New Jersey’s nation-leading efforts to protect the public from a class of toxic chemicals in drinking water are being threatened by the emergence of substitutes that may be just as hazardous to human health, experts argue.

At a public roundtable on PFAS chemicals, hosted by NJ Spotlight last Wednesday, scientists said chemical manufacturers have responded to increasing regulation of the chemicals by New Jersey and other states by introducing so-called short-chain alternatives, such as the chemical Gen-X, that serve the same purposes but have not been fully vetted by regulators.

Although the substitutes have not been subject to the same rigorous evaluation as the original chemicals, there are signs that they are equally toxic, according to the chairman of New Jersey’s Drinking Water Quality Institute, a scientific panel that advises the Department of Environmental Protection.

“Many times, these have not really been tested on rodents, they have not gone through a full toxicity screening,” said Dr. Keith Cooper, a Rutgers University toxicologist. “Some of the early studies that have been done on Gen-X, it seems to be extremely toxic as well,” Cooper told the meeting at Camden County Community College.

Rutgers University’s Dr. Keith Cooper

He said the short-chain compounds have similar mechanisms to long-chain PFAS chemicals such as PFOA and PFOS. “The toxicity may still be present even though they are only present for a shorter period of time,” Cooper said.

Not enough research

But because of a shortage of research on the new chemicals, scientists and regulators know “very little” about the shorter-chain PFASs, he said.

New Jersey regulators are in the process of placing some of the nation’s strictest limits on three of the longer-chain chemicals — PFNA, PFOA and PFOS — because of their links with illnesses including cancer, immune-system and thyroid problems, low infant birth weight, and elevated cholesterol.

As a class, PFAS chemicals have been used in consumer products like nonstick cookware and flame-retardant fabrics since about the 1940s. Even though PFOA and PFOS are no longer made in the United States because of an agreement between manufacturers, they are widespread in the environment because they are designed not to break down; they have been found more commonly in New Jersey water sources than in many other states.

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A possible solution to the challenge of regulating the new short-chain chemicals could be to regulate the whole PFAS class, said Anthony Matarazzo, senior director of water quality and environmental management at New Jersey American Water, the state’s biggest water utility.

‘…a lot of the same health effects’

Anthony Matarazzo, senior director for Water Quality and Environmental Management, New Jersey American Water

“Recognizing that PFOA and PFOS are being targeted, industry quickly changed to a short-chain replacement,” based on the belief that it would be eliminated by the body faster, Matarazzo said. “But what they did find was that it has a lot of the same health effects as the legacy PFASs.”

Regulating the entire class rather than just individual chemicals would mean that scientists could avoid playing “whack-a-mole” to respond to new chemicals as they emerged, he argued.

In response to the new concerns, New Jersey American Water is cooperating with state officials to look at the substitute compounds at a couple of its locations, Matarazzo said.

Meanwhile, DEP officials are evaluating the DWQI’s recommendations on PFOA and PFOS but at a pace that clean-water advocates say is much too slow.

It took the DEP four years to adopt the DWQI’s recommendation for PFNA, which has set a national benchmark for regulating the chemical, said panelist Tracy Carluccio, deputy director of the environmental group Delaware Riverkeeper Network, and a long-time advocate for tougher limits on the chemicals.

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