With the widespread contamination of Drinking water by the industrial chemicals perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorosulphuric acid (PFOS), the US Environmental Protection Agency recently updated their drinking water guidelines for these perfluorinated compounds, issuing a lifetime drinking water health advisory of 70 ppt for human exposure. These Chemical compounds are widely used in industry and consumer products, and they persist in the environment, including waterways and aquifers that provide millions of US citizens with drinking water, potentially posing a human health risk.

One would intuitively believe that regulating the use of harmful pollutants would ultimately have a positive effect on the quality of water. But this is not necessarily the case. Typically, the problem doesn't simply disappear when regulations are implemented, as companies often substitute harmful chemicals with others that have an equally hazardous impact on water quality.

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For example, in the US, the EPA has been working together with large companies such as DuPont in phasing out the use of the hazardous chemical PFOA () — carcinogenic industrial pollutants responsible for contaminating the drinking water supply of Hoosick Falls and other communities, which led to the EPA issuing a health advisory earlier this year. However, according to the water news network, Water Online, DuPont and other companies that use PFOA are highly secretive about the substitute chemicals they are using instead of PFOA, and it is very likely that these replacements are just as hazardous as PFOA itself.

In an interview on WNYT, Dr David Carpenter, an environmental scientist at the University of Albany, explained: "It's been PFOA and perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS) that's been discontinued, but not the related chemicals that have not been studied so much. The chemicals used to replace these substances present various uncertainties around drinking water quality."

Carpenter points out "that the industry is very secretive about what they used to replace PFOA and it's hard to figure out exactly what they are. They're not saying what they replaced it with. It's almost certain that these are perfluorinated compounds (PFCs) with slightly different structures that have not been studied anywhere near the degree that these more common version of perfluorinated compounds have been," according to the report.

According to the WNYT report, the EPA is currently assessing hundreds of alternative substitute PFOA chemicals, and according to an EPA official: "There are many reasons to expect a range of toxicities. But more research is needed, particularly on the environmental fate of these compounds to fully evaluate these compounds."

Ultimately, one has to question whether substituting a known hazardous chemical compound with other chemical compounds (or hundreds of others as may be the case) about which very little if anything is known, offers any benefits in terms of reducing the risk to environmental and human health?

PFAS's fall under the category of PFC's - Perfluorinated Chemicals. PFOA, PFOS, etc.  The Black Berkey elements that come standard with our Berkey systems do reduce these contaminates.  Berkey water filter PFOA test results can be found here.