Remove Section 507 from the House Appropriations Bill and Restore PFAS Research Funding
The House of Representatives Appropriations Bill Fiscal Year 2026 has not one, but TWO, poison pills.
If passed, Section 507 would cause us to lose more food and farmland to dangerous PFAS contamination and cause us to eat more PFAS contaminated food.
As we’ve previously reported, on July 15, the U.S. House Appropriations Committee voted along party lines to advance Appropriations Bill FY26, which includes a dangerous provision—Section 453—that would strip away the rights of individuals harmed by pesticides by granting pesticide manufacturers broad legal immunity.
But that isn’t the only evil provision hiding in the bill. Appropriations Bill FY26 also includes Section 507, which would prohibit the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from taking any action to address the widespread problem of toxic PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) chemicals in sewage sludge, also marketed as biosolids, and used as fertilizer on farms and urban and personal gardens across the country. Section 507 is yet another giveaway to Big Chemical—a license to keep poisoning Americans with PFAS chemicals.
The language in the bill states, “SEC. 507. None of the funds made available by this or any other Act may be used to finalize, implement, administer, or enforce the draft risk assessment titled ‘Draft Sewage Sludge Risk Assessment for Perfluorooctanoic Acid (PFOA) and Perfluorooctane Sulfonic Acid (PFOS)’ published by the Environmental Protection Agency in the Federal Register on January 15, 2025 (90 Fed. Reg. 3859).”
Get a full understanding of the biosolids/sewage sludge issue HERE.
Don’t know what PFAS chemicals are? Be informed HERE.
On October 18, 2021, the EPA announced its “PFAS Strategic Roadmap” to address the PFAS pollution problem facing the nation. One of the goals of this roadmap included conducting an assessment that would “serve as the basis for determining whether regulation of PFOA and PFOS in biosolids is appropriate.”
PFOA and PFOS are two of the most-studied PFAS, a class of chemicals also known as “Forever Chemicals” because they don’t break down in the environment and they bioaccumulate in humans, animals, and plants. In 2024, the EPA classified both PFOA and PFOS as likely carcinogenic to humans and concluded that the chemicals are also likely to cause hepatic (liver), immunological, cardiovascular, and developmental harms, depending on exposure conditions. Peer-reviewed studies have linked PFAS chemicals to a long list of diseases and adverse health conditions at ultra-low levels, in the parts per trillion.
Even the EPA, an agency that most often acts in the interest of corporate profits over human health, concluded that there is no safe level of these chemicals.
On January 14, 2025, EPA issued a press release on its long-awaited Draft Sewage Sludge Risk Assessment, stating, “The draft risk assessment reflects the agency’s latest scientific understanding of the potential risks to human health and the environment posed by the presence of PFOA and PFOS in sewage sludge that is land applied as a soil conditioner or fertilizer (on agricultural, forested, and other lands)…”
The EPA found there are dangerous levels of these chemicals in biosolids/sewage sludge fertilizer and that the risks associated with PFAS in these fertilizers “exceed EPA’s acceptable thresholds, sometimes by several orders of magnitude.” EPA conceded that even small quantities of PFAS could pose major risks.
Section 507 of the Appropriations Bill isn’t the only gift to PFAS polluters. The Guardian reported that “the Trump administration has killed nearly $15 million in research into PFAS contamination of U.S. farmland, bringing to a close studies that public health advocates say are essential for understanding a worrying source of widespread food contamination… The research aimed to learn more about how the chemicals move into and accumulate in crops and livestock. Some research also looked at urban gardens: wastewater treatment plants often sell tainted sludge that it labels as ‘organic’. Other research aimed to improve mitigation strategies.”
Without the funding for this research, we won’t have a clear understanding of the extent of the problem and how to fix it.
Toxic PFAS contamination of our soil, water, and food is one of the most pressing health issues of our time. We can’t let chemical corporations get away with poisoning us and dictating how taxpayer funds get spent.
We must demand that the U.S. House of Representatives remove Section 507 from the Appropriations Bill FY26 and urge the White House to restore PFAS pollution research grants.
