PFAS, a class of chemicals used to make nonstick cooking pans and waterproof clothing, among hundreds of other applications, have become a serious health concern for officials across the country and in New York.

PFAS, formally per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are a class of chemicals that were heavily used from the 1940s to the late 2000s, although they persist in some applications to this day. Produced by companies like 3M, contamination can come from a variety of sources and typically results in contamination of the water table.

They’re known as ‘forever chemicals’ because there’s no way to fully remove them from the water or soil they contaminate, and they don’t break down fast enough to disappear over even centuries. They build up in the environment, including plants and animals, causing health problems for them and also moving up the food chain.

People who consume high levels of PFAS, or a smaller volume over a long period of time, can develop rare cancers, pre-eclampsia or a whole host of other chronic illnesses and diseases.

In 2016, New York was one of the first states to urge the federal Environmental Protection Agency to acknowledge that PFAS contamination is a major concern — joined with Vermont and New Hampshire, they pushed the EPA to implement its first health advisory for PFAS consumption later that year.

New York was the first state in the country to regulate PFAS, specifically the chemical perfluorooctanoic acid or PFOA, according to the state Department of Environmental Protection. Officials took a wide survey of businesses, fire departments, fire training centers and federal Department of Defense facilities that year as well.

State DEC officials collected 25,000 gallons of PFAS-containing firefighting foam up to 2018.

In 2016, federal officials acknowledged that Fort Drum in Jefferson County had contaminated water near the Wheeler-Sack Army Airfield, resulting in the closure of nearly a half-dozen on-post water wells and a multi-million dollar federal grant to restore water sufficiency on post.

In 2018, officials in New York were expressing disappointment with federal efforts to regulate and address PFAS. The EPA maintains a list of over 100 contaminants that are proven to harm human health, but officials have identified over 80,000 potentially toxic substances to be concerned about.

“The federal government is charged with having a monitoring system to potentially add other chemicals to the ones we are required to test, but the EPA has not been moving fast enough,” said Brad J. Hutton, former deputy commissioner for the state Public Health Office, speaking with the Watertown Daily Times in 2018.

Action has come since then. In 2019, the EPA launched a PFAS action plan, outlining a roadmap for addressing chemical contamination in water and soil. In January of 2024, the EPA moved to ban nearly 330 ‘inactive’ PFAS compounds from use or processing without an agency review, effectively taking the substances off the market. Inactive substances are those that aren’t used in any major manufacturing, import or export operations in any U.S. territories.

In April 2024, the EPA finalized a rule regulating six PFAS contaminants, including PFOA. The EPA also designated PFOA and PFOS, another similar compound, as hazardous to human health under the terms of the federal ‘Superfund’ law, allowing for cleanup and cost recovery from polluters.

Questions arose in 2025 over whether the Trump administration would change or drop any of the new regulations adopted after his first term ended in 2021, and in May, the new EPA administrator and former New York gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin announced the agency would keep the Biden-era restrictions for PFOA and PFOS, another PFAS chemical, but would drop regulations and reconsider findings for four other substances including PFNA and HDFO-DA.

The latter substance is known colloquially as ‘GenX’ and was a next-generation replacement to more harmful substances like PFOA. ‘GenX’ was later found to be similarly harmful to human health, and is similarly able to persist in the environment.

“We are on a path to uphold the agency’s nationwide standards to protect Americans from PFOA and PFOS in their water,” Zeldin said. “At the same time, we will work to provide common-sense flexibility in the form of additional time for compliance. This will support water systems across the country, including small systems in rural communities, as they work to address these contaminants. EPA will also continue to use its regulatory and enforcement tools to hold polluters accountable.”

Zeldin pushed the compliance deadline for the new regulations and promised to establish an outreach program focused on reaching noncompliant water systems, especially those in rural and small communities, to connect them with resources to bring their projects into compliance with the new rules. The initial rules required water systems to properly filter and remove the six contaminants by 2029, but the changes made by Zeldin push the broad deadline for PFOA and PFOS compliance to 2031.

The EPA also has plans to establish an exemption framework to give noncompliant systems even more time to fix their systems, but the specifics for that aren’t out yet.

That move was lauded by some water district officials, including the Association of State Drinking Water Administrators Director, Alan Roberson.

“With the current compliance date of 2029, states and water systems are struggling with the timeframes to complete the pilot testing, development of construction plans, and building the necessary treatment improvements. EPA’s proposed extension of the compliance date and increased technical assistance will address the number of systems that would be out of compliance in 2029 due to not being able to complete all of these tasks on time,” Roberson said.

Most of these changes aren’t official yet — the EPA still has to introduce the new rules and usher them through the process, which could be done as early as the spring of next year.