Both the New Hampshire landfill, which is owned by Waste Management, a national company, and the Madison treatment plant were operating within the bounds of their respective permits, neither of which require monitoring for PFAS.
But environmental health groups said the lack of standards or mandatory testing are precisely the problems.
Tim Whitehouse, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based organization Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, compared the situation surrounding PFAS to “a regulatory wild, wild West where nobody has a handle on its use, storage, or disposal.”
His organization and others are calling on the EPA to take more aggressive regulatory action on the chemicals.