In what surely will impact environmental regulatory programs across the United States, the EPA is actively prioritizing PFAS in the environment and has taken two recent actions to continue to address contamination.
The EPA has issued a memo detailing an interim National Pollutant Discharge Elimination (NPDES) permitting strategy for PFAS. The agency also released information on progress in developing new analytical methods to test for PFAS compounds in wastewater and other environmental media. According to the EPA, these recent actions will help secure the federally enforceable wastewater monitoring program for PFAS. Monitoring will begin as soon as validated analytical methods are finalized.
In the recent news release, EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler commented, “For the first time in EPA’s history, we are utilizing all of our program offices to address a singular, cross-cutting contaminant and the agency’s efforts are critical to supporting our state and local partners.”
In partnership with the interim NPDES permitting strategy, EPA has announced that it is also procuring data on the status of analytical methods needed to test for PFAS in wastewater. EPA is in the process of developing analytical methods in partnership with the U.S. Department of Defense to test for PFAS in wastewater and other environmental media, including soil. The agency is announcing a list of 40 PFAS chemicals that are the subject of analytical method development. This method would be in addition to Method 533 and Method 537.1 that are already approved and can measure 29 PFAS chemicals in drinking water. EPA anticipates that multi-lab validated testing for PFAS will be finalized in 2021. More information on the EPA’s testing method validation efforts can be found here.
Merit Laboratories is a leading national PFAS environmental laboratory, analyzing drinking water, soil, wastewater, groundwater, and other sample matrices, including biosolids and sludge. Analytical methods performed by Merit for PFAS include drinking water by EPA 533, EPA 537.1, and EPA 537 rev. 1.1 and soil, wastewater, groundwater, and surface water by ASTM D7979-19 with Isotopic Dilution and ASTM D7968-17.