Strengthen the Health Standards for Drinking Water

 

Federal advisory levels for arsenic and PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) are too weak, and too few states have adopted health-protective standards.

In our home state of Maine, we’re working to enact a truly health-protective standard for arsenic—just as other states, like New Hampshire, have already done. Maine’s current standard relies on decades-old science, and newer research shows that it should be much lower to protect our health.

The current standard for arsenic should be 1000 times stronger to truly protect people from cancer and children from harm to brain development. Plus, the current standard doesn’t even apply to wells. That standard needs to be dramatically lowered, and applied to private as well as public water supplies.

Furthermore, Maine currently has no maximum contaminant level established for PFAS, despite the established science showing its harm to human health and the fact that PFAS has been detected in some public and private water supplies.

In states like Maine that have not established a health-protective standard for PFAS in water, they rely on an outdated advisory level recommended by the Trump Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). That means that if you live in these states, the water you’re drinking would be considered unsafe to drink in the states that have heeded the science and adopted more health protective PFAS standards.

We’re also pushing for a truly health-protective drinking water standard for PFAS, which has been found in public water supplies as well as household wells.