USA Today: “U.S. Military Says National Security Depends on ‘Forever Chemicals’”
A recent report published by the Department of Defense is shedding new light on how the United States depends on per- and polyfluoroalkyl substance, or PFAS, to protect national security.
USA Today reports that Pentagon officials have told Congress that “[l]osing access to PFAS due to overly broad regulations or severe market contractions would greatly impact national security and DoD’s ability to fulfill its mission.”
More from USA Today:
“Kevin Fay, executive director of the Sustainable PFAS Action Network, a coalition of corporations, industry advocates, and researchers who support the use and management of PFAS compounds, said the Defense Department has a point and it is up to federal regulators to “responsibly manage” these chemicals and their use to strike a balance among environmental, health, and industrial needs.
“The U.S. Department of Defense’s report on critical PFAS uses is crystal clear: regulating PFAS through a one-size fits all approach will gravely harm national security and economic competitiveness,” Fay wrote in an email to KFF Health News.
Adding that not all PFAS compounds are the same and arguing that not all are harmful to human health, Fay said risk-based categorization and control is vital to the continued use of the chemicals.
But, he added, in locations where the chemicals pose a risk to human health, the government should act.
“The federal government should implement plans to identify and remediate contaminated sites, properly identify risk profiles of the many types of PFAS compounds, and encourage innovation by clearing the regulatory path for viable alternatives to specific dangerous compounds,” Fay wrote. ”
The Department of Defense issued the “Report on Critical Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substance Uses” to Congress in August pursuant to the FY2023 James M. Inhofe National Defense Authorization Act. Key findings and recommendations from the Department include:
"Congress and the Federal regulatory agencies should avoid taking a broad, purely ‘structural’ approach to restricting or banning PFAS. It is critical that future laws and regulations 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.”
“Emerging environmental regulations focused on PFAS are broad, unpredictable, lack the specificity of individual PFAS risk relative to their use, and in certain cases will have unintended impacts on market dynamics and the supply chain, resulting in the loss of access to mission critical uses of PFAS.”
"Eliminating PFAS from non-essential uses is an important step toward addressing public concerns and protecting human health and the environment."
“If future PFAS legal and regulatory frameworks ignore the OECD caution on the use of its PFAS definition and seek to broadly restrict the use of PFAS based on chemical structure, there could be extensive economic, industrial competitiveness, and quality-of-life impacts to U.S. society."
