Indiana bill makes it harder to protect water from 'forever chemicals’

Indiana lawmakers are advancing a bill that would limit the state’s ability to regulate the use of thousands of potentially dangerous chemicals known as “forever chemicals” used in common household products that may show up in drinking water.

House Bill 1399, authored by Rep. Shane Lindauer, R-Jasper, would do so by weakening the state’s 2020 definition of what constitutes PFAS chemicals by rewriting it to exclude most of the PFAS chemicals important to Indiana’s manufacturing sector. The Republican-controlled Indiana House passed the bill along party lines and it next will be considered by the Senate Committee on Environmental Affairs.

The bill would exclude most types of PFAS chemicals known as polymers from regulation. Polymers are considered less harmful than non-polymer PFAS, because they are made up of longer chains of atoms which makes it more difficult for the chemical to transfer to humans.

Polymeric PFAS are used in products that are resistant to heat, water, grease and stains, like Teflon nonstick pans, clothing and other products sold and manufactured in the state. Under certain conditions, they can break down into more dangerous non-polymeric forms.

The Indiana Department of Environmental Management isn’t currently considering stronger regulations. But Lindauer says the bill is necessary because the absence of PFAS regulations alone is not enough to give potential investors the certainty they need to operate in the state.

You see, PFAS use also is essential for microchip manufacturing, one of the businesses the state is attempting to attract, including for its billion-dollar LEAP Innovation District near Lebanon.

“Some of the companies that are dealing with medical devices, chip manufacturers, lithium batteries and all that stuff, the need for regulatory certainty is magnified,” Lindauer said. “Just because it hasn’t happened yet doesn’t mean we don’t want to maybe get ahead of that and provide that certainty.”

So far, PFAS chemicals have been detected in the treated drinking water in dozens of large and small systems in the state, including Indianapolis. Testing has found the presence of a PFAS called PFBS in some treated drinking water.

Scientists only know how a few PFAS chemicals affect humans. Some of the earliest used PFAS are linked to certain cancers and other health conditions, but thousands of chemically similar PFAS have not been studied.

Studying chemicals is an expensive, years-long process, and, according to some PFAS experts, studying every PFAS chemical fully could take millions of years.

“The idea that you have to test one chemical at the time and get a battery of tests, which is what we have been doing in the past, is not applicable to PFAS because we simply don’t have time,” said Marta Venier, an Indiana University environmental chemist. “There’s too many of them. It would take geological eras to get all the data on all the chemicals.”

The Indiana Department of Environmental Management only tests for 18 PFAS chemicals. The best labs can only detect about 70 PFAS chemicals.

A bill to protect some PFAS

There’s a constant push and pull in Indiana balancing business versus environmental concerns. And legislators in recent years have seemed willing to strongly consider the benefits of businesses over environmentalists.

The bill has the support of the American Chemistry Council, Indiana Manufacturers Association and the Indiana Chamber of Commerce.

“PFAS is used in medical devices, pacemakers, defibrillators, by the electronics industry, touchscreens, lithium batteries, solar panels and the aerospace industry,” Lindauer testified Jan. 17 at the House Committee on Environmental Affairs. “So the bill is really designed to preserve the use of those products.”

While the state isn’t currently considering more stringent regulations on PFAS, manufacturers and other industries worry that rules at the federal level could enable the state to make its own rules on PFAS.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will soon limit the amount of PFOA, PFOS and four other PFAS in drinking water. The EPA also announced its intention to finalize a rule requiring clean ups at hazardous waste sites to include the clean up of PFOA, PFOS and seven other PFAS chemicals.

Separate from science

Some of the oldest PFAS chemicals, known as PFOA and PFOS, have been linked to kidney and testicular cancer, liver damage, increased cholesterol levels and many other health conditions.

The chemicals have been phased out by its manufacturers and replaced by new generations of PFAS chemicals, like GenX. But scientists like Venier believe the new PFAS are chemically related and just as unsafe as the legacy PFAS chemicals.

According to the EPA, GenX chemicals have been linked to liver cancer and some of the same health conditions linked to PFOA and PFOS.

Venier believes the regulatory exemptions being requested by lawmakers, manufacturers and the chemical industry’s lobbying group, the American Chemistry Council, could prevent future regulations from preventing the hazardous chemicals from being spread.

“The American Chemistry Council is saying that these compounds are safer than legacy PFAS, but the reality is that there’s a lot of evidence that shows that these compounds are not safer because once they are in the environment, they degrade into the more toxic PFAS,” Venier said.

For example, a non-stick pan coated with Teflon, a polymeric PFAS known as PTFE, is considered safe under most uses. But when the pan is overheated, the polymer Teflon breaks down into GenX and other chemicals.

If HB1399 becomes law, the Teflon used to coat the pan would not be considered PFAS but the chemicals released when the pan breaks down would be.

Venier believes this could allow more PFAS chemicals to enter our bodies than if they were allowed to be regulated.

PFAS are persistent, meaning they can stick around in the environment for potentially thousands of years without breaking down.

Once PFAS are absorbed into the human body through food, drink or other means, they can stay in the body for years. The more PFAS you ingest, the more that collects in your body. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly everyone in the U.S. currently has PFAS in their blood.

The Senate committee has yet to schedule a hearing on HB 1399.

Mirror Indy reporter Enrique Saenz covers west Indianapolis. Contact him at 317-983-4203 or enrique.saenz@mirrorindy.org. Follow him on X @heyEnriqueSaenz.