The Environmental Safety Company (EPA) lately proposed including 9 “eternally chemical compounds” to its record of hazardous constituents below the Useful resource Conservation and Restoration Act (RCRA). To qualify for the record, chemical compounds should have confirmed “poisonous, carcinogenic, mutagenic, or teratogenic results on human life or different life kinds,” based on the EPA’s web site.
The chemical compounds are per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), a category used to make heat-, oil- and grease-resistant merchandise. Present in additional than 12,000 kinds, PFAS might be discovered on every thing from menstrual merchandise to mattress pads to wall paint. PFAS are additionally an environmental menace as a result of they don’t break down, can transfer via soils and groundwater, and accumulate in wildlife, finally working their manner up the meals chain into people.
Producers who use PFAS have been unsurprised by the EPA’s announcement, based on Kent Sorenson, chief know-how officer at Allonnia, a bioremediation firm.
“The report rule was undoubtedly anticipated,” stated Sorenson, “extremely anticipated within the market each by way of those that are cleansing up contaminated websites and coping with the waste, but additionally from the customers of these compounds that principally personal that legal responsibility.”
However whereas the rule was anticipated, the particular chemical compounds chosen have been unknown, inflicting backlogs on the bottom.
“To some extent, [the unknown chemicals] have been holding up web site cleanups and evaluations, as a result of it’s laborious to do a correct analysis while you don’t know for positive which PFAS compounds are going to be thought-about hazardous constituents,” stated Sorenson.
One other essential a part of the announcement was the authority granted to each the EPA and the states to mandate chemical cleanup sooner or later.
“Because of robust partnerships with our co-regulators within the states, we’ll strengthen our potential to scrub up contamination from PFAS, maintain polluters accountable and advance public well being protections,” stated EPA administrator Michael Regan, in a press release.
Not everybody agrees with the EPA’s choice. “Grouping chemical compounds, together with PFAS, into broad classes and creating one-size-fits-all insurance policies is inefficient, pricey and ineffective in reaching the meant environmental objectives,” stated Robert Helminiak, vp of authorized and authorities relations on the Society of Chemical Producers & Associates, in an electronic mail to GreenBiz.
Helminiak pressured that the EPA’s ruling is “stopping important chemistries that … have web constructive environmental impacts from coming to market.”
Individually, a brand new rule added to the Poisonous Substance Management Act (TSCA) in October requires new recordkeeping and reporting for producers and importers of merchandise containing PFAS. It mandates firms report PFAS makes use of, manufacturing quantity, disposal, hazards and environmental results in merchandise that have been bought commercially from 2011 onwards. The official language lists the industries probably affected by this replace, together with development, manufacturing, wholesale commerce, retail commerce and waste administration and remediation providers.
Allonnia’s Sorenson envisions this might create new financial alternatives attributable to firms’ sudden have to entry this data. At present, nobody is filling that want, he stated.
“Producers are on the lookout for assist from individuals to guage [the reporting process], and that’s a complete new market that has now opened up,” stated Sorenson.
Corporations that know or suspect they are going to be affected by the TSCA and RCRA rulings are suggested to behave rapidly to attenuate potential legal responsibility. In a commentary piece for Reuters, Miles Scully, a companion at Gordon Rees Scully Mansukhani LLP, endorsed companies to scrutinize their provide chains for PFAS, assessment contracts for language concerning PFAS, and look into PFAS options.
Sorenson suggested firms to put money into nascent however rising applied sciences that may sort out PFAS elimination. He touted Allonnia’s floor energetic foam fractionation (SAFF) system as “probably the most sustainable and sturdy know-how” commercially accessible. SAFF leverages air bubbles to separate PFAS from water in small volumes, enabling the hazardous chemical to be retrieved and destroyed.
Correction: In a earlier model, Allonnia was misspelled.
