A multimillion-dollar federal study on toxic chemicals in drinking water across the country is facing delays because of a dispute within the Trump administration, according to several people involved in the study or who have knowledge of the process.
This summer, the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, an arm of the CDC, announced that it would use the funds to study highly exposed communities in California, Colorado, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania. The design of the study shops out the actual research to academic or government partners in each state and provides grant funding to conduct the work.
In an interview with USA TODAY Network, Laumbach said he heard from federal partners that the CDC had asked the White House to review a draft design of the national study. Under the federal Paperwork Reduction Act, studies such as the CDC’s must go to the Office of Management and Budget for a formal review and cannot be started until approved.
The CDC said state partners in the national study have already begun some level of work and are developing strategies to recruit participants, collect data and further involve the public. “I’ve heard others speak about frustration, that it’s being held up at OMB,” Birnbaum said. “And I know the CDC and are pushing back on that.”
Ticking away in the background is the fact that the most well-known PFAS chemicals decrease in human blood by half every three to five years. With many impacted communities having stopped or curbed drinking water exposure by 2017, would-be study participants may already have less than half of the blood levels they did when exposure was first discovered. But without research to better identify safe levels in the blood, scientists don’t know what any decreases would mean.
The original funding of the PFAS health study was hailed as a bipartisan victory in Congress. Key senators this week offered continuing support. Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., “has reached out to OMB regarding this matter,” his office said.