Access to clean, non-polluted drinking water is considered by many to be a human right and should be consistently attainable to communities around the nation. However, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, have been a constant and growing threat to this civil liberty due to manufacturers and utility services working with toxic chemicals to treat contaminated water.
PFAS, also known as "forever chemicals", have been increasingly recognized by concerned community groups, environmental nonprofits, and federal agencies as an environmental justice concern since the early 2000s. The main point of urgency arises from the harmful side effects that these chemicals pose to humans when not properly removed from publicly dispersed drinking water. These include "cancer, endocrine disruption, accelerated puberty, liver and immune system damage, [fertility issues], and thyroid changes," (EWG, 2024).
According to their website, a proposal is being written to extend the compliance date for these requirements to 2031. Although effective drinking water treatment remains a core subject in environmental regulation efforts, communities in states across the US have continually experienced the consequences of polluted drinking water.
For example, the public water systems in Texas have struggled to abide by the federal regulations on the "forever chemicals." More specifically, just last year, nearly 50 water utility systems had not stayed within the EPA's limits of PFAS after treatment. Individuals across Texas already pay higher utility rates than those in neighboring states due to its hotter climate, as more frequent droughts can make access to usable water less feasible.
In response, multiple cities across Texas have sued chemical manufacturers for not protecting public water systems from their polluting practices. Both "Fort Worth and Dallas rejected two class action settlements with 3M and Dupont, which faced hundreds of legal claims by US water providers," (Martinez, 2024). These claims exposed the corporations for threatening their rights to clean water access and furthered the conversation of PFAS and their risks to expose Texans to cancer and other medical conditions.
Furthermore, this form of protest has risen in number due to the increase in water quality testing around the country and public knowledge of the existence of commonly found PFAS in their utility systems. Areas that have proven to have inadequately treated water have resulted in environmental nonprofits helping people garner the power to get manufacturers to become responsible for polluting public drinking water and shift towards more productive ways of thinking when it comes to protecting communities from PFAS.
So far, the EPA and state governments have responded to PFAS threats in drinking water by requiring that public water utility systems and manufacturers submit their own accumulated data to acknowledge the public's desire for more testing and transparency on what they are consuming. However, Texas, among other US states, still has a long way to go when it comes to figuring out how to rid public drinking water of "forever chemicals" and protect the well-being of American households.