Harris & Walz Expected To Take A Tougher Stance On “Forever Chemicals”

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Public health advocates are optimistic that a Kamala Harris and Tim Walz victory in the US presidential election this November will lead to further regulation of toxic “forever chemicals,” so-called because they can take decades or even centuries to break down after they get released into the environment. Commonly referred to as PFAS, they are a class of about 15,000 chemicals typically used to make products that resist water, stains, and heat. They are called forever chemicals because they do not naturally break down, and can accumulate in humans and the environment. The chemicals are linked to cancer, kidney disease, liver problems, immune disorders, birth defects, and other serious health problems. In April, the EPA set new limits on 6 forever chemicals that are found in many public drinking water supplies.

Last year, as governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz signed bold legislation prohibiting the use of toxic PFAS across a range of common consumer goods from menstrual products to food packaging  — a measure that is considered by public health advocates to be among the “strongest bans in the world.” According to The Guardian, Walz worked closely with victims of PFAS pollution as the legislation moved forward through the Minnesota legislature. Sarah Doll, director of Safer States, which advocates for tougher regulations on toxic chemicals at the state level, said, “He has lived experience with the families … and just having that could bring a deeper understanding of the complexities and the challenges that we face.”

Though forever chemicals are added to thousands of consumer products, the federal government has done little to regulate how they are used. Instead, states in recent years have begun enacting their own bans on PFAS in consumer goods. Minnesota’s 2023 law prohibits the chemicals in 13 product categories, including clothing, children’s items, and cookware. Walz drew praise as a national leader on the issue in part for signing the bill despite intense opposition from 3M, one of the world’s biggest corporations and a major producer of PFAS chemicals. The fact that it is headquartered in Minnesota made the action taken by that state’s legislature and governor all the more extraordinary.

There are some concerns that the law in Minnesota is not broad enough to cover dangerous new PFAS, but Doll said there was always some uncertainty in the implementation of toxic chemical laws. “There is nothing I heard or saw or read in this that is a dagger that is going to undermine the potential for this to be an effective, strong law,” Doll said. She added that Walz also signed legislation restricting the use of other toxic chemicals, like flame retardants.

Harris, meanwhile, has drawn wide praise from environmental groups for taking on big oil. As California’s attorney general, she pursued criminal charges against some of that industry’s polluters and defeated an Obama administration proposal to allow fracking off the coast of California. The Center for Environmental Health in Oakland, California, praised her for helping to lead opposition in 2013 to an overhaul of the federal Toxic Substances Control Act pushed by the chemical industry. It was ultimately defeated and a stronger version rewritten and passed several years later.

During her tenure as San Francisco’s district attorney, she established what was among the first environmental justice units in the nation. Harris was also part of the Biden administration’s 2021 PFAS Road Map, a first-of-its-kind comprehensive plan to rein in pollution which led to the establishment of strict new limits for the chemicals in drinking water implemented earlier this year. The agency is also beginning to consider air pollution, food contamination, and more efficient approaches to regulating the thousands of PFAS compounds on the market.

A second Trump presidency would be likely spell the end of those efforts and any new regulations that are in the works. A Harris-Walz administration would probably continue the Biden administration’s policies, several former EPA officials told The Guardian. “A new administration will always review the prior administration’s policies,” said Walter Mugdan, a former EPA deputy regional administrator. “Biden and Harris seem to me to be fairly aligned on environmental issues, so I would expect only minor overall changes versus a wholesale change in emphasis or direction.”

Industry Pivots To “Attack The Science” Approach

In June, the chemical industry, the drinking water industry, and the National Association of Manufacturers filed suit in the US Court of Appeals for the DC circuit to block the new EPA rules designed to limit forever chemicals in drinking water. They claim the scientists at the EPA are a bunch of anti-industry stooges who go out of their way to come up with junk science to satisfy some amorphous socialist plot cooked up by George Soros and a coterie of childless cat ladies. In other words, it’s the same threadbare strategy of FUD developed by the tobacco industry to defend itself against vile attacks by do-gooders and busybodies who wanted to prevent people from enjoying the health benefits of sucking tobacco smoke into their lungs. That same strategy has also been used to denigrate climate science and electric cars. Anything that threatens profits must be resisted at all costs. In fact, it appears the chemical industry is well aware of the danger from using its products.

“The chemical industry and water utilities publicly declare their commitment to safe drinking water, yet now they turn around and claim in court that there is no law, no science, and no need for rules that protect drinking water from toxic PFAS pollution. They have long downplayed how dangerous these forever chemicals are. It’s outrageous,” said Erik Olson, senior strategic director for health at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “Duplicitous and self-serving arguments by the chemical industry and water utilities must no longer dictate whether millions of families can trust the water from their kitchen tap. People need these EPA standards to protect their drinking water and their families’ health.”

“The science is clear. These PFAS have been well-studied and linked to multiple serious health harms. Water utilities and the chemical industry are sowing doubt despite the overwhelming weight of evidence that forever chemicals are a threat to human health,” said Dr. Anna Reade, Director of PFAS Advocacy at NRDC.

The Guardian says it has reviewed documents that show the chemical and water industries are hiring scientists who care more about money than truth to buttress their challenge to the EPA rule on forever chemicals. In particular, it says a month after suit was filed, Michael Dourson, a toxicologist who receives some funding from chemical manufacturers, sent an email to scientists, consultants, and lawyers detailing a plan to develop and publish so-called peer reviewed science for chemical companies to use as evidence against PFAS limits.

Current and former Environmental Protection Agency staff who reviewed the documents allege that scientists like Dourson are engineering an ethically questionable plan designed to generate uncertainty about the “robust” science underpinning the PFAS limits. Those plans are “not a valid approach to science,” said Maria Doa, a former EPA risk assessment manager now with the Environmental Defense Fund. Instead, she said they were a legal strategy out of the industry playbook for undoing regulations. “They’re trying to undermine the EPA’s science, make it sound like there’s uncertainty where there isn’t and make it sound like there’s disagreement within the scientific community where there’s not,” Doa added. The EPA amassed hundreds of animal and epidemiological studies before issuing its new rules in April.

A ruling against the limits would discourage regulatory action on other toxic chemicals beyond PFAS in water, said Betsy Southerland, a retired EPA water division manager. “This is pivotal. If a court strikes this down … then the EPA will say the bar is too high to ever regulate using the Safe Drinking Water Act.”

Dourson said accusations of bias were “disingenuous.” He once worked for the EPA, but left the agency to set up what his critics characterize as a “one stop shop” for industry-friendly research — Toxicology Excellence for Risk Assessment. He claimed TERA was “very much an independent, neutral science NGO.” In 2017, Trump nominated Dourson to oversee the EPA’s chemical safety division, but he was forced to withdraw his name after failing to get enough GOP support, in part because his Senate critics alleged he ran a “Science for Sale” operation that allowed the American Chemistry Council to edit papers.

Dourson’s July email cites the legal challenge to the new regulations, then adds “a couple approaches can be used to support [it], but nearly all of them require peer reviewed and published papers before serious consideration.” So his group would create scientific papers that would be developed in part on presentations that industry-connected researchers, attorneys, consultants, and former Trump EPA officials gave at an October 2023 conference organized by TERA at which they honed the attack. Dourson wrote that the papers will be “published as the first issue of [a] new journal” being established to first provide “support” for the legal challenge, Dourson states in the email, which solicits donations to help fund the operation. “Can we count on your group to make a tax-deductible donation to get our team to publish a set of papers by the end of 2024?” he asks.

“In my 22 years spent in three regulatory programs I came to understand the games [the industry] plays, but this one astonished me because it’s unusual to be so blatant,” Penny Fenner-Crisp, a former EPA water division manager who worked with Dourson, told The Guardian. This is typical of the Triumpian playbook as epitomized by the Project 2025 playbook. Spout a fountain of lies over and over again until the opposition crumbles.

The Takeaway

Forever chemicals are found in the water that 200 million Americans rely on. You might think that would be enough to justify the EPA choosing to act cautiously to protect those people from significant health risks, but in America today, profits far outweigh a few thousand people getting sick and dying because of the crud found in their water, or tens of thousands of children suffering neurological damage. Chemical companies like 3M make billions from manufacturing forever chemicals. How dare the government exercise its authority to protect the citizenry when doing so will hurt shareholders? In addition, getting rid of those forever chemicals will cost billions of dollars. Who is going to pay for that, huh?

CleanTechnica readers might be so bold as to suggest those who created the pollution in the first place should pay to clean up their mess, but that is not how capitalism works in the modern world. Profits must be protected in every instance; people are expendable. Kamala Harris and Tim Walz seem to think that the scales are unbalanced in favor of corporations and that situation needs to be corrected. Yet another reason to vote for them in November.