As the Trump administration plans to roll back or delay federal limits for PFAS in drinking water, environmental groups in Massachusetts say the state is failing to step up and regulate the so-called “forever chemicals.”
“By almost any measure, Massachusetts is not doing enough,” said Deirdre Cummings of the advocacy group MassPIRG, which recently handed state lawmakers petitions with 10,000 signatures, pressing them to take action to address pollution from per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances.
Studies have shown PFAS exposure may lead to a wide range of health effects, including increased risk of prostate, kidney and testicular cancers, developmental delays in children, decreased fertility, and a reduction in immune response to infections.
“The evidence isn’t getting more murky,” Cummings said. “It’s getting clearer and clearer.”
Many states have enacted bans on the use of PFAS in a range of products, including carpets, cleaning products and textiles. For example, every New England state except Massachusetts has banned PFAS in firefighting foam. To date, though, the Massachusetts legislature has only banned PFAS in firefighters equipment, known as turnout gear. That ban is set to take effect next year.
“Twenty-eight different states are acting to tamp down the problem and attack the problem of PFAS contamination,” Cummings said. “Here in Massachusetts, we’re behind the eight ball.”
More than five years ago, the Massachusetts legislature created a task force to study the issue. The resulting report called for the prohibition of PFAS in consumer products and firefighting foam, as well as funding for remediation and other regulations. Legislation seeking to achieve many of those goals has been introduced, but has failed to pass in prior legislative sessions.
State lawmakers are once again trying to get a bill over the finish line before the formal legislative session closes at the end of July.
State Sen. Julian Cyr introduced the PFAS legislation, which is currently before the Ways & Means committees of both the state Senate and House. The House version of the bill was introduced by Rep. Kate Hogan.
Cyr said it’s time that Massachusetts joins the 14 states banning PFAS from food packaging and 17 states that have outlawed using firefighting foam with the chemicals.
“We have traditionally been in the vanguard of public health and environmental regulations,” Cyr said. “I think we’ve rested a bit on our laurels here. And we’re really trying to make the case that we need to take action here, particularly in the face of a federal government that has little interest in evidence-based approaches to protecting human health and our environment.”
Sen. Jo Comerford has also proposed legislation that’s narrower than Cyr’s, but aims to reduce PFAS contamination. The House version of the bill was introduced by Rep. James Arena-DeRosa.
Lawmakers have until the end of July to take action on either of the bills.
With PFAS exposures coming from a range of sources, and contamination becoming more widespread, here are some key areas where advocates say action is required in Massachusetts.
Consumer products
Advocates say the only way to cut down on PFAS contamination in Massachusetts is to stop it from getting into the state in the first place. Today, “forever chemicals” are widely used in everything from cookware to dental floss.
“What the state hasn’t done, and what DEP has not done, is act on trying to turn off the spigot of PFAS products used in the state,” said Laura Orlando of the waste-reduction nonprofit Just Zero.
A dozen states — including Maine, Vermont and Rhode Island — have banned the use of PFAS in cosmetics and nine states have banned them in juvenile products.
The PFAS legislation proposed by Cry and Hogan legislation defines nine areas of consumer products that would be banned from containing PFAS unless the manufacturer obtains a waiver from the state Department of Public Health.
“Those are the products that we see the most likely exposure pathways — textiles, clothing, furniture, child’s products. You know, basically the consumer products that come closest into contact with our bodies,” said Sen. Cyr.
The bill would also ban the use of PFAS in food packaging, but it would not ban PFAS in all consumer products.
“Several states have taken that approach. We think that approach is potentially sort of throwing out the baby with the bathwater,” Cyr said. “PFAS is used in a whole host of refrigerant applications that are quite useful.”
Business groups argue that an all-out ban on PFAS isn’t feasible. The group Associated Industries of Massachusetts is opposed to Cyr’s bill.
“The legislation would significantly impact the ability of many AIM members to function,” state a blog post on the industry group’s website. “Cornerstone Massachusetts industries like manufacturing, life sciences, national defense, chemical producers, medical devices, food producers, grocery stores, semiconductors, and more would be forced to move or make massive changes to their operations. For many industries and products there are no feasible alternatives to PFAS.”
Sewage sludge, or ‘biosolids’
Massachusetts has an ongoing problem figuring out what to do with its sewage. Each year, tens of thousands of pounds of the state’s sewage are dried into pellets, or “biosolids,” to be used as fertilizer. And as residents are exposed to more PFAS contamination, sewage is increasingly contaminated with the chemicals.
“There’s all these things that have PFAS, and then you rinse it, you wash it in your washing machine, you scrub your floor, you pour that down the drain,” said Clint Richmond of the Sierra Club. “That all goes to the wastewater treatment plant. And all the PFAS products are feeding into that.”
A 2024 state report said that the prior year, nearly 16,000 tons of the state’s sewage sludge was processed into biosolids compost or dried pellets and applied to land in Massachusetts. Massachusetts sludge was also applied to the land in New York, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Virginia, Ohio and Vermont.
It’s not clear, though, exactly where those biosolids have been used as fertilizer. Laura Orlando of the waste reduction advocacy group Just Zero said that “when the state has been asked by the Coalition for Sludge-Free Land, by Just Zero, by Conservation Law Foundation and other organizations [like] Sierra Club, ‘Where has sludge been spread in the state?’ we get a big, ‘I don’t know.’ That’s completely unacceptable.”
In a written statement, a spokesperson for MassDEP said the department is “working diligently” to address PFAS contamination.
“Efforts are underway to ensure safe, practical, and sustainable disposal alternatives that avoid increased water and sewer costs for residents, municipalities, and farmers,” the MassDEP statement said. “Initiatives include an innovative pilot to assess reduction and destruction technologies, and a new analysis of potential disposal strategies. We will continue to engage with stakeholders and the public as we work to rid Massachusetts of these persistent and pervasive chemicals.”
The land application of biosolids would be banned in the state if the legislation introduced by Sen. Comerford were to pass.
“It turns off biosolid spreading and it says that the state has to help us — in these communities where biosolid spreading has been a way to manage waste — figure out how we’re going to deal with solid waste,” Comerford said. “It also says farmers cannot be held liable for PFAS on their farms.”
Comerford’s bill would also ensure that farmers don’t suffer tax consequences from no longer being able to farm contaminated land, and provide funding both to help impacted farmers and to help establish new ways of disposing of sewage waste.
The broader bill proposed by Sen. Cyr also addresses biosolids, but does not include a ban on land application. It focuses on creating a plan for what to do with them.
“If we banned application of biosolids tomorrow, we would have no place to put the afterproduct from our sewer treatment plants,” Cyr said. “It would be a pretty tremendous unexpected expense on our cities and towns, the MWRA, and other entities that are basically taking care of human waste. So we’ve got to come up with a plan that’s going to make sense and it’s going to work with biosolids.”
If the state addresses the main sources of PFAS, Cyr said, the chemicals in our waste streams won’t be as much of a problem.
“If we prohibit PFAS in priority consumer products and in food packaging and we’re monitoring for PFAS aggressively in our drinking water, that means that the amount of PFAS that residents in Massachusetts are exposed to is going to decrease, and decrease significantly,” Cyr said. “And that means we’re going to see less PFAS show up in our waste stream. First and foremost, you’ve got to turn off the spigot there.”
Water contamination
PFAS contamination is widely seen in drinking water supplies around the state. More than 170 public water systems in Massachusetts exceed PFAS standards the state DEP set in 2020. Those standards set a limit of no more than 20 parts per trillion for six specific PFAS chemicals, known as the PFAS 6.
“That was one of the strictest standards across the country at that time and kind of paved the way for several other states that adopted a similar standard,” said Laurel Schaider of Silent Spring Institute. “So we are seeing that around 10% of public water supplies in Massachusetts have had at least one water sample test above the state’s standard of 20 parts per trillion for PFAS 6.”
That’s left many communities around the state scrambling to supply bottled water and find alternative sources as they try to install filtering systems.
For residents in Acton, Ayer, Groton, Westminster, Hyannis, Pepperell, and many more communities, addressing PFAS contamination in water supplies has been a source of concern.
The omnibus environmental bond bills passed by both the state House and the Senate include $120 million for PFAS remediation projects. Those bills are currently being reconciled in a conference committee.
The PFAS bill proposed by Sen. Cyr includes funding for the state Department of Public Health to offer rebates and grants for water sampling and treatment. That includes funds for private well users.
“One other thing that’s important in the bill also is a PFAS remediation fund to help both water authorities [and] cities and towns who manage their drinking water, and private well owners, [have] the resources they need to test and then to mitigate and to clean up PFAS contamination,” said Cummings of MassPIRG.
Artificial turf fields
With synthetic turf pitched as a low-maintenance option for athletic fields around the state, some scientists and community groups are raising concerns they may also be contributing to PFAS contamination.
Several Massachusetts communities have issued moratoriums on new turf fields. In 2022, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu blocked the installation of a new turf field in Roxbury, while falling short of announcing a ban on artificial turf.
Residents in Milton recently appealed a DEP permit allowing a new artificial turf field in the town. In June, the department’s Office of Appeals and Dispute Resolution rejected that appeal, citing assertions from the manufacturer that no PFAS is intentionally added to the fields. The ruling said the petitioners failed to show that that PFAS or other chemicals from the field would “alter” the surrounding area. A similar appeal is pending in the case of a field in Dorchester.
Kyla Bennett of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, who was involved in both appeals, has been sounding the alarm about PFAS in artificial turf for years.
“I actually was sued by an artificial turf company in my individual capacity for saying that artificial turf has PFAS,” Bennett said. “That case was dismissed against me for jurisdictional reasons. But I will continue to say that, because ... academics, nonprofits, citizen groups have collectively tested literally dozens of samples of artificial turf. And if the testing is done correctly, we have never seen a lab report that shows no PFAS.”
Those chemicals run off those fields and contaminate surrounding wetlands, Bennett said, adding that the DEP is failing to stop that from happening.
“They seem to have made a determination that because PFAS and microplastics are not specifically mentioned in the Wetlands Protection Act, that therefore they do not have to address them as an alteration of the wetlands or waters under the Wetlands Protection Act,” she said.
A spokesperson for the DEP declined to comment on the pending appeals.
Legislation to ban new artificial turf fields has been introduced in the past, but has failed to move forward.
Melanie Taylor, president and CEO of the Synthetic Turf Council, an industry group, said synthetic turf shouldn’t be banned. “It provides access, more playtime, more access to sports for communities … and that’s really important for areas with high population, low-income areas,” she said.
Members of the Synthetic Turf Council committed in 2024 to eliminate any “intentionally added” PFAS from their fields, Taylor said.
Stratton Kirton, who chairs the Synthetic Turf Council’s board of directors, said that because PFAS contamination has become so common, if it’s found in tests of artificial turf, it’s not necessarily coming from the fields themselves.
“PFAS is ubiquitous,” Kirton said. “It’s ubiquitous in other products. It’s ubiquitous in water. It’s carried in the rain cycle. So oftentimes, one of the biggest challenges is — even if you’re well-intentioned and you want to test a synthetic turf field — if that turf field has been shipped in a plastic packing material, material, if it’s been exposed to water that contains PFAS … then it likely contains some background traces of PFAS.”
