Scientists with financial ties to industry and a history of conducting controversial research to circumvent chemical regulations are mobilizing to challenge tough new federal drinking water limits for toxic PFAS, or "forever chemicals," according to documents seen by the Guardian.
In July, Michael Dourson, a controversial toxicologist who receives some money from chemical manufacturers, sent an email to scientists, consultants and lawyers outlining a plan to develop and publish peer-reviewed science that chemical companies can use as evidence against PFAS limits. The email came just after industry groups launched a legal challenge to the restrictions.
But current and former Environmental Protection Agency employees who reviewed the documents allege the scientists are devising an ethically questionable plan to create uncertainty about the "robust" science underlying the PFAS limits.
The plans are "not a valid approach to the science," said Maria Doa, a former EPA risk assessment manager who now works at the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund. She has previously said they are an industry playbook legal strategy to undo regulations.
"They're trying to undermine the EPA's science, to make it sound like there's uncertainty where there's not, to make it sound like there's disagreement within the scientific community where there's not," Doa added. The EPA gathered hundreds of animal and epidemiological studies before issuing its new rules in April.
In July, the American Chemistry Council, Chemours, the American Water Works Association and other organizations filed lawsuits against the EPA over the new regulations.
Billions of dollars in industry profits from PFAS are at stake, as is water quality for the estimated 200 million people whose water is contaminated by PFAS. Meanwhile, a ruling against the limits would discourage regulatory action on toxic chemicals other than PFAS in water, said Betsy Southerland, a retired manager of the EPA's water division.
"This is critical," she said. "If a court rejects this ... then the EPA will say the bar is too high to ever regulate under the Safe Drinking Water Act."
Dourson said accusations of bias are "disingenuous." He once worked for the EPA but left the agency to set up what his critics describe as a "one-stop shop" for industry-friendly research, Toxicology Excellence for Risk Assessment (Tera). It receives funding from the chemical industry and government, he said, adding that Tera is "very much an independent, neutral scientific NGO."
In 2017, Trump nominated Dourson to oversee the EPA's chemical safety division, but he had to withdraw his first name after he failed to gain enough support from Republicans, in part because his critics in the Senate alleged he was running a "Science for Sale" operation that allowed the industry's American Chemistry Council to edit papers.
Dourson's July email mentions the legal challenge to the new regulations, then adds that "a number of approaches can be used to support the new regulations." [it]but almost all of them require peer-reviewed and published articles before they are seriously considered."
The scientific papers would be developed in part based on presentations that Trump researchers, lawyers, consultants and former EPA officials gave at an October 2023 conference hosted by Tera, where they further developed the attack, Dourson wrote.
The articles will be published later this year as the first issue of [a] new journal" that has been created to provide initial "support" for the legal challenge, Dourson said in the email. The new journal will be published by a nonprofit organization that has been criticized for its ties to the tobacco industry and the bias of its publications toward the industry.
In the email, Dourson asks for donations to help fund the operation. "Can we count on your group to make a tax-deductible donation to help push our team to publish a set of papers by the end of 2024?" he asks.
PFAS are a class of about 15,000 chemicals that are commonly used to make products that are resistant to water, stains and heat. They are called "forever chemicals" because they do not break down naturally. They can accumulate in people and the environment and have been linked to cancer, kidney disease, liver problems, immune disorders, birth defects and other serious health problems.
In a systematic review of all available scientific data on the topic, the EPA found virtually no safe levels of PFOA or PFOS, two types of common PFAS compounds, in drinking water. Legally enforceable limits of four parts per trillion (ppt) were set for each type.
Dourson and dozens of other scientists working with industry and part of the Tera-led plan say the limits should be much higher.
'It's unusual to be so open'
When tobacco companies were confronted with overwhelming evidence that smoking causes cancer in the late 1950s, they sent scientists out to conduct research designed to "manufacture scientific uncertainty" and undermine regulators, according to a peer-reviewed article in the American Journal of Public Health.
The strategy delayed regulation for decades and became "a powerful and influential model." Some observers say it is now being used by the fossil fuel industry to delay climate action and Tera to thwart PFAS regulation.
"This is way off the mark and it's a lot of the same so-called scientists and the same hired guns," said Erik Olson, senior advisor to the NRDC Action Fund. "These papers are cited in tort cases against the chemical industry and are used extensively before regulators."
According to one expert, Dourson's performance was particularly remarkable.
"In the 22 years I spent in three regulatory programs, I have come to understand the games [the industry] "There are a lot of plays, but this one surprised me because it's unusual to be so blunt," said Penny Fenner-Crisp, a former manager in the EPA's water division who worked with Dourson and reviewed the email and conference document.
The documents lay out a three-pronged attack aimed at conveying uncertainty and a lack of consensus about PFAS limits. Dourson alleges there are "concerns" or "criticisms" about the statistical methods, limitations and designs of the studies underlying the EPA's rules.
He and other scientists, many with industry ties, recently published a study claiming the safe drinking water limit was between 70 ppt and 490 ppt - hundreds of times above the EPA limit - but the study dismissed the vast majority of animal and epidemiological studies that the EPA considered valuable.
Harvey Clewell, another consultant who for decades ran an industry firm that produced scientific data to attack regulations, said at the October 2023 conference that the epidemiological studies are inconclusive.
Southerland said the vast majority of the scientific community disagrees: "What they're saying is we just don't know unless there are a lot of bodies on the street, and they're setting the bar so high that the data is never enough."
Those opposed to the limits also point to much higher PFAS limits in other countries, such as Canada, where regulators once allowed 200 ppt. The differences "call for investigation, explanation and efforts to reduce uncertainty," Clewell said.
His opponents say such claims cherry-pick limits developed from 20-year-old science. Health Canada's oft-cited limits were set in 2018, but the agency has since lowered them as the dangers of PFAS have come into sharper focus in recent years and the technology to measure and remove them has improved dramatically.
A third industry argument against stricter limits focuses on the cost of upgrading water treatment plants, which could run into tens of billions of dollars. Supporters of stricter regulation say the benefit to public health could also be significant.
A current EPA scientist, who asked not to be identified, dismissed the industry criticism, saying that any study has "limitations" and that it's impossible to design a study that covers every possible aspect of a problem.
"Emphasizing those uncertainties while downplaying what the studies almost certainly tell us is the standard method of attacking regulators," they added.
"It's a pretty good investment for them"
Dourson told the Guardian that his research, which found that higher levels of PFOA exposure are safe, had not received any industry funding. He said government officials from other countries were present at his conference.
He says this is evidence that he is not launching the attack on the EPA's PFAS limits solely at the behest of industry.
When asked in his email about the funding pitch, Dourson replied, "We are a very independent NGO and we work with all parties." He added that he would make the funding sources public after the journal is published.
Those who reviewed the papers also raised ethical concerns about the scientific process. It is unusual to found a journal whose first issue is devoted to overturning regulations. Dourson's critics also raised questions about whether the peer reviewers had biases that would influence their judgments.
Regardless, the industry's strategy of funding peer-reviewed science for legal purposes has sometimes been "quite successful" in the past, Olson said.
"They use it for litigation, regulatory purposes, trying to influence public opinion, and it's a pretty good investment for them - they spend a few million dollars here and a few million there and in the meantime they keep a chemical that they're making billions of dollars on the market," he added.
