PFAS is a class of chemicals that can linger almost permanently in air, water and soil. Research suggests they are associated with a variety of health issues, including cancer.
For the first time, the Environmental Protection Agency has established national limits for six types of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances in drinking water.
The substances, known by the initialism PFAS, are nicknamed “forever chemicals” because they barely degrade and are nearly impossible to destroy, so they can linger permanently in air, water and soil.
As a class of chemicals, PFAS have been associated with a higher risk of certain cancers, heart disease, high cholesterol, thyroid disease, low birth weight and reproductive issues, including decreased fertility.
Most people in the U.S. have PFAS in their blood, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.
FWIW the most recent analysis I came across from a law professor makes me think the emergence of the “major questions doctrine” is more concerning:
In Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, the US Supreme Court will decide whether to overrule one of its most frequently cited precedents—its 1984 opinion in Chevron v. NRDC. The decision in Loper may change the language that lawyers use in briefs and professors use in class, but is unlikely to significantly affect case outcomes involving interpretation of the statutes that agencies administer. In practice, it’s the court’s new major questions doctrine announced in 2021 that could fundamentally change how agencies operate.
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I am much more concerned about the court’s 2021 decision to create the “major questions doctrine” and to apply it in four other cases than I am about the effects of a potential reversal of Chevron in Loper. Lower courts are beginning to rely on the major questions doctrine as the basis to overturn scores of agency decisions. That doctrine has potential to make it impossible for any agency to take any significant action.
The major questions doctrine is a principle of statutory interpretation applied in United States administrative law cases which states that courts will presume that Congress does not delegate to executive agencies issues of major political or economic significance.
(2000): “[W]e must be guided to a degree by common sense as to the manner in which Congress is likely to delegate a policy decision of such economic and political magnitude to an administrative agency.”
There are at least two versions of the doctrine,[2] a narrow version (a limitation on Chevron deference) and a broad version (a clear statement rule). Under the narrow version, the doctrine serves only to say that, when an agency asserts that it has authority to decide major questions, courts should independently determine whether the agency’s interpretation of its statutory authority is the most reasonable reading of the statute. Under the broad version, the doctrine says that courts must not interpret statutes as delegating major questions to agencies unless Congress clearly said so.
