Pfas Action Act of 2021
Floor Speech
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Mrs. DINGELL. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for being such a strong leader and getting us to where we are today.
Mr. Speaker, I am proud to stand here in support of this very important piece of bipartisan legislation, which I am leading with my good friend and colleague, Representative Fred Upton.
This is a meaningful bill that is the product of good bipartisan work by the Energy and Commerce Committee. It passed the House with strong bipartisan support in the last Congress, and it is an example that bipartisanship does exist on Capitol Hill. This bill embodies it, and today's vote will once again validate that.
PFAS chemicals are an urgent threat to public health. This class of manmade chemicals is extremely persistent in the environment and has long been linked with adverse health effects, including cancer.
These chemicals were birthed out of the Manhattan Project, and, now, nearly every American, almost every American, has PFAS coursing through their blood after generations of use of these drugs in our modern society.
The EPA has understood the risks posed by PFAS since 1998. The Defense Department has understood the risks since the 1970s. The FDA has understood the risks since the 1960s. And industry has known about the dangers for decades.
But we still do not have a strong Federal policy to combat these forever chemicals, which are a crisis. We have yet to set a national drinking water standard for PFAS that our water utilities need to meet. We have yet to designate them as hazardous substances under Superfund to jump-start cleanup. We have yet to regulate industrial discharges of PFAS into our water and our air. And we have yet to establish simple labeling that PFAS is in a product to allow consumers to protect themselves.
This can all change if we pass the PFAS Action Act.
According to the Environmental Working Group, over 200 million Americans are drinking water now contaminated with PFAS, and we are finding more and more contamination regularly. Just today, the Environmental Working Group reported that PFAS have been detected in 2,800 communities, including 2,411 drinking water systems, and at 328 military installations nationwide.
Listen to me: The Pentagon is not going to prioritize cleanup of these military sites until these chemicals are listed as the hazardous substances that they are.
I want to be clear: I love my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, but there is nothing in this bill that would ban PFAS used in drugs, medical devices, or PPE. It will not ban masks.
I urge my colleagues to vote for this bill. It is time we protect Americans.
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