Where do ‘forever chemicals’ in drinking water come from?
The US is introducing new environmental protections aimed at limiting long-lived PFAS chemicals in tap water, but these are only the tip of a very persistent iceberg.
They are in the water we drink, the packaging of the food we eat, the utensils we cook with, the beds we sleep in, the clothes we wear and even within our own bodies. There is no escaping so-called "forever chemicals", a set of long-lasting and potentially harmful human-made substances that infuse almost every environment on the planet.
The US government is imposing its first-ever national restrictions on five of these individual chemicals, known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), plus limits on mixtures that include a sixth PFAS compound. The Environmental Protec...
