New Regulations to Impact Property Transactions

Are you planning on buying or selling a property where products have been manufactured using per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), used a fire fighting foam or have a property where fire fighting foam has been used, or are you responsible for groundwater monitoring and sampling on a site with a release of unrelated contaminants, and have a neighbor that may have used PFAS to any significant degree?  

If so, please see the timeline below:

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Timeline of PFAS, PFOA and PFOS, regulations and what to expect in 2019!

PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) are long-chained, highly fluorinated, bioaccumulative, synthetic compounds, which are resistant to water, heat, oil, and chemicals. The combination of these unique properties makes PFAS extremely stable compounds which can be utilized in a wide range of manufacturing applications – cookware, clothes, furniture, food-packaging and retardant foam industries to name few.

With the increasing emergence of PFAS in drinking water supplies throughout the country and the discovery of the adverse health effects caused by them, the most widely known PFAS - PFOA (perfluorooctanoic acid) and PFOS (perfluorooctane sulfonic acid) have been on the forefront of regulatory stringency since 2016. The timeline of the critical regulatory changes with respect to the compound:

• 2009 - EPA establishes a provisional drinking water health advisory for 400 parts per trillion (ppt) for PFOA and 200 ppt for PFOS.
• 2012 - EPA adds PFOA and PFOS to the list of unregulated contaminants for which public water systems were required to test between 2013 to 2015.  
• May 2016 - EPA issued a non-binding health advisory level of 70 parts per trillion (ppt) for PFOA and PFOS, which was a notable decrease from its 2009 advisory.

Different states have adopted their own stringent set of advisory levels for PFAS. California’s standards are summarized below:

• November 2017 - California added PFOA and PFOS to its Proposition 65 list of toxicity causing chemicals.
• July 2018 - California State Water Resource Control Board’s Drinking Water Division (DDW) established drinking water notification levels of 13 ppt for PFOS, 14 ppt for PFOA and 70 ppt for them combined.
• February 2018 – DTSC released a Product-Chemical Profile for carpets and rugs with PFAS, proposing that these products be designated as Priority Products under the Safer Consumer Product Regulation, and began a public comment period which ended on April 2018.
• November 2018 - EPA published a draft toxicology assessment for certain PFAS, as a part of their effort to increase research and information about the compounds.

And looking forward to 2019:

• January 2019 – Expected reporting of PFOS’s in children’s products under California’s Proposition 65 (OEHHA).
• July 2019 – Expected ‘discharge prohibition’ as part of California’s Proposition 65, which would require labeling requirements and prohibit any business from knowingly discharging or releasing any of the listed chemicals into land or drinking water source.
• November 2019 - Expected final recommendations for the final Chemical Action Plan (CAP) for PFAS by the Department of Ecology and Health, State of Washington.

Ask us your PFAS questions!

If you have questions or what to know more, please contact Alta at 562-495-5777 or email Mike Cassidy, VP Site Assessment and Remediation at Mike.Cassidy@altaenviron.com.

Blog post by Mehak Gupta, Environmental Specialist.