PFAS, also known as “forever chemicals,” have been linked to cancers, childhood development problems, reduced fertility and other health issues. (Credit: Adobe Stock)
Last month, the Trump administration said a rule establishing limits for PFAS chemicals in drinking water will no longer be going into effect.
PFAS, also known as “forever chemicals,” have been linked to cancers, childhood development problems, reduced fertility and other health issues. Studies have found at least 97 percent of Americans have PFAS in their system.
PFAS-related lawsuits and insurance claims have been on the rise in recent years. Last year, in the largest class action settlement of 2024, 3M agreed to pay $10.3 billion after being sued by public water providers for polluting drinking water with PFAS.
We spoke with Jamie Sanders, a partner with the law firm Clyde & Co., about what the rule change could mean going forward.
PropertyCasualty360.com: What was the rule prior to this change?
Sanders: So the rule that had been proposed by the EPA under the Biden administration, which was eventually adopted, established maximum exceedances for PFAS discharges. It established a limit of four parts per trillion for PFOA [perfluorooctanoic acid] and PFOS [perfluorooctane sulfonic acid] in drinking water. And then it also established a maximum of 10 parts per trillion for some other chemicals that are part of the PFAS family.
This was adopted in 2024, but the implementation of it was envisioned to happen over the course of five or six years. You were going to have monitoring that was going to go on for the next three years, and public water systems had until 2029 to implement solutions. So these rules, even as adopted, were envisioning their compliance taking years.
PropertyCasualty360.com: Why was the rule adopted? Why was it important?
Sanders: What was important about the rule was that it was the first nationwide standard. What we have otherwise is a patchwork of state-specific standards that are wildly different. You have some states that have been very aggressive and have limits of four or five parts per trillion. You have other states where the standard is much higher, up to several hundred parts per trillion.
PropertyCasualty360.com: Why did the current administration change direction?
Sanders: The Trump administration announced that this rule was not going to be going into effect, but that’s really all that the Trump administration announced. It seems to have been part of a broader effort to pause EPA regulation efforts. I don’t think PFAS was targeted for any particular reason; it was just grouped in with other things.
We don’t know what the Trump administration is eventually going to do with PFAS, whether it will ultimately adopt this rule or some looser version of it, with higher parts per trillion or perhaps something with a longer compliance timeline. I do think that given the public attention to this issue and the fact that Lee Zeldin, who is the new EPA administrator, has been involved with PFAS issues before — it would surprise me if they didn’t eventually do something.
PropertyCasualty360.com: What impact will this have on pending or upcoming litigation?
Sanders: I think that the withdrawal of it, at least in the short term, it is not likely to materially change anything. The reason why I don’t think that it’s going to make any difference, at least in the short term on the litigation, is that the litigation is not really tied to arguments that certain standard formats were not met because there were no standards and those cases are based on theories of general negligence and similar tort concepts. So the EPA adopting or not adopting regulations really should not have a significant impact on the cases that have been filed by the water suppliers.
For property damage and clean-up costs, I definitely don’t think that it is going to have any impact whatsoever on the bodily injury claims because the bodily injury claims are based on arguments that exposure to PFAS cause a certain type of cancer or non-cancerous condition, and the outcomes of those cases are going to be determined by the testimony in those cases, particularly the expert testimony. I just don’t see the EPA rules or the fact that these EPA rules are not going into effect stopping that or changing how that litigation goes.
I also can’t imagine that the pause of these rules is going to dissuade either water suppliers or bodily injury claimants from bringing what they consider to be valid claims. So I’m not expecting it to stop the current trajectory of the litigation.
PropertyCasualty360.com: What will happen next?
Sanders: We may know more this time next year. Whether the Trump administration, for instance, introduced a new rule to replace the old one by then, or if they’ve done nothing, maybe that suggests that they’re not ever going to do anything with it. But I just think it’s premature at this point to draw any large conclusions over the withdrawal of a rule. I don’t think there was a lot of thought put into it other than just they’re undertaking deregulation efforts, and this was part of that.
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