EPA Drops First Set Of UCMR 5 Data

U.S. EPA released the first set of data collected by public water systems (PWS) pursuant to the Fifth Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Rule (UCMR 5). UCMR 5 required PWS serving more than 10,000 customers to sample for 29 specific per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), including perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS), and hexafluoropropylene oxide dimer acid (GenX). The key take-aways from this newly released data (which represents about seven percent of the data that U.S. EPA expects to receive from the UCMR 5 sampling) are as follows:

• PFOA and PFOS were identified above their minimum reporting levels (above 4 ppt) in 8.5% and 7.8% of the PWS, respectively;