Urge the EPA to regulate a long-hidden source of PFAS

What's At Stake

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is taking steps to tackle a long-hidden source of PFAS. PFAS (per and poly-fluoroalkyl substances) are toxic “forever chemicals” linked to a wide array of adverse health effects at extremely low levels. PFAS are found in a variety of everyday goods and have been detected in the blood of 97% of the United States population. Today, hundreds of millions of plastic containers undergo a fluorination process that creates harmful PFAS that can leach into our products and make their way into our bodies. Tell the EPA to regulate this source of PFAS today.

The agency’s actions come after a coalition of advocates, including several groups represented by Earthjustice, petitioned the EPA under our nation’s chemical law to regulate PFAS created during the fluorination of plastic containers.

What is fluorination?

For more than 40 years, Inhance Technologies LLC has been using a fluorination process to create better barrier protection in high-density polyethylene (HDPE) plastic containers. During this process, the containers are blasted with fluorine gas, which reacts with oxygen and forms PFAS. The PFAS created then leach into the products stored in the containers and are released into the environment once the products are used or the plastic containers break down.

Each year, some 200 million plastic containers are fluorinated using this process. Many of these containers hold common household items like cleaning products and agricultural products like pesticides.

What can we do about it?

PFAS are dangerous even at extremely low levels of exposure, and EPA must act quickly to stop these chemicals from entering the market. Regulating the PFAS-creating fluorination process is a crucial step in eliminating a significant source of PFAS and protecting communities from these toxic chemicals.

There’s a comment period open right now until November 29th that needs your voice. Urge the EPA to take action today.

High-density polyethlyene containers treated with fluorinated compounds can leach PFAS into pesticides and other liquid products (Shutterstock)
High-density polyethlyene containers treated with fluorinated compounds can leach PFAS into pesticides and other liquid products (Shutterstock)

28 Days Remain

Delivery to Environmental Protection Agency

Important Notice

Your message is delivered to a public agency, and all information submitted may be placed in the public record. Do not submit confidential information.

By taking action, you will receive emails from Earthjustice. Change your mailing preferences or opt-out at any time. Learn more in our Privacy Policy. This Earthjustice action is hosted on EveryAction. Learn about EveryAction’s Privacy Policy.

Why is a phone number or prefix required on some action forms?

Trouble Viewing This Action?

If the action form is not loading above, please add earthjustice.org as a trusted website in your ad blocker or pause any ad blockers, and refresh this webpage. (Details.) If the action form still does not display, please report the problem to us at action@earthjustice.org. Thank you!

Your Actions Matter

Your messages make a difference, even if we have leaders who don't want to listen. Here's why.

You level the playing field.

Elected officials pay attention when they see that we are paying attention. Read more.

They may be hearing from industry lobbyists left and right, but hearing the stories of their constituents — that’s your power.

Our legislators serve at the pleasure of the people who gave them their job — you.

Make sure your elected officials know whose community and whose values they represent. When you contact your elected official, you’re putting a face and a name on an issue.

Whether or not you voted for them, they work for you, for the duration of their term.

Make sure your elected officials know whose community and whose values they represent. (Find your local, state, and federal elected officials.)

Your action is with us in court.

If a federal agency finalizes a harmful action, the record of public comments provides a basis for bringing them into court. Read more.

Throughout each of the public comment periods we alert you to, Earthjustice’s attorneys are researching and writing in-depth, technical comments to submit — detailing how the regulation could and should be stronger to protect the environment, our communities, and our planet.

We need you to join us — your specific experiences, knowledge, and voice are crucial to add to the Administrative Record through the comment periods.

Lawsuits we file that challenge weak or harmful federal regulations rely on what was submitted during the comment period. The court can only look at documents that are in the Administrative Record — including the public comments — to decide if the agency did something improper.

Your actions aid our litigation. Taking action and submitting comments during a comment period is substantively important.

It’s the law.

Federal agencies must pause what they’re doing and ask for — and consider — your comment. Read more.

Many of us may have never heard of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), but laws like these require our government to ask the public to weigh in before agencies adopt or change regulations.

Regulations essentially describe how federal agencies will carry out laws — including decisions that could undermine science, or weaken safeguards on public health.

Public comments are collected at various points throughout the federal government’s rulemaking process, including when a regulation is proposed and finalized. (Learn about the rulemaking process.) These comments become part of the official, legal public record — the “Administrative Record.”

When the public responds with a huge outpouring of support for environmental protections, these individual messages collectively undercut politicians' attempts to claim otherwise.

What this means is each of us can take a role in shaping the rules our government creates — and ensuring those rules are fair and effective.