Speaker 1: You're listening to the podcast Parts per Billion, but today
Speaker 1: we're gonna be talking about parts per quadrillion. We have
Speaker 1: to get that small because we're talking about the new
Speaker 1: science on p fasts and about why it seems like
Speaker 1: the more we know about these chemicals, the worst they see.
Speaker 1: Hello everybody, and welcome once again to Parts per Billion,
Speaker 1: the environmental podcast from Bloomberg Law. I'm your host, David Schultz,
Speaker 1: and as I mentioned up at the top, we are
Speaker 1: now in parts per quadrillion territory when it comes to
Speaker 1: measuring the safe levels of certain p fast chemicals. Earlier
Speaker 1: this month, the ep OF lowereded standard for the amount
Speaker 1: of safe exposure to two substances within this broader class
Speaker 1: of so called forever chemicals. Previously, according to figures set
Speaker 1: just in sixteen, the threshold was at seventy parts per
Speaker 1: trillion for both substances, known as p FOSS and p FOA.
Speaker 1: Now it's thousands of times smaller than that, at twenty
Speaker 1: parts per quadrillion for p FASS and four parts per
Speaker 1: quadrillion for p FOA. It's hard to wrap your head
Speaker 1: around what that means. I mean, what even is a quadrillion?
Speaker 1: But I did a back of the envelope calculation, and
Speaker 1: four parts per quadrillion is like taking half a cup
Speaker 1: of water and pouring it into Lake Mead. Seriously, it
Speaker 1: was a reminder that even though we've been talking about
Speaker 1: p fast chemicals for years now, we're still learning new
Speaker 1: things about them, and those new things are pretty alarming.
Speaker 1: To find out what this means and where the sciences
Speaker 1: is heading, I rang up our ace chemicals reporter Pat
Speaker 1: Razzuto and had her walk with me through why the
Speaker 1: e p A said the safety standard so mind bogglingly low.
Speaker 1: It issued four health advisories for four different p fast chemicals,
Speaker 1: and those dealt with the amount of those chemicals that
Speaker 1: the ep A thinks a person could drink in water
Speaker 1: for their entire life, which is estimated to be seventy
Speaker 1: years without being harmed, and that it's the whole purpose
Speaker 1: of them is to let states, drinking water utilities the
Speaker 1: public know what EPA's latest thinking about the sciences. It's
Speaker 1: information I see. And they did this, uh in so
Speaker 1: I guess they felt that in you know it, and
Speaker 1: they just needed updating. Is that why they issued these
Speaker 1: new numbers. So the ones that updated and really ratcheted down.
Speaker 1: The numbers were for UM, the oldest and best known
Speaker 1: of the chemicals. Let's get into that, because when you
Speaker 1: say ratcheted down, I mean this, that's an understatement. These
Speaker 1: new numbers are some of the smallest numbers I've ever
Speaker 1: seen on any type of environmental document. We're talking about,
Speaker 1: you know, basically four parts per quadrillion for one of them.
Speaker 1: Why are these numbers so low? I mean it used
Speaker 1: to be of inde parts per trillion, which itself was
Speaker 1: very low, and now we're just getting it seems like
Speaker 1: we're thousands of times lower. Well, I understand the numbers
Speaker 1: are beyond human scale. We can't understand how tiny these
Speaker 1: numbers are. UM. One analogy I heard that I just
Speaker 1: kind of liked was that, UM, the PFOA advisory of
Speaker 1: fur parts per quadrillion would be like four kernels of
Speaker 1: corn in the fifty two million acres of corn fields
Speaker 1: across the corn belt. That's you know, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska,
Speaker 1: and Wisconsin. UM. But what I was really helped to
Speaker 1: see by people who have a simpler vision than I
Speaker 1: do at a conference I attended last week is e
Speaker 1: p A is essentially saying there is no safe level
Speaker 1: to drink those particular two chemicals over a lifetime. These
Speaker 1: are these levels that it issued were below what laboratory
Speaker 1: technology can measure. But um, yes, So what e p
Speaker 1: A it was saying is ideally there shouldn't be any
Speaker 1: in the water. Now e p A has actually said
Speaker 1: that for other chemicals. E p A says that for lead,
Speaker 1: it doesn't want any lead in the drinking water, It
Speaker 1: doesn't want any radionucleoides like uranium in the drinking water.
Speaker 1: But that's not where it regulates. Um. It says the
Speaker 1: goal is zero, but then it uses you know what
Speaker 1: technology can do? How expensive is that technology factors like
Speaker 1: that to actually set a regulatory level. So this is
Speaker 1: not as bizarre as it comes across. But that's and
Speaker 1: that's one thing I'm eager to hear from you, is
Speaker 1: that why didn't it do that for for these chemicals,
Speaker 1: to say the goal of zero, no amount is safe,
Speaker 1: but practically we want you to get to this level.
Speaker 1: It seems like it didn't do that here, Well why not?
Speaker 1: Um it sends the same message. It just sends it
Speaker 1: based on the science, because apparently it's you can't say
Speaker 1: there's absolutely no amount that's safe. The science isn't there
Speaker 1: for that, I see. So yeah, I mean I guess
Speaker 1: if you can get that precise, why not get that precise?
Speaker 1: Um So, let's talk about the reaction to this, because
Speaker 1: you know, this is a pretty shockingly low number, as
Speaker 1: you mentioned, hard to comprehend. What was the action from
Speaker 1: the chemical industry. Imagine they weren't too thrilled with this. Well, actually,
Speaker 1: I think the people who are hit who are in
Speaker 1: the front lines with this, the drinking water utilities, because
Speaker 1: suddenly what they're being told is that no amount of
Speaker 1: this that they can measure in their drinking water is safe.
Speaker 1: Right if you if you test your drinking water and
Speaker 1: any amount of these chemicals comes up, you have a problem, exactly.
Speaker 1: And that's a hard message to deliver to your water customers. Um. So,
Speaker 1: I think that they're in the front lines. And um
Speaker 1: since they are providing a public service, they don't make
Speaker 1: these chemicals. They actually just receive them and remove them
Speaker 1: out of the water when they can, and when they
Speaker 1: reach a high enough level that they've got a big challenge.
Speaker 1: Between next January and December five, EPA is going to
Speaker 1: require drinking water utilities of basically any significant size to
Speaker 1: be measuring PFOA p FAST the other two, Um, there
Speaker 1: are twenty nine fast that you drinking water utilities are
Speaker 1: going to have to measure and report to e p
Speaker 1: A and they'll need to you know, that information will
Speaker 1: become public and people will have questions about that, and
Speaker 1: those questions are going to trigger legislators, you know, asking
Speaker 1: you what do we need to do? Um, do we
Speaker 1: need to be installing more drinking water control technologies? So
Speaker 1: there are there are a few things. This all sounds
Speaker 1: doom and gloom. On the one hand, by putting these
Speaker 1: super extraordinarily low health advisories out, e p A send
Speaker 1: a really strong signal to everybody it's going to be
Speaker 1: some years before the e p A can regulate PFOA
Speaker 1: and p FASE in drinking water. In the meantime, it
Speaker 1: told everybody the regulatory level that's coming is going to
Speaker 1: be a lot lower than the advisory we've been using.
Speaker 1: Get ready for it. So there's actually a logic to
Speaker 1: e p A releasing these advisories as a signal right
Speaker 1: now on. But that doesn't change the fact that drinking
Speaker 1: water utilities have this signal and with it. There's not
Speaker 1: a strong um direction from the agency. This is the
Speaker 1: best drinking water clean up technology to use to meet
Speaker 1: a regulatory standard. It will have to do that in
Speaker 1: the future. Yes, so right now they have a target
Speaker 1: to meet, but they don't have a lot of direction
Speaker 1: on how to meet that target. You know, it's interesting
Speaker 1: You're you're bringing up water utilities and how this is
Speaker 1: affecting them, and it sounds like it's affecting them pretty seriously.
Speaker 1: You're not talking about the chemical manufacturers, the companies that
Speaker 1: made these these chemicals. Is it because these don't affect them?
Speaker 1: Or is it because they're already in such deep trouble
Speaker 1: that things can't get possibly get worse for them. No,
Speaker 1: I think they're absolutely I was trying to talk about
Speaker 1: frontline first, drinking water utilities next in line um not
Speaker 1: only the manufacturers of p fast but also the companies
Speaker 1: that use them because what the health advisory will also
Speaker 1: likely spur. And I heard an attorney say this at
Speaker 1: a webinar yesterday. The Drinking Water Act allows drinking water
Speaker 1: utilities if their states agree to act as regulators, they
Speaker 1: can go upstream and slap effluent limits on the companies
Speaker 1: who are putting problematic calm pounds into their source water.
Speaker 1: So if states and drinking water utilities didn't have a
Speaker 1: good incentive already to be regulating those upstream companies, they
Speaker 1: certainly do now. Um. So I would expect more states
Speaker 1: and more drinking water utilities to be exploring that particular authority.
Speaker 1: I'd be expecting companies upstream to be getting more permit limits. Um.
Speaker 1: And I would expect attorneys who represent injured parties to
Speaker 1: be absolutely using the new health advisory in the thousands
Speaker 1: upon thousands of legal cases that are you know, have
Speaker 1: been filed against three M du Pont Comorris Tycho fire Products,
Speaker 1: and and and and and yeah, definitely alright, So finally
Speaker 1: wrapping things up, where's the p FAST science heading? I mean,
Speaker 1: I know that's an impossible question to answer, but you know,
Speaker 1: are we It seems like we're having a trend here
Speaker 1: where the more we learn about p fast, the worse
Speaker 1: it gets. The more concerning things we discover and the
Speaker 1: more avenues of research that we have. Are we getting
Speaker 1: to a point where that won't be happening and we
Speaker 1: are kind of reaching a plateau? Or have we not
Speaker 1: even approached the science plateau yet. For p Fass, I
Speaker 1: don't think we've even approached the science plateau yet because
Speaker 1: there are thousands upon thousands of these chemicals out there.
Speaker 1: Most of what we know is based on the older,
Speaker 1: longer ones, but there's enough information about the newer ones
Speaker 1: that concerns have been raised about them as well. Your
Speaker 1: question gets a really important noub many scientists, say. Ma Halfriedoff,
Speaker 1: who's the chief hunt O over chemicals at e p A,
Speaker 1: said this morning, we can't study the p fast chemicals
Speaker 1: one at a time. It's just impossible. So how do
Speaker 1: you get the information? Becomes the question. E p a
Speaker 1: s approach is to try and break them into categories
Speaker 1: and try and get information about categories. Um. The European
Speaker 1: Union's approach is to aim for some type of regulation
Speaker 1: that says, unless the chemicals are essential to society, you
Speaker 1: can't use them. Now, there are absolutely essential uses. If
Speaker 1: I have a heart stent, I want it to have
Speaker 1: p fast chemicals on it because that enables the heart
Speaker 1: stent to last in my body for decades. But there
Speaker 1: is a huge divide between the affected communities in particular
Speaker 1: and some scientists who strongly feel the default approach, which
Speaker 1: has to be regulate them as one consider them bad
Speaker 1: unless proven innocent, and then the other um view says, wait,
Speaker 1: it's like the term feelines. Okay, fee lines are not
Speaker 1: all alike. One's a lion, one's a panther, one's a jaguar,
Speaker 1: one's my kitty cat. They don't all act alike. We
Speaker 1: can't handle them as the equivalent. That's a good point,
Speaker 1: although I will say sometimes my kitty cat does think
Speaker 1: he is a panther, so that's that's another story. But
Speaker 1: now the metaphor holds um. That's really fascinating stuff. Thank
Speaker 1: you Pat so much for talking about this, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm just so fascinated to see where this
Speaker 1: goes in the future. It sounds like we're gonna be
Speaker 1: talking about it for a very long time, forever conversation,
Speaker 1: forever conversation about for every cat calls. Thanks and that's
Speaker 1: it for today's Out of Parts per Billion. If you
Speaker 1: want more environmental news, check us out on Twitter. We
Speaker 1: use a pretty easy to remember handle at environment It's
Speaker 1: just that environment. I'm at David B. Schultz if you
Speaker 1: want to chat with me about anything and everything. Today's
Speaker 1: episode of Parts per Billion was produced by myself, David Schultz.
Speaker 1: Parson Billion was created by Jessica Combs and Rachel Dagle
Speaker 1: and is edited by Zach Shrwood and Chuck McCutcheon, and
Speaker 1: our executive producer is Josh Block. Thanks for listening, everyone,
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