IPC International Community magazine an association member publication
Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1497169
IPC COMMUNITY 44 SPRING 2023 What Role Does Advocacy Play in PFAS? In my experience as an environmental attor- ney, and as IPC's environmental regulatory affairs manager, I recognize that there is often a lack of data to back up community-based environmental cases. There's a disconnect between the science and what is happening to people (or what we're concerned could be hap- pening), and it's hard to make that connection. It happens all the time with environmental laws and regulations. While government works dili- gently to protect public health and the environ- ment, the laws are often broad and rather lofty. The importance of advocacy and under- standing the implications of a law are critical. P r o v i d i n g t h e g o v e r n m e n t w i t h d a t a t o s u p p o r t a p o l i cy e n s u re s thoughtful and sustain- able regulations that can be effectively enforced. With input from stakeholders, it is often found that it is more useful to protect public health when you have a narrower regulatory scope that is more realistically achievable. At I P C , we a re wo r k i n g c l o s e l y w i t h e l e c t r o n i c s manufacturing companies to help support their under- standing of PFAS use and k e e p t h e m a h e a d o f upcoming policies, both n a t i o n a l l y a n d g l o b a l l y. There's a lot to keep track of and we want to fully support our members in being as prepared as possible. PFAS is one of those big issues where scien- tists, industry, and regulators don't yet have all the answers. There are so many different variations and uses of PFAS it's hard to make a regulation that will be effective and achiev- able. In the policy world, having evidence and data to support achievable regulations is so important. How Are PFAS Chemicals Being Regulated? In the policy space, mainly in Europe and North America, we're seeing a push to regulate the entire class of PFAS chemicals—not just any one specific PFAS, like PFOA or PFOS, but the entire family. But are they all bad actors to pub- lic health? This is difficult to determine. It is imprac- tical and tedious to test the thousands of chemical chains categorized as PFAS and understand the envi- ronmental and human health impacts. Rather, it is more protective and prac- tical to push for an alternative to the carbon-fluorine bond. However, we need to consider if that is technologically and economically feasible for the array of uses. We learned from ozone- depleting substances, chlorinated There are possibly more than 10,000 PFAS chemistries included in the OECD definition of PFAS.