GOP's new move will exacerbate 'rapidly spreading chemical disaster': expert

Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives are pushing to block action that would protect farms from toxic "forever chemicals" found in fertilizers made from sewage sludge.

The provision, introduced as part of a government spending bill unveiled Monday, would bar the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from enforcing the findings from a January risk assessment, which found that the sludge contains dangerous amounts of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS).

According to the environmental advocacy group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), the act could cause agricultural losses and pose serious risks to public health.

For decades, the federal government encouraged farmers to spread municipal sewage onto their farmland, as it was a good source of nutrients and a preferable alternative to putting the sludge in landfills.

Nearly 20% of U.S. agricultural land is estimated to use this sludge, commonly known as "biosolids," in fertilizer, and 70 million acres of farmland may be contaminated.

These biosolids contain large amounts of PFAS, which are absorbed through the roots of plants and contaminate plant and animal products that end up on store shelves.

These chemicals are known to accumulate in the body for years without degrading and cause increased rates of cancer, decreased fertility, and developmental delays in children.

The EPA's January study found that the risks associated with PFAS in these sewage sludge-based fertilizers "exceed EPA's acceptable thresholds, sometimes by several orders of magnitude." Even very small quantities of these chemicals, it found, could pose major risks.

The GOP bill, however, forbids the EPA from using any funding to "finalize, implement, administer, or enforce" that risk assessment.

"Preventing EPA from protecting public health and our food supply from toxic contamination epitomizes special interest politics at their worst," said PEER science policy director Kyla Bennett, a scientist and attorney formerly with the EPA. "If finalized, this ban will leave ill-equipped state agricultural agencies to deal with a rapidly spreading chemical disaster."

Republicans have faced pressure from chemical manufacturing groups to kill PFAS regulations. In 2023, a report from Food & Water Watch found that eight major companies, including Dow and DuPont, spent a combined $55.7 million to lobby against bills to rein in PFAS between 2019 and 2022. The American Chemistry Council, the industry's lobbying arm, spent over $58.7 million during that same period.

The rule banning action on PFAS is part of a broader effort by Republicans to gut environmental regulations. The bill released Monday slashes EPA spending by over $2 billion, nearly 25%.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has also weakened standards on PFAS in drinking water, which were adopted during the Biden administration.

"Across the country, farms have had to be condemned and livestock slaughtered due to PFAS pollution from fertilizers," said PEER staff counsel Laura Dumais, who filed a lawsuit against the EPA last year for its slow rollout of PFAS regulations. "Further delay in preventing more of these needless tragedies would be unconscionable."