PFAS: Responding to Orders to Investigate and Increasing State and Federal Scrutiny

Description

Numerous consumer products such as cookware, fast food packaging, textiles, and firefighting foam use PFAS, a broad class of over 4,000 chemicals. Because of their relative persistence in the environment, they have been given the name "forever chemicals" by environmental groups. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) and state-level agencies target these chemicals, citing their pervasive use, potential for dispersing widely, and studies concerning the potential health effects.

With the rollout of the U.S. EPA's Strategic Roadmap, issued in October of last year, the agency is undertaking nationwide efforts to restrict PFAS chemicals from being released into the environment and accelerate the cleanup of past PFAS contamination with new regulations proposed under the Safe Drinking Water Act, CERCLA, RCRA, TSCA and more. While the U.S. EPA continues to make progress at the national level, many state programs have moved to promulgate varying standards, leaving a patchwork of local regulations for the industry to navigate. Investigations and legal actions are underway across the country, ranging from New England through the South, the Midwest, California, and Alaska.

Listen as our panel of experienced attorneys and professionals offers guidance on responding when a governing authority issues an order to investigate potential PFAS contamination. The panel will address the growing scope of government enforcement authority, the implications of receiving an order, sampling issues, validity/reliability of analytical methods, monitoring, the availability of reliable fingerprinting and source tracing techniques, and the current trends in the courtroom.