EPA Announces Comprehensive Nationwide PFAS Action Plan
First-Ever
At an event in Philadelphia, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler announced the EPA’s Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) Action Plan. This historic PFAS Action Plan responds to extensive public interest and input the agency has received over the past year, and represents the first time the EPA has built a multi-media, multi-program, national communication and research plan to address an emerging environmental challenge like PFAS. The EPA’s Action Plan identifies both short-term solutions for addressing these chemicals and long-term strategies that will help provide the tools and technologies states, tribes, and local communities need to provide clean and safe drinking water to their residents and to address PFAS at the source—even before it gets into the water.
“The PFAS Action Plan is the most comprehensive cross-agency plan to address an emerging chemical of concern ever undertaken by EPA,” Wheeler says. “For the first time in agency history, we utilized all of our program offices to construct an all-encompassing plan to help states and local communities address PFAS and protect our nation’s drinking water. We are moving forward with several important actions, including the maximum contaminant level process that will help affected communities better monitor, detect and address PFAS.”