The Environmental Safety Company (EPA) lately proposed including 9 “perpetually chemical compounds” to its listing of hazardous constituents underneath the Useful resource Conservation and Restoration Act (RCRA). To qualify for the listing, chemical compounds should have confirmed “poisonous, carcinogenic, mutagenic, or teratogenic results on human life or different life types,” in line with the EPA’s web site.

The chemical compounds are per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), a category used to make heat-, oil- and grease-resistant merchandise. Current in additional than 12,000 types, PFAS could be discovered on all the pieces from menstrual merchandise to mattress pads to wall paint. PFAS are additionally an environmental menace as a result of they don’t break down, can transfer by way of soils and groundwater, and accumulate in wildlife, finally working their means up the meals chain into people.

Producers who use PFAS had been unsurprised by the EPA’s announcement, in line with Kent Sorenson, chief expertise officer at Allonnia, a bioremediation firm.

“The file rule was positively anticipated,” stated Sorenson, “extremely anticipated within the market each when it comes to those that are cleansing up contaminated websites and coping with the waste, but in addition from the customers of these compounds that principally personal that legal responsibility.” 

However whereas the rule was anticipated, the particular chemical compounds chosen had been unknown, inflicting backlogs on the bottom.

“To some extent, [the unknown chemicals] had been holding up web site cleanups and evaluations, as a result of it’s exhausting to do a correct analysis if you don’t know for positive which PFAS compounds are going to be thought of hazardous constituents,” stated Sorenson.

One other vital a part of the announcement was the authority granted to each the EPA and the states to mandate chemical cleanup sooner or later.

“Due to robust partnerships with our co-regulators within the states, we’ll strengthen our capacity to wash up contamination from PFAS, maintain polluters accountable and advance public well being protections,” stated EPA administrator Michael Regan, in an announcement.

Not everybody agrees with the EPA’s choice. “Grouping chemical compounds, together with PFAS, into broad classes and creating one-size-fits-all insurance policies is inefficient, expensive and ineffective in attaining the meant environmental targets,” stated Robert Helminiak, vp of authorized and authorities relations on the Society of Chemical Producers & Associates, in an e-mail to GreenBiz.

Helminiak confused that the EPA’s ruling is “stopping vital chemistries that … have internet constructive environmental impacts from coming to market.”

Individually, a brand new rule added to the Poisonous Substance Management Act (TSCA) in October requires new recordkeeping and reporting for producers and importers of merchandise containing PFAS. It mandates firms report PFAS makes use of, manufacturing quantity, disposal, hazards and environmental results in merchandise that had been offered commercially from 2011 onwards. The official language lists the industries most certainly affected by this replace, together with development, manufacturing, wholesale commerce, retail commerce and waste administration and remediation companies.

Allonnia’s Sorenson envisions this might create new financial alternatives resulting from firms’ sudden must entry this data. Presently, nobody is filling that want, he stated.

“Producers are in search of assist from individuals to judge [the reporting process], and that’s an entire new market that has now opened up,” stated Sorenson.

Corporations that know or suspect they are going to be affected by the TSCA and RCRA rulings are suggested to behave shortly to reduce potential legal responsibility. In a commentary piece for Reuters, Miles Scully, a associate at Gordon Rees Scully Mansukhani LLP, endorsed companies to scrutinize their provide chains for PFAS, assessment contracts for language concerning PFAS, and look into PFAS options.

Sorenson suggested firms to put money into nascent however rising applied sciences that may sort out PFAS elimination. He touted Allonnia’s floor lively foam fractionation (SAFF) system as “essentially the most sustainable and sturdy expertise” commercially obtainable. SAFF leverages air bubbles to separate PFAS from water in small volumes, enabling the hazardous chemical to be retrieved and destroyed.

Correction: In a earlier model, Allonnia was misspelled.