New EPA PFAS Regulation Summary

On April 10, 2024, EPA announced the final National Primary Drinking Water Regulation (NPDWR) for six PFAS.  EPA expects that over many years the final rule will prevent PFAS exposure in drinking water for approximately 100 million people, prevent thousands of deaths, and reduce tens of thousands of serious PFAS-attributable illnesses.

The final rule requires:

• Public water systems must monitor for these PFAS compounds and have three years to complete initial monitoring (by 2027), followed by ongoing compliance monitoring. Water systems must also provide the public with information on the levels of these PFAS in their drinking water beginning in 2027.
• Public water systems have five years (by 2029) to implement solutions that reduce these PFAS if monitoring shows that drinking water levels exceed these MCLs.
• Beginning in five years (2029), public water systems that have PFAS in drinking water which violates one or more of these MCLs must take action to reduce levels of these PFAS in their drinking water and must provide notification to the public of the violation.

⁽¹⁾ Hazard Index (HI): The Hazard Index is a long-established approach that EPA regularly uses to understand health risk from a chemical mixture (i.e., exposure to multiple chemicals). The HI is made up of a sum of fractions. Each fraction compares the level of each PFAS measured in the water to the health-based water concentration