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Drinking water health advisories are issued by the EPA for contaminants not subject to a National Primary Drinking Water Regulation (NPDWR). Health advisories identify the concentration of a contaminant in drinking water at which adverse health effects and/or aesthetic effects are not anticipated to occur over specific exposure durations. The PFAS health advisories assume a lifetime of exposure to these PFAS in drinking water and account for potential sources of exposure to these PFAS beyond drinking water (e.g., food, air, and consumer products). Health advisories are not legally enforceable federal standards but can help Tribes, states, and local governments inform the public and determine whether local actions are needed to address public health impacts in affected communities.
The reference doses used to calculate PFOA and PFOS interim health advisories were published in draft EPA documents in December 2021 and subsequently reviewed by the EPA’s Science Advisory Board (SAB) in early 2022. The SAB recommended additional analyses be performed prior to finalizing the PFOA and PFOS reference doses; therefore, the EPA has published the PFOA and PFOS health advisories as interim values. The interim health advisories will remain in place until the EPA establishes an NPDWR for PFOA and PFOS. The EPA plans to propose an NPDWR for PFOA and PFOS in fall 2022 and finalize the regulation in fall 2023. While the health advisories for PFBS and GenX chemicals can generally be met by the reporting limits and method detection limits commonly reported by commercial analytical laboratories, the interim health advisories for PFOA and PFOS cannot.
When asked about the lifetime drinking water health advisories, Radhika Fox, Assistant Administrator for the EPA’s Office of Water, acknowledged that PFOS and PFOA advisories are below detection levels and that the EPA’s “advice to drinking water systems and states is to test for PFAS utilizing [the current] method [detection limits] at 4 ppt and if they see PFAS, then really the next step is for the local water system to talk to their state regulator to think about – ‘Is further sampling needed, is monitoring needed, what are the treatment solutions?’”
We will summarize future EPA actions on PFAS in our PFAS Technical Newsletter, published monthly. You can sign up for the newsletter here, and our past newsletter issues can be viewed here.
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