Today, I'm Parts pervillion. What's the federal government's latest plan to deal with p fass aka forever chemicals, and perhaps more importantly, what's the government's plan to help find the money to pay for that p fast plan. Hello, and welcome back once again to Parts per billion, the environmental podcast from Bloomberg Law. I'm your host, David Schultz. So it's been a while since we've talked about p fast
on this podcast. For the uninitiated, p fast is an acronym that stands for eleven syllable phrase that is very hard to pronounce for folks like me who haven't taken a chemistry class in decades. Suffice to say, p fast chemicals have been one of the biggest emerging environmental problems for the past few years, and that's because they've been used in a variety of applications for a long time.
We now know exposure can cause serious health problems, and their chemical bonds are so strong that it's nearly impossible for them to break down in the environment, hence the nickname forever chemicals. President Biden is now the third consecutive president to grapple with the p fast problem, and earlier this month, his administration, led by the EPA, came out with a roadmap for how to address p fasts in
the coming months and years. Bloomberg Law chemicals reporter Pat Razuto covered the release of that plan, as she has with every other piece of breaking p fast news over the past few years. I talked to Pat about what the Biden plan would actually do and if there's any sense yet of how it's all going to get paid for. But first I asked Pat to bring us all up to speed on what exactly p fast chemicals really are. Well, other than being an unpronounceable group of chemicals, they are
a huge group of thousands of chemicals. Although thousands the EPA knows about six hundred and fifty are actively made or used in the US. What distinguishes this group are these two types of molecules, carbons and flooring, that cling together so tightly Superman is going to probably need help to tear them apart. Then, I guess that's why they're
called forever chemicals. Yes, that is a part of it, because once they get into the environment, they just hang on and hang on and hang on, and we actually don't know what their half life life in the environment is and remind me what are they used for. I mean, the things that come to my mind are non stick pans and firefighting foam. But I get to gather there's
a lot more uses than just those two things. Oh yeah, there are, and they are used to give all sorts of stuff that people like, you know, smartphones, cafeitters, wires, cables, fuel cells, solar panels, and non stick cookware special properties like they transfer data really quickly and effectively, they help a capeitter stay safely in our bodies for decades, and
they turn hydrogen and oxygen into electricity. But you know, the flip side of all those nice uses of ffasts that I mentioned are that pfasts are also associated with a host of problems. At least some PFASs are increased cholesterol, weaker immune systems, low weight babies, which which might sound really good to a mom who's in the middle of giving birth, but so having a low weight baby isn't
a good indicator for its future. So thyroid problems is another problem that is associated with certain pfasts, as is certain cancers. Wow, but let's talk about the most recent news. The reason why we're talking because the EPA just released its past roadmap for how to deal with p FAST in the environment. Can you just sort of briefly sum up within that roadmap and what's supposed to happen in
the next few years. So, Yeah, this last week, EPA and seven other agencies announced the spectrum of actions that they are taking. But EPA most particularly to reign in the problematic p FAST that we already know about, to gather a heck of a lot more information about the other thousands, and to be much more careful as we allow new p fas to be made and used. Yeah, tell me about some of the deadlines that are in this plan. What needs to happen, you know, bios specific dates.
So the things that people have been asking EPA to do the longest, so they're going to get the most resonants are drinking water limits and hazardous waste designation. So by the fall of twenty twenty three, EPA plans to issue nationwide limits for two pfats in drinking water, and it also buy them intends to declare those same two chemicals to be hazardous wastes under super Fund, which will
trigger nationwide plane ups. Interesting, So I want to get into the drinking water stuff in a little bit because especially because of how that's going to impact municipal government, state and local governments. But first off, I wanted to talk about the Biden administration versus the Trump administration. You know, we had four years of Trump in office when this was an issue. What did the Trump administration do and
what is the Biden administration doing differently than predecessor. Well, smartly, it didn't start with a clean slate. There was a lot of groundwork that the Trump administration had laid that the Biden administration looked at said this is good. What else can we do? The big shift is Trump ran and one on an anti regulatory agenda, so his administration moved pretty slowly on these chemicals. Biden ran and one
with an agenda that said government provides essential services. So its pace is way faster and the scope of actions that it plans to take is much broader. I mean, we talked about EPA having plans to regulate a couple and just a couple of pfast. But it also in that big roadmap that it relieved, it laid out its
plan to look at those thousands. It can't issue thousands of regulations, so it describes specific regulations and other types of actions that it's going to be taking to say, how can we get as much data as possible about
those thousands and then put them into buckets. And so maybe we proceed with regulations that cover five different buckets of these p facts, and we put the least stringent regulations on those that seem to be the least toxic, and we put the most stringent regulations on those that seem to be the most toxica. All right, I want to talk about, you know, the costs and sort of who's going to pay for this, and I want to focus in on two groups municipalities as I mentioned before,
and the military. The military because they are you know, one of the groups that has been singled out for using p fast the most through firefighting foam. Does the military have a strategy or a plan to be able to clean up the p fast that it emitted into
the environment and to pay for those clean ups. Yeah, the military isn't a really interesting situation because the way it used p fast, it was used in specialized firefighting foams that are used for jet fugle and other really dangerous fires, and that's a direct release into the environment, and for years and years and years they used the
foam in all sorts of training. And let's face it, one thing the military does is train its staff because they have the firefighters out there training and spraying, and the group just ran into the water, So they've they deposited tons of it into or at least lots of it into the environment. And that's why they've got such a spotlight into them. It was such a direct environmental use.
And sadly, there hasn't been a lot of change in the financial cost estimates that I can give you on It's still estimated at about three billion, but the end fact amount is going to depend on a lot of things. What technologies are available to treat pfasts right now, we don't have p fast treatment technologies. The military is spending millions tens of millions to research that, but there aren't proven technologies. What cleanup levels will be required for how
many pfasts. There's so many unknowns it's really hard to put a closer tab on it. But we are talking billions, not millions. And then let's talk about the municipalities here. I mean, oftentimes they run the local water utility in town, which means that any new you know, standards or new regulations on drinking water, they're gonna have to pay extra to be able to meet those standards. Has there been any talk of federal assistance to help them do that
or are they sort of out on their own? Well, at the moment, they are largely out on their own, although EPA has you know, some grant money that it's making available. And remember that it's not the utilities that can just you know, pay it all themselves. It's you and me who pay water bills who end up having to pay for this. So, yes, there is a plan for money. We don't know if that plan is going to work or not. The Infrastructure built includes ten billion
dollars to help water. These five billion dollars to help small and disadvantaged communities address p fast in their drinking water, four billion to help water utilities or to connect well owners to local water systems, and another one million dollars for wastewater utility. And we should say that infrastructure build could be coming up for a final vote as early
as this week. Finally, let's talk about a story that you published actually earlier today, a really fascinating story about how the medical community is reacting to p fast exposure. Are doctors now kind of looking out for p fast exposure in their patients a little bit more than they used to? Great questions, and Nope, p fasts were not on the curriculum that doctors had to learn when they were in medical school, and p fast is not something
thing that most physicians know about. On people who are living in communities where p FEST has been found at high levels in their drinking water struggle with the fact that they go to their doctors and their doctors go, huh, what are you talking about? And no doctor likes to be embarrassed about his or her lack of knowledge, so in the absence of information is easy to dismiss patients.
My story focused on one woman, Sandy wind Stealth up in Belmont, Michigan, who happen to have a very different physician, a very young guy who was very interested to see what he could learn, and so he made the extra effort to learn about these chemicals and medical tests, pretty routine ones that are out there that are available to physicians that they can use to monitor the diseases that
highly exposed PFEST patient and are faced increased risk of kidding. Yeah, I mean that's what I really liked your story today because it focused on this one doctor who had a really progressive approach to treating p fast exposure. But it sounds like this doctor is the exception, not the rule. Yes, now there is an effort. A group of universities and affected communities teamed up and they came out with some
two page guidance is this summer in July. One of the guidance documents is aimed to help ordinary people like you and me understand how p fasts could affect their health. And the other is designed in really simple language to be something a patient can hand his or her doctor and say, here's what I'm concerned about, here's what a here can be done about it. What do you think? And the goal what people who have been exposed to high amounts of these chemical fits want is to start
that conversation. All right, Well, that was Pat Rizzuto speaking to us from Bloomberg Law headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. Pat, it's always a pleasure to speak with you. Thank you so much, Thank you, David. And that'll do it for today's episode of Parts Pervilion. If you want more environmental News check us out on Twitter. We use the handle at environment just that at Environment, nothing else. I'm at David B. Schultz if you want to chat with me
about pe Fass or anything else. Today's episode of Parts per Billion was produced by myself, David Schultz. Parts per Billion was created by Jessica Coombs and Rachel Dagle and is edited by Rebecca Baker and Chuck McCutcheon. Our executive producer is Josh Block. Thanks everyone for listening. For our next season of Uncommon Law, we're looking at the regulatory future of big tech. The giants need to be broken up. Facebook, Google, all of them is big tech impinging on your right
to free speech. They've had unchecked power to sensor, restrict, edit, shape, hide, altar, misinformation, disinformation. It's like a big then diagram. We do not want to become the arbiters of truth. We're calling this series Unchecked. Just search for Uncommon Law wherever you get your podcasts.