WASHINGTON — When Dana Sargent’s brother, Grant Raymond, was diagnosed with glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer, she suspected the cause was PFAS, a contaminant to which he and other firefighters were exposed through protective gear, firefighting foam and burning household materials.
Research has linked exposure to PFAS with serious health issues, including cancer. Although it’s impossible to prove that PFAS caused an individual’s illness, Raymond had decades of exposure as a firefighter and as a former U.S. Marine.
He died two years after his diagnosis in 2019 at age 47, leaving his loved ones searching for answers.
“I need to know if PFAS killed my brother,” Sargent said.
On Wednesday, the Environmental Protection Agency announced that it plans to “rescind and reconsider” key Biden-era limits on four common PFAS chemicals found in the drinking water of millions of Americans.
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, are manufactured chemicals found in everyday products like food packaging and waterproof clothing, and they can persist for years in the human body.
In April 2024, the Biden administration finalized its drinking water rules to limit public exposure to six common PFAS, including PFOA and PFOS.
The Trump administration said the rollbacks would “address procedural flaws with the Safe Drinking Water Act by the prior administration,” according to an email from the EPA press office.
In the announcement, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said the changes would “protect Americans from PFOA and PFOS in their water.”
The EPA does plan to maintain Biden-era limits on two other types of PFAS, but will grant public water systems more time to comply with the limits.
Sargent, who is also a clean water advocate and executive director of Cape Fear River Watch in North Carolina, accused Zeldin of prioritizing polluters.
“How can he come to the conclusion that rescinding the only federal protection on PFAS is the right and true thing to do,” Sargent said. “It’s supportive of polluters over public health and the environment.”
Sargent’s group has been trying to clean up the drinking water supply for hundreds of thousands of people suffering decades-long PFAS contamination from a North Carolina manufacturing plant owned by Chemours, a spinoff of DuPont.
“Zeldin says he’s strong on PFAS, but rescinded and delayed the very rules meant to protect us,” said Emily Donovan, who lives just 80 miles from the Chemours plant.
Donovan, who co-founded a grassroots organization called Clean Cape Fear, became concerned about the plant when parents at her children’s elementary school asked for bottled water so their children wouldn’t have to drink from water fountains. Donovan said she worries every night about her children’s safety due to exposure.
“We’ve been exposed to over 200 different PFAS, but we still can’t get any health regulators to tell us which ones cause what illnesses,” Donovan said. “It’s a violation of our human rights to not know what these exposures really did to us, so we can’t seek preventative care.”
Others questioned the legality of the EPA’s rollbacks, and expect them to be challenged in court.
“These rollbacks are illegal,” said Corinne Bell, a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “The Safe Drinking Water Act protects us from such rollbacks.”
However, some water utilities praised Zeldin’s extension of deadlines to clean up PFAS.
“This commonsense decision provides the additional time that water system managers need to identify affordable treatment technologies and make sure they are on a sustainable path to compliance,” National Rural Water Association CEO Matthew Holmes said in a statement.
But even if the courts were to eventually reverse the changes, Bell said the process will take time — and meanwhile, people will remain exposed. For now, she said, the best thing people can do is pressure their state to provide its own state-level limits for these pollutants.
Sargent said the government should make the polluters clean up the contamination and stop making more of the deadly chemicals. Instead, the government has placed the burden on drinking water providers to filter it out — and that cost gets passed onto consumers.
“It’s a broken system,” she said.
On Wednesday, the Cape Fear Public Utility Authority announced a 6.9% increase in monthly water and sewer bills starting July 1. This was the third consecutive rate increase, which CFPUA said was driven largely by the costs of filtering out PFAS from drinking water.
In a letter to Congress addressing the challenges to North Carolina brought on by PFAS, Sargent wrote that her brother was “just one of potentially thousands more that have died or will die from diseases that our government could be protecting us from, by simply ensuring that polluting corporations are not treated with more respect and consideration than people like Grant, who served our country as a U.S. Marine and who saved lives as a Chicago firefighter.”
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