SPAN Joins California Council for Environmental and Economic Balance (CCEEB) Panel Addressing Effective PFAS Management Approaches

Policy focus shifts to risk-based PFAS management, with greater attention to prioritization and targeted definitions.

On July 11, 2024 the Sustainable PFAS Action Network's (SPAN) Andrew Bemus joined a panel discussion at the California Council for Environmental and Economic Balance (CCEEB) ‘Summer Issues Seminar’ exploring the outlook for PFAS management in California and across the United States. The expert panel addressed the future of PFAS management amid growing public concern around exposure and the increasingly complex regulatory landscape, leading to a myriad of legislative and regulatory responses at both the national and state level, including in Sacramento.  

California-based industries that utilize PFAS support over 500,000 jobs and contribute nearly $150 billion to the state GDP. Bemus explained by drawing insights from states like Maine, which is confronting the implementation challenges of a class-wide management approach that threatened to harm the state’s economy, California can implement effective strategies while avoiding the pitfalls of overly broad and costly reporting programs.

Bemus highlighted Maine as an example of a state that recently scaled back a first-in-the-nation  class-based PFAS management approach. Maine's initial class-wide ban on PFAS led to noncompliance and confusion regarding the responsibility to report PFAS in products. Consequently, state lawmakers revised its PFAS in Products program to exempt major industrial uses and adjusted the state reporting program to align with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s current reporting program under the Toxic Substances Control Act.

Separately, New Hampshire’s recent adoption of the EPA’s PFAS definition under the Toxic Substances Control Act reporting program signified an important step towards a focus on managing commercially active substances. These developments, in addition to other states like Colorado and Connecticut that recently narrowed proposed class-based approaches, demonstrates a broader trend towards adopting sustainable, risk-based policies for more effective PFAS management at the state-level.

 “A big part of what we’re doing is educating state and federal policy makers on the different implications of PFAS policy and how we can effectively make them workable,” said Bemus. “What we have really seen at the federal-level is an indication that the federal government understands there needs to be a much more risk-based approach to the PFAS management.”

To this end, last year the State Department responded to a proposed PFAS regulatory framework received by the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) that would restrict critical PFAS uses, writing that the policies should account for “the safe use of those substances already in commerce, particularly for uses critical to the functioning of society” and called for “effective risk management across the spectrum of PFAS.” In addition, the Department of Defense in its 2023 report to Congress warned that taking a “broad, purely ‘structural’ approach to restricting or banning PFAS” would harm national security and that federal laws and regulations should “consider and balance the range of environmental and health risks associated with different individual PFAS, their essentiality to the U.S. economy and society, and the availability of viable alternatives.”

To achieve sustainable solutions, Bemus concluded that a unform PFAS management approach is urgently needed at the federal level, and reaffirmed SPAN’s commitment to working with all stakeholders to apply lessons learned in state capitols to develop responsible management policies that target commercially active PFAS that may pose risk to health and the environment.

Other panelist included Assemblymember Diane Papan; Jonathan Bishop, State Water Resources Control Board; Jessica Gauger, California Association of Sanitation Agencies; and Kristin Robrock, Exponent.

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