Washington – Today, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released proposals to eliminate and weaken regulations intended to protect the public from forever chemicals, or PFAS, contamination of drinking water. 

The Trump EPA has proposed a rule to outright eliminate the limits related to four PFAS in drinking water: PFHxS, PFNA, HFPO-DA (known as GenX) and PFBS. Another proposal would allow water systems that meet certain criteria to delay their deadline to comply with the limits for PFOA and PFOS for up to two more years. 

Food & Water Watch water program director Mary Grant released the following statement:

“With today’s proposals, the Trump administration is telling the public to drink poison. It has once again shown that it represents the interests of billionaire corporate polluters – not the health of people in this country. 

“One thing is absolutely clear, we cannot roll back or delay protections against PFAS. For decades, communities have been sounding the alarm and demanding action on these toxic forever chemicals. Instead of implementing commonsense regulations, Trump’s EPA has doubled down on weakening our drinking water protections. Every person deserves and needs clean, safe water and today’s proposed rules are threats to millions of people. 

“EPA must not delay or roll back these hard-won limits on toxic PFAS contaminants in drinking water. It must immediately cease these deregulatory actions, stop approving new PFAS chemicals, ban all non-essential uses, hold polluters accountable for clean up, expand protections to regulate the entire class, and ramp up support to ensure that every community has access to safe, affordable water.” 

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a class of thousands of toxic lab-made chemicals that are contaminating the drinking water supply of tens of millions of people. 

In 2024, the EPA put in place landmark protections to limit the amount of six types of PFAS in drinking water.