two best-known ones, PFOA and PFOS [1][2]. The agency held a hearing on it July 7, and the public comment window closes around July 20 [2].
The 2024 rule was the first time the federal government set enforceable drinking-water limits for PFAS, a class of industrial chemicals linked to cancers, immune harm, and developmental effects, and named for how long they persist in the body and the environment [2]. The new proposal would rescind the standards for the four compounds outright and keep the limits for PFOA and PFOS while pushing their enforcement deadline back several years [1][2].
Former EPA official Betsy Southerland said the agency 'is delaying enforceable safeguards and reopening protections for dangerous forever chemicals' [2]. Ken Cook of the Environmental Working Group put it more sharply: 'you cannot make America healthy again while allowing toxic PFAS to flow freely from our taps' [2].
The stakes are, quite literally, what comes out of the faucet. The 2024 limits are the mechanism that forces utilities to test for and filter these compounds; rescinding four of them, and delaying the other two, lifts that legal obligation for the systems involved and shifts the cost and the exposure back onto the people drinking the water [2]. The proposal is filed as a technical rescission of 'regulatory determinations' - the quiet channel through which a protection is removed, entered into the register and opened for comment rather than announced as a rollback [1].
A proposed rule is not yet a final one, which is precisely why the comment window matters. What the record shows right now is an EPA moving to unwind the first federal PFAS drinking-water standards a year after they were written, on a timeline that closes public comment in late July [1][2].
