Why Trump administration’s plan to attempt to destroy Pfas is ‘nonsensical’

The EPA said it was cutting Biden-era regulations on Pfas in drinking water, but advocates say the move will harm public health and benefit industry

A new Trump administration plan to ditch Pfas drinking water regulations and instead attempt to destroy “forever chemicals” on a wide scale tears a page from the fossil fuel industry’s carbon capture playbook, and will benefit the industry while harming public health.

The US Environmental Protection Agency last week announced it is moving to kill strong Biden-era drinking water limits around four Pfas compounds, and delaying implementation for two more. It represented a blow to public health – advocates say strong limits and a dramatic cut in the production of the dangerous chemicals are imperative.

Still, the press conference was billed as a “Pfas destruction event”, and administration leaders largely spent their time touting an “explosion in destruction technology”, and EPA investment in industry efforts to protect public health by eliminating the chemicals.

They were, in effect, suggesting they had a solution to a crisis that did not require the drinking water regulations. The problem with the Trump plan: technology that fully destroys Pfas does not exist, and while progress is being made in its development, it is unclear when – if ever – it may be deployed on an industrial scale.

The idea that the administration is going to destroy its way out of the Pfas problem is “nonsensical”, said Kyla Bennett, a former EPA scientist. It parallels fossil fuel industry attempts to use unreliable carbon capture technology as a solution – both offer the appearance of meaningful action while allowing industry to continue to profit and pollute at the expense of public health.

“No one has said they can destroy Pfas on a large scale,” said Bennett, who is now with the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (Peer) non-profit. “From what we know about Pfas, this is not going to work, and to say ‘We’re going to destroy it so we don’t need to regulate it’ is bullshit.”

Pfas are a class of at least 16,000 compounds most frequently used to make products water-, stain- and grease-resistant. They have been linked to cancer, birth defects, decreased immunity, high cholesterol, kidney disease and a range of other serious health problems. They are dubbed “forever chemicals” because they can persist for thousands of years in the environment, and are designed to be indestructible.