On July 22, the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) announced that Michigan will adopt a new rule set creating the nation’s lowest drinking water standards for PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances). The standards went into effect last week, on August 3, 2020. The current US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Drinking Water Health Advisory for PFAS is 70 parts-per-trillion or ppt and is now starting its Maximum Contaminant Levels (MCLs) process for PFAS. Given the complexity of the PFAS science, and the emerging studies, the US EPA evaluation will involve 100s of toxicologists/scientists and is a multi-year process. The new Michigan MCLs are:

The 8-carbon PFOS was phased out of production and use in 2002 and PFOA in 2015. The new replacement, smaller PFAS (4- and 6-carbon PFAS) are generally considered less toxic and have radically short half-lives (time it takes for to remove half the PFAS from our bodies).

Drinking Water Supplies – The new standards will cover roughly 2,700 public water supplies around the state. During MPART’s 2018 statewide sampling program, approximately 30 public water systems were found to have total PFAS results of 10 ppt or higher.

Contaminated Sites – The new drinking water and groundwater standards will immediately result in 42 new PFAS investigations being added to MPART’s oversight. Half of the sites are landfills, and more than a dozen are former plating or manufacturing sites.

Industry Discharge & WWTPs – Industries discharge effluents to municipal waste-water treatment plants (WWTPs) as well as directly to surface waters. These Industries that use PFAS will be subject to monitoring by EGLE under these new regulations. Municipalities will need to budget for testing, and possibly treatment of their discharge waters.

WWTP Sludges or Biosolids – About half of the 7 million tons of sludges and biosolids generated annually in the U.S., are applied to farm fields and other land throughout the county. The sludge offers farmers a cheap source of fertilizer. Although now, sludges containing PFAS may need to be shipped to landfills (assuming municipal landfills continue to accept these biosludges).

In addition to these industrial uses of PFAS, it is used globally in thousands of commonly used products such as food packaging, pizza boxes, fast food wrappers, popcorn bags, shampoos, and cosmetics (particularly eye shadow, foundation, facial powder, bronzer, and blush). They are also used by industries as metal platers to reduce vapors and protect work health & safety. Although, PFAS does not accumulate in fat of animals like PCBs and DDT, it can repel both oil and water.