Floored by Fluorochemicals: EPA Lags Labs in Testing Protocols

Karla Buechler’s laboratory in Sacramento, Calif., tests baby bottles, car upholstery, and food wrappers for fluorochemicals that have contaminated drinking water supplies across the U.S.

“The chemicals are ubiquitous,” Buechler, corporate technical director at TestAmerica, told Bloomberg Environment. “They’re in all of us and in everything.”

Those substances are part of a family of hundreds of fluorochemicals called poly- and perfluoroalkyl substances, also known as PFAS.

The Environmental Protection Agency has protocols on how to test some of the chemicals in drinking water. But commercial labs, such as Buechler’s, aren’t waiting for the EPA to tell them how ...