EPA Publishes Federal Register Notice with Final Regulatory Determinations for CCL4

EPA has published the Federal Register Notice with the “Announcement of Final Regulatory Determinations for Contaminants on the Fourth Drinking Water Contaminant Candidate List (CCL4).” This FR Notice comes after the Biden administration’s review and re-issue of the regulatory determinations. The review did not change the Agency’s final determinations – to regulate two contaminants (PFOS and PFOA) and to not regulate six contaminants (1,1-dichloroethane, acetochlor, methyl bromide (bromomethane), metolachlor, nitrobenzene, and Royal Demolition eXplosive (RDX)).

The FR Notice provides brief descriptions of the Agency’s findings, responses to public comments, and commits EPA to making regulatory determinations for additional PFAS prior to the 2026 SDWA statutory deadline for the Agency’s fifth Regulatory Determination, if sufficient health assessments, occurrence data, and other scientific information is available. This sufficient data and information includes the new toxicity assessments for seven PFAS chemicals that EPA plans to complete by 2023 for PFBS, PFBA, PFHxS, PFHxA, PFNA, PFDA, and HFPO–DA (GenX chemicals), as well as the occurrence data for 29 PFAS compounds on the UCMR5 where monitoring will begin in January 2023. The clock is also now ticking for PFOA and PFOS, where EPA has 24 months to propose a regulation and an additional 18 months to finalize it.

EPA also provided information in the notice about its continuing evaluations for three other chemicals:

• Strontium: EPA is continuing with its previous 2016 decision to delay a final determination for strontium (on CCL3) to further consider additional exposure studies, data, and effectiveness of treatment technologies.
• 1,4-dioxane: More information and analysis are needed before EPA can make a regulatory determination in order to consider the recently completed TSCA risk evaluation and upcoming Canadian guidelines.
• 1,2,3-trichloropropane: The Agency did not make a preliminary determination due to analytical method minimum reporting level limitations for current occurrence data.

For more information, read the Federal Register Notice and view the Final Regulatory Determination 4 Support Documents.