The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) announced on September 3, 2024, the release of its Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) Federal Research and Development Strategic Plan (Strategic Plan). Prepared by the Joint Subcommittee on Environment, Innovation, and Public Health PFAS Strategy Team (PFAS ST) of the National Science and Technology Council, the Strategic Plan provides a federal strategy and implementation plan for addressing the strategic areas identified in the 2023 Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) Report (PFAS Report). The Strategic Plan is intended to be a companion document to the PFAS Report. The activities described in the Strategic Plan are reviewed through the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) annual budget process and subject to available resources.
Background
As reported in our March 16, 2023, blog item, the PFAS Report provides an analysis of the state of the science of PFAS and information that will be used to direct the development of a federal strategic plan. The PFAS Report focuses on the current science of PFAS as a chemical class, identifies scientific consensus, and portrays uncertainties in the scientific information where consensus is still sought. The PFAS Report identifies four key strategic areas that, when addressed, will generate actionable information to address PFAS: removal, destruction, or degradation of PFAS; safer and environmentally friendlier alternatives; sources and pathways of exposure to PFAS; and toxicity of PFAS. The gaps and opportunities identified in the PFAS Report were used to develop the Strategic Plan.
Strategic Plan
Based on the four strategic areas presented in the 2023 PFAS Report, the PFAS ST identified four strategic goals that will drive federal research and development (R&D) efforts regarding PFAS:
- Provide relevant, high-quality scientific data that increase the understanding of PFAS exposure pathways to inform federal decisions that reduce risks to human health and the environment;
- Effectively and equitably communicate federal work and results regarding PFAS R&D through engagement with impacted communities and federal, Tribal, state, and local agencies;
- Identify research and technologies to address PFAS contamination and mitigate the adverse impacts on communities; and
- Generate information that facilitates informed procurement decisions by federal agencies, manufacturers, and consumers regarding products that contain or use PFAS and PFAS alternatives to reduce adverse human health and environmental effects.
According to the Strategic Plan, the PFAS ST identified five R&D strategies within the strategic research areas that address the identified knowledge gaps. The R&D strategies and select tasks to achieve the objectives within each strategy include:
- Understand PFAS exposure pathways to individuals and communities:
- Further characterize potential PFAS exposures in the built environment, including schools, workplaces, and other indoor/household environments. According to the Strategic Plan, this would include the co-occurrence and use of consumer products and understanding the lifecycle of products with regard to PFAS exposure;
- Initiate studies regarding PFAS co-exposure and potential interactions with other contaminants (including other PFAS) in environmental samples, such as nano- and microplastics, petroleum constituents, metals, pesticides, and pharmaceuticals;
- Initiate and continue studies of the physical-chemical properties of PFAS and mixtures of PFAS;
- Investigate additional pathways and routes of exposure, such as direct contact, dermal absorption, oral ingestion, and inhalation from indoor and outdoor environments (residential, consumer, and occupational exposures); and
- Develop and support studies of PFAS exposures in indoor environments through collection of dust, air, consumer products, and other media where biomonitoring may also be conducted;
- Address current PFAS measurement challenges through the development of standards, advanced sampling, and analytical methodologies:
- Develop and refine analytical methods and data collection methods to evaluate PFAS content, migration, and emissions from consumer, commercial, and industrial products, and their impact on workplace and indoor environments;
- Develop testing programs and methods related to quantifying PFAS content, migration, and emissions in animal/livestock feed, food and food packaging, indoor exposure (dust, home/office materials), workplace settings, and consumer products; and
- Develop and validate real-time, rapid, and remote PFAS screening methods using analytical sensors, PFAS proxies, passive sampling devices, and other novel technologies for the detection of PFAS in media;
- Understand the toxicological mechanisms, human and environmental health effects, and risks of PFAS exposure:
- Develop scientifically supported classification schemes for PFAS with respect to adverse impacts on human health and the environment;
- Develop and support research regarding the human toxicity and ecotoxicity testing of PFAS as mixtures with PFAS and other co-occurring chemicals;
- Support research to understand further the mechanism of action of PFAS toxicity, advance development of adverse outcome pathways, and understand the impact of PFAS mixture toxicities when evaluating cumulative health effects;
- Develop and support epidemiological studies designed to identify communities near significant sources of PFAS contamination that may have environmental justice concerns, including occupationally exposed populations and populations, communities, and/or lifestages that are more susceptible to PFAS exposure or adverse health outcomes;
- Explore the development of a federal data-sharing strategy to use interagency toxicological and epidemiological data to determine human health endpoints of concern from PFAS exposure; and
- Develop classification strategies that enable grouping of PFAS by hazard identification, exposure assessment, and dose-response studies in support of risk assessments;
- Develop, evaluate, and demonstrate technologies for the removal, destruction, and disposal of PFAS:
- Continue to support the foundational research that advances technologies for the destruction of PFAS by both thermal and non-thermal approaches;
- Support the implementation of removal and destruction technologies that apply to discharge and releases at the point of manufacturing; and
- Develop and implement models to evaluate technology performance, short-term and long-term costs, energy demands, scalability, and the composition of treated materials that are released to the environment;
- Identify PFAS alternatives and evaluate their human health and environmental effects:
- Engage with academic and private sector industrial researchers to support the development of novel, less toxic alternative chemistries and processes for sustainable PFAS alternatives;
- Identify and evaluate critical and essential uses of PFAS within individual agencies and sectors;
- Develop an interagency-aligned evaluation framework for prioritizing research on specific PFAS alternatives that includes considerations regarding sustainability; performance; viability and timeframe to transition; dependency on foreign sources of materials; criticality of the current product to national security, critical infrastructure, climate change mitigation, and public health; and criticality of the need for a replacement product or process;
- Support research to advance sustainable manufacturing and circularity of PFAS-based processes and products to preserve current critical and essential uses, which will enable an orderly transition to PFAS alternatives in critical manufacturing sectors that are dependent on PFAS;
- Develop a database of the current commercial inventory of alternative materials and products with relevant chemical and toxicological information, manufacturer production capacity, and performance comparison of the alternatives to PFAS-containing materials and products; and
- Continue to assess human health and environmental effects posed by alternative materials and products for use in comparison to other product formulations, including PFAS-containing product formulations.
Commentary
Bergeson & Campbell, P.C. (B&C®) acknowledges that OSTP’s PFAS Strategy may benefit from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) regulatory activities under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) and other initiatives. We provide below representative examples of these activities.
Between 2022 and 2024, EPA issued TSCA Section 4 test orders requiring manufacturers and/or processors to perform various studies on four PFAS (i.e., 6:2 fluorotelomer sulfonamide betaine [6:2 FTSB], trifluoro(trifluoromethyl)oxirane [HFPO], 2,3,3,3-tetrafluoro-2-heptafluoropropoxy) propanoyl fluoride [HFPO-DAF], and 1,1,2,2,3,3,4,4,5,5,6,6,7,7,8,8,8-Heptadecafluoro-N-(2-hydroxyethyl)-N-methyloctane-1-sulfonamide [NMeFOSE]).
EPA also intends on initiating ten additional TSCA Section 4 test orders per year on PFAS between fiscal year (FY) 2024 and FY 2026 (i.e., October 1, 2024-September 30, 2027). EPA’s activities under TSCA Section 4 may lead to the development of data that provide a better understanding of the human health and environmental effects of specific types of PFAS.
The TSCA Section 8(a)(7) rule on the reporting and recordkeeping of manufacture and import of PFAS will provide additional information on PFAS uses, production volumes, disposal, exposures, and hazards. In addition, EPA’s publication of its updated PFAS category analysis may help frame how to use data on PFAS for which testing has been (or is in the process of being) completed to fill data gaps on related PFAS.
Further, EPA’s Office of Research and Development (ORD) and Office of Land Use and Emergency Management (OLEM) have made significant contributions on analytical methods for detecting PFAS in various media and guidance for destroying and disposing of PFAS and PFAS-containing materials, respectively. The TSCA Section 8(a)(7) information along with EPA’s advancements with identifying PFAS in environmental media may aid with identifying those PFAS and the associated uses that lead to the greatest environmental releases.
Collectively, EPA’s activities on PFAS will advance the objectives of OSTP’s PFAS Strategy. This information may also aid with differentiating the types of PFAS that present the greatest concerns to human health and the environment versus those chemistries that do not. After all, many chemical substances, including pharmaceuticals and pesticides, meet one or more of the existing definitions for PFAS and have clear public health benefits, yet do not present the same concerns as those PFAS that have significant concerns (e.g., perfluorooctanoic acid).
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