Comment submitted by Hilary Kay

Dear EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and EPA Leaders, Please do not delay in any way PFAS compliance deadlines. All throughout our great country, people have been exposed to PFAS contamination -- without their knowledge or consent -- for decades. The American people, whose health PFAS has affected, and the community infrastructure where those people affected by PFAS chemicals live, have had to bear the cost of continued PFAS contamination for decades. There is no more time for these brave -- and suffering through no fault of their own -- Americans to have to wait for Extending the Compliance Deadline for the PFOA and PFOS Maximum Contaminant Levels! These communities across our great country have already waited far too long for meaningful protections for American residents being exposed to toxic “forever chemicals” that are contaminating our drinking water supplies. PFAS exposure has been linked to serious health harms including cancer, immune system suppression, developmental harms, and reproductive impacts. If you delay making the companies comply with limiting PFOA and PFOS contamination levels, you will just continue exposing millions of Americans to unsafe levels of PFAS. Your delay would also make those people and community infrastructures carry the burden of PFAS chemical contamination. The American people whose health PFAS has affected, and the community infrastructure where those people affected by PFAS chemicals live, must no longer bear the cost of continued PFAS contamination. You and the EPA must not let the companies release toxic PFAS chemicals into our natural resource systems any longer. We cannot afford further delays in reducing Americans' exposure to toxic PFAS chemicals in our drinking water. Your EPA existing PFAS drinking water standards are an essential and long overdue health safeguard based on solid, scientific evidence. Utilities and responsible parties have had plenty of advance notice that they needed to take action to reduce the PFAS in our drinking water. If you and EPA weaken, or postpone, requiring Compliance by the currently stated Deadline for the PFOA and PFOS Maximum Contaminant Levels, you would be undermining public trust, creating costly, regulatory uncertainty, and putting at risk Americans health -- our health -- especially for our most vulnerable populations -- children, pregnant women, and rural communities. You and EPA must maintain the current compliance timeline. EPA must prioritize: 1-- rapid implementation of the Compliance Deadline for the PFOA and PFOS Maximum Contaminant Levels, 2-- providing technical assistance, and 3-- enforcing accountability for the parties required to be in Compliance with the current Deadline for the PFOA and PFOS Maximum Contaminant Levels. You and EPA must not grant additional delays. Clean, safe drinking water is a basic public health necessity. Please do not negotiate a timeline for our country's basic, public health necessity to be have clean, safe drinking water. Thank you.