By 2027, a federal rule will require your local water utility to ensure that the water they send to your home has no more than trace amounts of six toxic chemicals that could damage your liver, weaken your immune system and trigger thyroid cancer, among other maladies.
Except now, the current Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is moving to weaken that rule—including rescinding the limits for four of those PFAS chemicals and delaying limits on the other two. Here’s the story:
What are PFAS?
PFAS are a class of at least 9,000 chemicals that are used in numerous consumer products to make them water-resistant, durable or non-stick. Some of the earliest uses of PFAS are traced back to the 1950s, when they were created for nonstick coatings.
Today, PFAS are not-so-affectionately known as “forever chemicals” because they don’t break down for decades or longer. And the more they build up inside our bodies, the bigger risks we face. Exposure to even low levels of PFAS over time have been linked to a wide range of health effects, including increased risk of some cancers, decreased fertility and developmental delays in children.
Yet even as new research links PFAS to human health effects, companies continue to make and use them. At each step of the chemicals’ life cycle, more PFAS enter our environment—in the waste generated during manufacturing, in the small particles shed by consumer products during use and in the PFAS-contaminated trash that gets dumped in landfills.
The result is PFAS pollution. As of July 2025, the most recent data from the EPA indicates that 158 million people are now at risk of drinking PFAS contaminated water. The problem could be even more widespread: One estimate suggests that two types of PFAS—PFOS and PFOS—have likely contaminated the drinking water of 200 million people across the U.S. So unless water utilities are required to remove these toxic PFAS, they are likely to be in the water flowing from your kitchen sink for years to come.
The EPA takes steps to rescind its own PFAS limits in drinking water
In light of this public health threat, in 2024, the EPA set strict limits for six types of PFAS in drinking water. These standards are set to go into effect in 2027. While we still need additional rules to keep all the other types of PFAS out of our water, these first-ever national limits are a crucial step for our health. The American Chemistry Council and the National Association of Manufacturers are currently challenging these standards in court, along with two public water utility associations.
Unfortunately, the current EPA is now moving to roll back these PFAS limits. Ordinarily, such a step would require the agency to go through a formal rule-making process where it would be subject to scientific and public scrutiny. Moreover, the EPA would have to somehow overcome the Safe Drinking Water Act’s prohibition on weakening drinking water standards.
Yet the EPA appears to be pursuing a way to sidestep these legal guardrails to weaken its own rule.
Rather than defend its own standards, the EPA has asked a federal court to vacate them for four types or mixtures of PFAS: PFHxS, PFNA, PFBS, and GenX chemicals. If the court agrees, then these PFAS limits would disappear—with no public comment, scientific scrutiny or protections of the Safe Drinking Water Act.
The all but certain result? More of these chemicals will find their way into our drinking water, and stay there.
What you can do to support clean drinking water
PFAS have been detected in the drinking water of all 50 states. PFAS in drinking water have been linked with cancer.
We must stop the EPA from rescinding its own limits on PFAS in our drinking water. Environment America is calling on Congress to make the existing PFAS limits the law of the land.
Before you go: Tell your U.S. House representative to support the PFAS National Drinking Water Standard Act.
