Forever Chemicals, Forever Excuses: The Study America Just Killed

A $15M study could have helped protect families. The administration chose not to finish it.

This summer, the Trump administration quietly halted a critical federal study of PFAS contamination in America’s food supply. The $15 million research effort, launched under Biden in 2024, was designed to answer urgent questions: how do these “forever chemicals” move from treated sewage sludge known as biosolids into farmland, soil, crops, livestock, and ultimately onto our plates?

It was not a luxury. The study was a response to mounting evidence from states like Maine and Michigan, where milk from family farms tested at more than 150 times the EPA’s drinking water limits for PFAS. Farms closed. Livelihoods vanished. Lawsuits piled up. The study was our chance to stop flying blind, to finally measure the scope of a crisis we already know is harming people. And yet, it was killed.

Drinking Water, Asbestos, and Proof That Pushback Works

The irony is sharp: around the same time, the administration tried to weaken PFAS standards in drinking water, and backed off after lawsuits and public outcry. A similar attempt to delay a long-overdue asbestos ban also crumbled under pressure. These reversals prove an important point: pushback works. When enough people demand accountability, even this administration responds.

We should bring that same pressure to bear on the decision to cancel the farmland and food study.

What Are PFAS?

PFAS — per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances — are synthetic chemicals created in the 1940s and prized for their resistance to heat, water, and grease. They’re in everything from Teflon pans to firefighting foam to food packaging.

But these same qualities make them a nightmare. PFAS don’t break down in the environment or our bodies. They persist. They accumulate. Studies have linked them to cancer, thyroid disease, infertility, immune dysfunction, and developmental harm in children. Today, nearly 99% of Americans have detectable PFAS in their blood.

More Than Just Drinking Water

Most public attention has focused on PFAS in drinking water, and for good reason. But water is only one pathway.

Every year, U.S. wastewater treatment plants generate millions of tons of biosolids — treated sewage — that are spread as fertilizer on farmland. Those biosolids are contaminated with PFAS, which then seep into soil, plants, and animals. Cows drinking contaminated water and eating contaminated feed produce contaminated milk, eggs, and meat. Grains and vegetables absorb PFAS from the land.

Even if your tap water is clean, your food may not be. Most disturbingly, the USDA does not require testing for PFAS, not even in milk, where it is easiest to detect due to its high water content. Some states have testing protocols especially for milk, but most have nothing at all.

PFAS Spares No One

This is not a crisis confined to “poor neighborhoods” or rural backwaters. Unlike lead pipes, which largely harmed marginalized communities, PFAS spares no one.

Bottled water and high-end groceries can still contain PFAS. Wealth cannot insulate you from it, because we all eat from the same agricultural system and drink from the same aquifers. The CDC’s data is unambiguous: PFAS is already inside almost every American.

Justice Deferred

Like lead, PFAS began as a crisis of inequality. Long before most Americans knew the term “forever chemicals,” PFAS contamination was poisoning communities near chemical plants, military bases, and wastewater treatment sites. These places, often rural, poor, home to tribal nations, or majority Black and brown, were targeted precisely because they had less power to fight back.

Chemical companies sited their factories in these areas because the land was cheap, the residents were politically marginalized, and environmental regulations were loosely enforced. Military bases and airports drenched surrounding fields and wells with PFAS-laden firefighting foam for decades without warning neighbors or cleaning it up. Municipalities spread biosolids on farmland because it was the cheapest way to dispose of sludge, often without telling farmers what was in it.

These communities have been the first and hardest hit, losing farms, livelihoods, and health, and they are still fighting for recognition and restitution. The fact that PFAS now touches everyone does not erase the reality that some bore the cost earlier, longer, and more severely. The failure to act continues to tell these communities their lives matter less than profit margins.

See our recent reporting on lead here:

From Rome to Flint: 2,000 Years of Lead and Neglect

We Know How to Fix This. Others Already Are

The tragedy is that we already have the tools to solve much of this problem. Technologies like activated carbon, reverse osmosis, and ion exchange can capture PFAS from water. Advanced methods like supercritical water oxidation and plasma arc destruction can actually destroy PFAS in concentrated waste streams.

Other nations have not only acknowledged the crisis but also acted decisively. Japan and South Korea have built and operate PFAS-destroying facilities today, proving these technologies work at scale. The European Union has moved beyond piecemeal regulation, proposing to phase out entire classes of PFAS and mandating thermal destruction of contaminated waste. Countries like Denmark and Sweden have banned PFAS in consumer products and invested in cleaning up farm soils.

These nations treat PFAS as the public health emergency it is, investing in their families’ safety, deploying the best technologies, and holding polluters accountable. We could follow their lead. We should follow their lead.

We cannot afford to wait decades, even a century, as we did with exposure to lead.

The Cost of Waiting

Critics point to cost as the reason for the delay, but doing nothing is far more expensive. PFAS-related healthcare, lawsuits, farm closures, and retroactive cleanup already cost the U.S. billions each year, and the longer we wait, the more those costs grow.

We can pay to fix this now, or pay far more in money and lives later.

The Future Risk

And the longer we wait, the worse it gets. Climate change is likely to magnify PFAS risks, concentrating contaminants in shrinking water supplies and spreading them farther through floods and fires. Delay is not neutral. It compounds the damage.

Do We Believe American Families Deserve Less?

That is the question at the heart of this crisis. Other nations are protecting their families. They are investing in technologies to destroy PFAS, regulating its use, and cleaning up their water and soil.

If we fail to act, we are saying that American families, including our own, deserve less than clean water, safe food, and healthy land.

We don’t need another lead pipe crisis. We don’t need decades of lawsuits, sick children, poisoned farms, and belated regret.

We know what PFAS is doing. We know how to stop it.

The only question left is: will we?

Call to Action

If you care about clean water, safe food, and a government that values the health of its people over corporate profits, now is the time to speak up.

Call your members of Congress and demand that they:
— Reinstate funding for the halted PFAS farmland and food study.
— Invest in proven PFAS destruction technologies.
— Enforce strong standards for PFAS in water, food, and soil.
— Support justice for the communities most harmed.

Call the U.S. Capitol Switchboard: (202) 224‑3121
Tell the operator your ZIP code, and they’ll connect you directly to your senator or representative’s office.

Here’s a sample script you can use:

“Hello, my name is [your name] and I’m a constituent from [your town]. I’m calling to urge [Senator/Representative] [Name] to take immediate action on PFAS contamination. The Trump administration’s decision to cancel the farmland and food study was wrong. We deserve to know how these toxic ‘forever chemicals’ are getting into our food supply, and we already have the technology to clean it up. Please support reinstating the study, funding PFAS destruction technologies, and holding polluters accountable. American families deserve safe water, safe food, and healthy land. Thank you.”

You can also amplify your impact by supporting the organizations on the front lines of this fight, including:

• Environmental Working Group (EWG): https://www.ewg.org

• Union of Concerned Scientists: https://www.ucsusa.org

• Environmental Defense Fund: https://www.edf.org

• IATP (Institute for Agriculture & Trade Policy): https://www.iatp.org

• Local and state‑based environmental justice groups in your community.

Together, we can make sure this fight is not forgotten and that American families get the protection they deserve.

Bibliography:

• “Trump Administration Yanks $15 Million in Research into PFAS on U.S. Farms: ‘Not Just Stupid, It’s Evil.’” The Guardian, July 11, 2025.

• “‘Forever Chemicals’ and Agriculture: A Case Study.” Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, November 9, 2021.

• “Groundbreaking Study Shows Unaffordable Costs of PFAS Cleanup from Wastewater.” Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, June 6, 2023.

• “PFAS: The astronomical cost of depolluting Europe.” Le Monde, Jan. 14, 2025.

• “What the EPA’s Partial Rollback of the ‘Forever Chemical’ Drinking Water Rule Means.” AP News, May 15, 2025.

• “Breaking: Trump Administration Keeps Asbestos Ban.” MesotheliomaGuide.com, June 24, 2025.

• “Supercritical Fluid Oxidation & Alternatives.” Minnesota House Research, July 2024.

• “PFAS: Global Economic Removal Costs Greater Than Entire GDP.” ScienceDirect, 2024.

• “Emerging Technologies for Removal of PFAS from Biosolids.” Environmental Sciences Europe, December 18, 2024.

• “National Milk Testing Strategy (NMTS) for Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza.” USDA APHIS, FAQs.

• “Analytical Results: Testing Food for PFAS Environmental Contamination.” FDA.gov, 2024.

• “Developing PFAS Methods for Meat, Poultry, Eggs, and Milk.” USDA FSIS/ARS Progress Report, 2024.