The U.S. EPA’s most recent progress report on PFAS actions highlights a year of significant new regulatory and research updates, some of which will continue to have long-term impacts on the waste and recycling industry.

The third annual progress report compiles 2024 updates related to regulations, research and other actions to curb health and safety impacts of the chemicals. It comes in the last few months of President Joe Biden’s administration, which in 2021 created its PFAS Strategic Roadmap meant as a master to-do list “to confront PFAS contamination head on,” according to the report.

The Biden administration has “taken unprecedented steps to develop the science, implement strong standards, and invest billions into solutions to protect all Americans from these forever chemicals,” said EPA Administrator Michael Regan in a statement. Yet the new report maintains that per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances are an “urgent threat,” and it calls for more work to be done to study and regulate such chemicals.

 Here are the top takeaways from the progress report and how EPA actions affected the industry this year:

The regulatory landscape is still evolving after notable EPA decisions

The EPA said holding polluters accountable was a major part of its work in 2024. That includes finalizing a new rule to designate PFOS and PFOA as hazardous substances under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, known as CERCLA or Superfund. 

The EPA, along with some environmental groups, have said the long-awaited move has given the agency “critical tools to improve transparency and accountability for PFAS cleanups.” But the hazardous designation has long concerned the waste industry. It says the new rule could cause unintended liability consequences for their facilities since they consider themselves "passive receivers” of PFAS-containing material, not polluters themselves.

The EPA has said it does not intend to pursue municipal landfills, farms “where biosolids are applied to the land” or water utilities in its enforcement strategy. The National Waste & Recycling Association, along with the Recycled Materials Association, the American Chemistry Council, the American Forest & Paper Association and others, have asked a federal court to review the rule. Oral arguments have not been set for the case, but a series of briefing schedule deadlines are set throughout the spring of 2025. 

Meanwhile, the industry is generally supportive of the other major EPA regulation finalized this year: the first legally enforceable drinking water standards for certain PFAS. In the report, the agency says it expects the drinking water standards will “reduce PFAS exposure for approximately 100 million people, prevent thousands of deaths, and reduce tens of thousands of serious illnesses.” Waste facility operators expect such standards will impact how they approach leachate management, monitor groundwater and interact with wastewater treatment facilities. 

In the coming months, the EPA says it also expects to propose Effluent Limitations Guidelines for the PFAS manufacturing sector, and plans to follow up with similar guidelines for metal finishers and landfills, the agency said. Those guidelines are meant to curb “some of the largest sources of PFAS discharges to waterways,” it said.

In January, the agency finalized tests to detect 40 kinds of PFAS in landfill leachate, biosolids, wastewater surface water and groundwater. The EPA expects to soon propose a rule that would require PFAS data from such tests to be reported as part of Clean Water Act permit applications, according to the report.

Keeping PFAS out of new products could help ease future PFAS management efforts

Keeping PFAS from entering the environment through products, packaging and chemicals is another goal of the EPA’s strategy. It’s a philosophy some in the waste industry say is important to prevent more PFAS-containing items from entering landfills, recycling centers and water treatment facilities.

In 2024, the EPA finalized a rule to prevent inactive PFAS from reentering commerce, which is meant to stop companies from “starting or resuming the manufacture or processing” of 329 types of PFAS “that have not been made or used for many years.” Such companies that want to use one of the named PFAS must undergo an EPA review and risk determination, the agency said.

The agency says it has also focused on government purchasing strategies. The agency worked with the General Services Administration to cut PFAS from government custodial contracts. This year, the EPA also updated its Safer Choice program to indicate that PFAS must not be intentionally added to Safer Choice-certified products. This standard indicates products and packaging that have met certain health and environmental criteria.

This spring, the EPA also updated its guidance on how to manage destruction and disposal of existing PFAS-containing waste streams. The new guidance showed that landfills release more PFAS to the environment than previously thought. 

Though the waste industry does not consider the document to be the final word on PFAS management, it offers updated research on the three most “widely-used, commercially available” techniques: landfilling, thermal treatment and deep well injection. The growing PFAS management industry has also pointed to the document as a helpful way for waste facility operators to navigate options when planning for mitigation projects.

Some in the waste industry, especially those with hazardous waste incinerators, are also looking into whether they can meet a newer, more stringent EPA testing standard for PFAS destruction known as OTM-50.

More PFAS research is ongoing, but questions remain for the new administration

The EPA under the Biden administration has stressed that more research must be done to understand every aspect of PFAS, from its health and environmental impacts to the best methods for destroying or managing the chemicals. 

Though the PFAS Strategic Roadmap only covers activity from 2021 to 2024, the agency said in a statement that it has “an ongoing and rigorous research agenda” planned. 

That includes collecting more data on PFAS “that will improve scientific understanding of this large and diverse class of chemicals.” The EPA has also previously called for more research into how PFAS are migrating from landfills into the environment.

President-elect Donald Trump’s administration could change the federal government’s approach to these chemicals. The EPA under his administration in 2019 had its own PFAS action plan, which called for establishing more research and technical assistance for addressing PFAS as a public health concern and called for “understanding PFAS toxicity to develop recommendations and standards.” 

Andrew Wheeler, the most recent EPA administrator of the previous Trump administration, has said his administration was instrumental in “moving forward” with several PFAS-related regulatory steps. But current EPA Administrator Regan touted more recent moves from the last four years. “Before President Biden took office, the federal government wasn’t doing enough to address PFAS pollution across the country,” he said in a statement.

The industry is waiting to see how Lee Zeldin, Trump’s pick for EPA administrator, will approach key issues including PFAS. When he was in Congress, Zeldin did vote in favor of several PFAS regulation bills, including a 2021 bill that would have placed some per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances under a National Drinking Water Standard.