"Such chemicals, like PFOA and PFOS, have been associated with cancers, hormonal disruption, obesity, and immune and reproductive problems."
"Even as the Environmental Protection Agency has been trumpeting its efforts to find and clean up contamination from industrial chemicals known as PFAS, it has been allowing new chemicals in this class to enter into commerce, according to data from the agency. The EPA has allowed more than 100 new PFAS compounds to be made and imported in large quantities in the U.S. after it became aware of the health risks associated with them, and many more have entered commerce through loopholes that allow them to be omitted from the official inventory of chemicals and to bypass a basic safety review.
Since 2002, the agency has allowed 112 new PFAS chemicals to be made or imported in very large quantities, according to a list of compounds kept by the agency known as the Chemical Data Reporting database, or CDR. Companies have to report a chemical on the CDR if they make 25,000 pounds or more of it in a year in a single location. At that point, the agency was already working on a risk assessment of PFOA, which it released the next year with the grim warning that the chemical “raised a number of potential toxicity concerns,” and required additional study. “To ensure consumers are protected from any potential risks, the Agency will be conducting its most extensive scientific assessment ever undertaken on this type of chemical,” the EPA assistant administrator said at the time.
Yet, in 2006, just three years later, when the CDR was next updated, the EPA had allowed four more PFAS compounds to be added to the list of chemicals made or imported in large quantities. That year, the EPA arranged to phase out PFOA and PFOS, two of the best-known chemicals in the class, due to evidence that they caused health problems in people and animals and persisted indefinitely in the environment. By 2012, when it had become clear that PFAS had contaminated water near several industrial and military sources, the list included an additional 14 new PFAS compounds made in large amounts. Last year, when PFAS contamination was so widespread that it was described as a nationwide crisis, the latest CDR was released with 19 more new PFAS chemicals"
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