Mark Ruffalo urges Biden to act fast on ‘chemicals forever’ before Trump takes office

Actor and activist Mark Ruffalo is calling on the Biden administration to take decisive regulatory action on “chemicals forever,” as President-elect Trump’s return to the White House nears.

“The EPA has struggled, against all odds, to achieve a drinking water standard in this particular chemical class,” Ruffalo said in a Monday webinar hosted by the Environmental Working Group.

“Now the Biden administration just needs to close the loop and hold the people who have killed people accountable,” he added.

Ruffalo was referring to the producers of the thousands of types of synthetic compounds known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS.

Known for their ability to persist in the human body and the environment, these chemicals are found in certain types of firefighting foam, industrial discharges and a long list of household items. They have been linked to many serious diseases, including thyroid, testicular and kidney cancer.

“We’ve been in the White House with families who have lost children to these diseases and they continue to accumulate in our bodies,” Ruffalo said.

“The problem now is that they’re still shielding these companies from liability,” he added, referring to the federal government.

The Biden administration has already taken several decisive steps in long-term missions to regulate and clean up decades of PFAS contamination caused by companies and military institutions across America.

In April, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)designatedtwo types of PFAS as hazardous substances under the country’s legacy”super fund“Act: Making it easier for polluters to pay for their actions. This decision came just days after the EPAissued a separate ruleset limits for various PFASs in drinking water.

And last week, the agency released a new regulationprevent PFASto be approved through low-volume exemptions: abbreviated reviews granted to chemicals that will be created in small quantities.

But Ruffalo and fellow activists are pressing the Biden administration to take more decisive action aimed at strengthening PFAS-related oversight before Trump takes office.

In particular, they referred to aapossible proposed ruleon wastewater discharges containing PFAS, which have been under consideration in the White House Office of Management and Budget for review since June.

These possible plans have been in the works since 2021, when the EPAfirst announcedthat would propose a rule that sets limits to these versions.

“The Biden administration has finally done the right thing, more than any other administration in the United States in decades,” Ruffalo said Monday, referring to the PFAS-related action the EPA has taken in recent years. last four years

But Ruffalo also pointed to what he called “bad news” — the fact that the potential firing proposal is “dangling right now in the Biden administration.”

“It’s been sitting there for a long time, and it’s the taxpayers and the downstream communities that are still paying the price repeatedly for it,” Ruffalo said.

Melanie Benesh, legislative attorney for the Environmental Working Group, offered a similar perspective, noting that “polluters already have the tools to stop dumping PFAS into the water.”

“The longer we delay addressing industrial discharges and actually getting to PFAS at the source, the more illness and even death we risk,” Benesh said.

Speaking on behalf of an area affected by these tragedies, Brenda Hampton of north Alabama said she and her neighbors “have had so many deaths in this area it’s unreal.”

In the Hampton region, numerous businesses near Decatur, Alabama, were for decades dumping PFAS-laden discharge into the Tennessee River, which flows downstream into their community.

“I hope this administration can enact a law that will be there permanently, so the incoming administration can’t overturn it,” Hampton said. “Drinking water is a right. It’s not a privilege; it’s a right.”

However, even if the EPA were to officially propose this PFAS-laden discharge rule, which is still under review at this point, it would be virtually impossible to finalize it before Trump takes office, due to the federal government’s set deadlines . regulatory process.

These rules, which are governed by theLaw of administrative procedureit usually takes at least a year from proposal to completed stages. After a proposal, most rules require a 30- to 60-day comment period, after which the agency must review all such submissions.

The Hill has reached out to the Office of Management and Budget for comment.

But in Monday’s webinar, Hampton emphasized the need to provide Americans with “clean, safe drinking water,” expressing his hope that “this administration can really do something to really help us, because we’re dying here.” .

Emily Donovan, co-founder of Clean Cape Fear in North Carolina, echoed Hampton’s sentiments, noting that her region’s PFAS crisis “is massive and contaminates public water systems that serve more than half million residents of three counties.”

Donovan credited the current president for finalizing the PFAS drinking water standard, but at the same time, he said he is “asking the Biden administration to allow the EPA to propose a rule to limit PFAS discharges.”

“Please don’t fail us,” he said. “Do it for the children in my region who no longer have their mothers or fathers.”

As PFAS activists across the country face the uncertainty of a future Trump administration, both Hampton and Donovan stressed that they will continue their struggles locally and regionally.

For her part, Hampton said she will press Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey (R) to rescind permits for polluting companies, while Donovan stressed the need to keep her area’s fight alive in state and local governments .

“We’re leaving the door open to the possibility, maybe of movement with this Trump 2.0,” Donovan said. “But if history is any indication, the hopes aren’t that high.”

Ruffalo also stressed the importance of focusing on “the regional politicians who are going to be held accountable for this, and who are going to have activists and people who have been harmed constantly coming after them.”

He also expressed his support for philanthropists to invest money in this fight, so that these environmental justice communities have many resources on the ground.

Ruffalo also pointed to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Trump’s pick for secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, as someone who has done extensive work on water pollution, and asked him to take this problem seriously.

“Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, if you are who you say you are, we will be reaching out to you to do what you know better than anyone else in this administration,” Ruffalo said.

Asked by The Hill if he thinks Kennedy would have the power to make that change, given that it would be at Health and Human Services rather than the EPA, Ruffalo said “there won’t be any other expert in the administration who knows more than the water. Robert.”

“I look forward to him using whatever position he has, experience, to really influence EPA policy,” the actor-activist continued.

“If this is a populist administration, as they tell us, there is nothing that transcends politics, ideologies and parties more than water,” added Ruffalo. “I know every Republican wants clean water. I know every working class person wants clean water.”

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