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PFAS OVERVIEW
Lorien Fono, the Executive Director of the Bay Area Clean Water Association, summarizes the PFAS challenges California is facing.
Walter Marlowe, the Executive Director of the Water Environment Federation (WEF), calls for all uses of PFAS related compounds to be stopped immediately.
A column from our PFAS topic sponsor, Carollo Engineers.
Download templates from the Water Research Foundation (free, log-in req)
Recorded Webinars
Recorded Webinars on OWEN
PFAS Primer for Clean Water Professionals (free)
Regulatory Landscape for PFAS in Biosolids and Effluent/Reuse
How PFAS Will Impact Your Pretreatment Program
The Next Wastewater Utility Challenge
WEF Recorded Webinars
Association Links
PFAS STORIES
Water Environment Federation Responds to EPA PFAS Rules
Updated on April 19: the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released both its final rule to classify PFOA and PFOS as hazardous substances under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) and an enforcement discretion memo. This memo shows that EPA does not believe that water systems are the problem. However, the reality of…
California Scientists Release New Book ‘Toward a PFAS-free Future’
Edited by Simona A Bălan and Thomas A Bruton, California Department of Toxic Substances Control; and Kimberly G Hazard, UC Berkeley. From the description: Perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) are extensively used in consumer products, despite their high persistence and other hazards. The risks posed by this chemical class to human health and the environment,…
WEF Launches new PFAS Manual
CWEA’s coverage of PFAS is supported by Carollo. Advance your career with WEF’s industrial water resources! These peer-reviewed publications provide water quality professionals with essential technical knowledge and strategies. Order yours today! PFAS in the Water and Wastewater Sectors: Fundamentals, Management, and Treatment This collection of essays provides a state of the field on PFAS…
EPA Announces Partnership to Prevent and Manage PFAS in Biosolids
“One of the most effective near- and long-term solutions to reducing PFAS in biosolids is to prevent PFAS from entering wastewater treatment facilities in the first place.” The latest science is clear: long-term exposure to PFAS is linked to significant health risks, and PFAS can enter our water and land through several different paths. That’s…
PFAS and Biosolids: What Wastewater Pros Need to Know
Coverage of PFAS is supported by Carollo. The toxicity and widespread detectability of certain per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) have raised concern about their potential health impacts or changes to water and wastewater practices in response. PFAS are commonly present in water, human blood, environmental samples, household products, and biosolids (Ducatman et al., 2022; Hu…
Column: Initial Thoughts on EPA’s Proposed PFAS Standards
As regular readers of my blog are likely aware, this week EPA announced proposed Maximum Contaminant Limits (MCLs) of 4 ppt for PFAS in U.S. drinking water utilities. I’m a social scientist, not a toxicologist or engineer. I can’t speak to health risks or the benefits of regulating PFAS. I can’t address the feasibility of…
Water Research Journal: Occurrence of PFAS Substances in U.S. WRRFs
View CWEA’s PFAS topics page > Research by Charles E. Schaefer, Jennifer L. Hooper, Laurel E. Strom, Ibrahim Abusallout, Eric R.V. Dickenson, Kyle A. Thompson, Gayathri Ram Mohan, Dina Drennan, Ke Wu, and Jennifer L. Guelfo (please see article for affiliations) Abstract Both quantifiable and semi-quantifiable poly- and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) were evaluated in the…
EPA to Consider New PFAS Regulations in Future Years
View CWEA’s PFAS resources page, support by Carollo. Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced it is seeking public comment on its proposal to address environmental justice, climate change, and PFAS contamination in its National Enforcement and Compliance Initiatives (NECIs). Every four years, EPA selects national initiatives to focus resources on serious and widespread…
Breaking Down the Facts about PFAS in Biosolids
Coverage of PFAS is supported by Carollo. In 2018, the media seized on a story about a small dairy farm in Maine that was forced to no longer produce milk due to sludge and biosolids spread on the farm as fertilizer under a state-sponsored program from 1983 to 2004. Wastewater utilities were quickly blamed for…
CASA Releases Fact Sheet on PFAS
View CWEA’s PFAS resources page, support by Carollo. PFAS Are Ubiquitous in Our Homes and Our Environment Several recent legislative and regulatory efforts across the US to address PFAS have focused on limiting levels in drinking water. However, there has been relatively little conversation about the presence of these chemicals in our everyday lives. In…
Bay Area Agencies Participate in Land Application Biosolids Study
View CWEA’s PFAS resources page, support by Carollo. Three San Francisco Bay Area wastewater agencies are participating in an EPA-funded national research program looking at the prioritization, fate, and transport of unregulated organic chemicals (UOCs) in the environment resulting from land application of biosolids. The three agencies, including the Las Gallinas Valley Sanitary District…
Laboratory Pros are on the Frontlines of Finding PFAS
In early 2022, OC San proudly announced they were the first municipal wastewater lab in California accredited to test for PFAS in wastewater. Today, there are 20 labs in California accredited for PFAS testing, OC San and the Inland Empire Utilities Agency are the only approved municipal labs. OC San operates a state-of-the-art Environmental Sciences…
A Critical Need: Supercritical Water Treatment for PFAS Elimination
The practice of treating wastewater has existed since the 19th century, beginning with centralized designs to keep sewage discharge out of clean water sources. Around this time, efforts to separate storm runoff from wastewater was also introduced in many communities. Fast forward to today, decades of focus on the environmental impact of waste treatment and…
OC San Helping to Pinpoint the Sources of PFAS
Mark Kawamoto and his team at Orange County Sanitation District, also known as OC San, are trying to solve a riddle: “How does PFAS make its way into water resource recovery facilities?” PFAS are in wastewater that is treated at water resource recovery facilities (WRRFs), including at OC San’s two facilities, but the source of…
Synthetic “Forever Chemical” Linked to Liver Cancer
View CWEA’s PFAS resources page, support by Carollo. Exposure to a synthetic chemical found widely in the environment is linked to non-viral hepatocellular carcinoma, the most common type of liver cancer, according to a new study conducted by researchers from the Keck School of Medicine of USC and published in JHEP Reports. These chemicals, which…
EPA Announces Plans for Wastewater Regulations and Studies
View CWEA’s PFAS resources page, support by Carollo. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released Effluent Guidelines Program Plan 15 (Plan 15), which lays out how the Agency will work to protect the nation’s waterways by following the science and the Clean Water Act to develop technology-based pollution limits and studies on wastewater discharges from…
The Ill-Foreverness of PFAS
View CWEA’s PFAS resources page, support by Carollo. It is a fact that chemistry has changed our world for the better. It has played an important role in the production of commercial products, thus making a great variety of raw materials accessible to manufacturers across all industrial sectors and leading to the production of many…
PFAS Legislation We Have Seen in 2022
The California Legislature has taken action to limit the use of PFAS in recent years, enacting bills to phase them out of food packaging, banning their use in nearly all firefighting foam, and requiring notification on cookware containing PFAS. Three bills relating to PFAS were passed in the 2022 Legislative Session. The bills included two…
Seven Habits of Highly Effective PFAS Source-Trackers
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are ubiquitous, including detectable amounts typically in the parts per trillion (ppt) range in wastewater effluent and parts per billion (ppb) range in solids. The US EPA plans to publish ambient water quality human-health-based criteria for perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS) by Fall 2024. The EPA also…
PFAS Legislative & Regulatory Developments in California
Per and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a group of man-made chemicals, often called “forever chemicals” because they are extremely resistant to breaking down and they persist in the environment and the human body, leading to continued exposure and health risks into the future. Despite these problems, PFAS are widely used by industry and are in…
Removing PFAS Starts at The Source
Stories about PFAS have multiplied as we discover more about these “forever chemicals.” They’ve been in our lives since the 1940s – used in clothing, carpets, couches, cookware, cosmetics, and more – but we had no idea until this century that prolonged exposure could be harmful to our health. At least 80 percent of PFAS…
PFAS is the Top Source Control Challenge of Our Time
View CWEA’s PFAS resources page, support by Carollo. Welcome to this special edition of CWEA’s winter magazine. Polyfluoroalkyl and Perfluoroalkyl compounds, or PFAS for short, are a family of chemical compounds with a’ persistence, ubiquity, and toxicity at very low levels that make them the leading contaminant challenge of our time. In 2020, the State…
New California Laws Ban PFAS in Juvenile Products and Food Packaging
On October 5, 2021, Governor Gavin Newsom signed two bills prohibiting PFAS in juvenile products (AB 652) and disposable food packaging (AB 1200). The two new laws are a part of a trend in PFAS regulation in both California and national food law compliance. The persistence, ubiquity, and uncertainty of the health effects of PFAS have…
EPA Announces Comprehensive National Strategy to Confront PFAS Pollution
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Michael S. Regan announced the agency’s comprehensive Strategic Roadmap to confront PFAS contamination nationwide. The Roadmap is the result of a thorough analysis conducted by the EPA Council on PFAS that Administrator Regan established in April 2021. EPA’s Roadmap is centered on three guiding strategies: Increase investments in…
Report Finds PFAS Raises the Cost of Managing Biosolids
In recent years, PFAS has become a topic of public concern, particularly when found in water supplies. We in the water sector are also concerned about PFAS because protecting public health and the environment and increasing sustainability in our communities is our daily mission. The Water Environment Federation (WEF) and its members always prioritize science,…
PFAS Primer for Clean Water Professionals
Download the presentation (pdf) Student and Young Professionals RECORDED Webinar SYP webinars are sponsored by the Los Angeles Basin Section; San Francisco Bay Section and Desert and Mountains Section. Chemicals called PFAS have been in the headlines lately: These emerging contaminants are the focus of a major Hollywood movie, a Congressional task force, and considerable…
Hot Topics: PFAS Info and Discussions at CWEA Events
CWEA is tracking the challenges associated with PFAS, a family of chemicals that are compounds of emerging concern. Join us for an upcoming webinar or conference to build your understanding of the challenges, hear from experts and add your voice. From the State Water Board’s PFAS info website… Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a…
PFAS Technical Seminar Video Recordings, Agenda, Speaker Abstracts and Biographies, Presentations, and Survey
The State Water Resources Control Board recently hosted a 2-day Technical Seminar and concurrent Datathon on per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). Recordings of the seminar along with the agenda, speaker biographies and abstracts is provided on the State Water Board’s PFAS website at https://www.waterboards.ca.gov/pfas. The presentations from the PFAS Technical Seminar are available at: Link:…
AWWA Releases Briefing on PFAS
Released this month by AWWA, click here for AWWA’s PFAS website… AWWA Briefing on PFAS PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are persistent synthetic compounds used in a variety of industrial and consumer product applications including non-stick cookware and firefighting foams. The presence of PFAS compounds in source water and drinking water is of increasing…
WateReuse Association Releases PFAS Regulatory Recommendations
PFAS compounds are contained in dozens of common household products, in the dust we breathe, and in the blood of nearly every person in America. There are over 3,000 varieties of PFAS that have been created, with about 75 of these used in commercial applications; very little is known about most of them. What is…