In Wisconsin, Donald Trump was at the end of last year. I said At the campaign stop, many people also want it, saying, “I’m an environmentalist…I want clean air and clean water.I want really clean water.” Like Americans across the country, many Wisconsinians have been drinking water for decades contaminated by a highly toxic “eternal chemical” known as PFA. It’s become.
This is a challenge for environmentalist Trump, and his administration is It is widely expected Many environmental regulations and already have Pause Work to set limits on PFA. However, now EPA administrator Lee Zeldin said at a confirmation hearing last month that the PFA was a “first priority” for government agencies and as a member of Congress he made Democrats on his side. . Back rules This limits the chemicals in drinking water and allows contaminants to pay for cleaning.
PFA is The era of bipartisanship Congress passed the Clean Water Act in 1972. By then, President Richard Nixon had already oversaw the creation of the EPA, but rejected the Landmark Water Bill. However, 17 Republicans worked with Democrats to override his veto. “If we can’t swim in a lake or river, what other comforts does life offer us if we can’t breathe the air God has given us?” Tennessee Republican Senator Howard Baker of I said The October morning of voting.
In this century, some Republicans have argued that PFA measures are expensive and involve legal burdens on businesses. The chemical industry is We. and abroad. But like the environmental disaster of the 1970s, this is something politicians who want to do something about it to the government.
In his first term, Trump’s EPA issued a PFAS Action Plan To specify a compound as dangerous, set limits and create cleanup recommendations. But the White House I opposed the PFAS bill In Congress after the chemical industry opposed it, and the administration was closest to fulfill its own plan. Submit a proposal Adjust the PFA with drinking water on the last day. Over the next four years, PFA was able to test whether it was the EPA version of Trump.It’s peeled off Many career employees staff As industry lobbyists, millions of Americans can do the work they might want.
As I wrote, PFAS in frontDDT from this era is probably more accurate to say it’s worse. PFAS is the umbrella term for thousands of compounds used in numerous cited ways. Often, the “performance” fabric on the sofa resists dirt, the rice cooker is very easy to wipe off, and the boots are waterproof. They can withstand the paper plates grease and make the conditioner even more silky. Where they are manufactured or used to manufacture others, decades of drainage contaminates groundwater and supplies urban water supplies. Fluorine carbon bonds have no idea how to destroy the single most stable compound in large-scale organic chemistry.
And they continue to circulate the water system, and accumulate in our bodies, almost forever. The PFA was not a known concern when the Clean Water Act was created, and was not anyone’s radar when the Safe Drinking Water Act came into effect in 1974. I knew The PFAS compound it invented sold to DuPont to make Teflon, which had accumulated in the blood of its employees.
Almost every American now They have a PFA. Over the past half century, these compounds have been used in dozens of industries to manufacture thousands of products worldwide, creating a stream of hazardous waste that has permeated countless communities. Research has included PFA exposure and other issues, including kidney cancer, testicular cancer, thyroid disease, reduced birth rates, and child developmental problems.
About 20 years after the EPA began investigating these compounds last year, the Biden administration ordered water operators to test several types of PFAs in the water, besides eliminating those compounds for the first time. Everything started. The agency says it is, just like Lead. There is no safe level Two of these compounds are the most common. We also released a report caveat The risk of spreading sewage sludge (often highly contaminated by PFA) is field fields as fertilizer, a continuing practice in many states. They were then trying to set the initial discharge limit for PFA in industrial wastewaters. This is the principle that the Trump administration has now suspended. (A spokesman for the EPA told me that this action is part of a “common transition procedure.”) This means that local government water systems need to test PFAs. , manufacturers do not need to measure or limit PFA with wastewater released into their systems.
In the meantime, American towns and cities are trying to deal with the threat of PFA in fragments. In Campbell, Wisconsin, a river island town where people watch the bald Eagles hunt fish and raise children in their homes, water samples from residents’ wells first confirmed PFA in 2020 I’ve returned to it. Made of PFA, it launched a plane crash fire and was used for decades to train firefighters at nearby airports. Residents are now wondering if it explains many unusual diagnoses among their neighbors. Lee Donohue, the town of Campbell, told me: Testicular cancer at 20 years old, or ovarian cancer in her 30s, which is attacked later in her woman’s life.
Almost five years after these water tests, residents are still drinking bottled water, but the townboard works to rerout drinking water supplies from contaminated wells towards new sources It’s there. The switch was grants from President Joe Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, which Trump suspended, as well as Democrats Sen. Tammy Baldwin and town president Derrick Van Olden, and Republican Derrick Van Olden. It is funded in part by an EPA grant protected by Van Olden. “This isn’t the most popular Republican position. I really don’t care,” Van Olden said. He spoke to a local ABC affiliate The grant was announced at the time. “When you turn on the faucet, you don’t ask if you’re a Republican or a Democrat.”
Campbell is a microcosm of swinging. It split almost exactly 50-50 votes between Trump and Kamala Harris. On the other side of the state, Marinette, a city of 11,000, is a “very red community” dealing with its own PFA issues, former town chair Cindy Boyle told me. Boyle, 53, realized that she was drinking PFA-contaminated water for the rest of her life. Tycofire products tested firefighters’ bubbles on land half a mile from the home where they raised their three sons. Spread it as a sludge She said in the fields within a mile of the house she grew up in. That’s what the company was like Sued by the state, Public Water Systemand Some residents In the area. Boyle wasn’t one of them. Still, the company currently provides a whole house filter at home and distributes bottled water. (Tyco resolved the lawsuit with the Water System and residents without admitting fraud. The state lawsuit is suspended.)
However, the damage may have already been done. She removed her thyroid in her 30s. Her sister currently suffers from thyroid disease, and her mother has kidney cancer. Her husband has Parkinson’s disease. Recent research shows that PFA accumulates in the brain, link They become neuropathic. Boyle is registered independently of conservative families and she “takes the bushes anytime now,” she said. However, she says she can’t vote for anyone who isn’t interested in closing the PFA.
In Wisconsin, Democrats and Republicans are now I was trapped in a fight At the Capitol on how to do that. Republicans maintain proposed funds for testing and improvement out of fear that could force them to pay for cleanup of contamination that landowners have not caused. Tuesday, Democrat Gov. Tony Evers; announcement The state budget means that if Congress passes it, they will resolve their concerns and release the funds.
Without federal regulations, state efforts to address PFA were patchwork and politically unpredictable. West Virginia voted for Trump at a 7-3 ratio, and without a doubt Birthplace Former Governor Jim Justice, Republican, amid the PFAS crisis in the US. Passed law To suppress that. It is estimated in North Carolina 2.5 million residents He uses PFA to have Republican appointees for the State Commission. stall Creating rules will set clear restrictions on the existence of PFA. With a Democratic-controlled Congress and a widespread PFAS crisis, Maine has passed some of the country’s toughest PFA bills. New York was in it First state It is also possible to declare certain PFA harmful substances, but schedule In double The amount of sludge spreads across the fields by 2050.
It takes federal efforts to address PFA contamination meaningfully. During Trump’s previous term, he appointed a former chemical industry executive and oversaw toxic chemicals at the EPA. Rewrite the rulesmaking it difficult to track health effects. At the time, Americans in some states were just beginning to understand the threat posed by the PFA. Now, eight years from now, the scenery is very different and the state is watching. During his time as a Congressional representative from New York, Zeldin was in favor of removing PFA contamination. Promote EPA Move faster and regulate. At his confirmation hearing, he gave no details on how to proceed with the PFA as an EPA administrator. Action plan From the first terminology. Whatever stage Zeldin takes, it shows that he prioritizes issues against Trump’s EPA this semester, defining how far the administration’s environmentalism is in fact.
