The head of the Senate’s environment panel is wary of regulating a class of thousands of chemical compounds at once—a position that threatens progress toward a legislative package addressing the ubiquitous compounds’ presence as environmental contaminants.
Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) chairs the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee, which met May 22 to discuss six bills addressing per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). Most of the bills address the chemicals as a class.
Those bills aren’t yet ready for a markup, and as a result are unlikely to become part of the Senate’s defense authorization bill, he said after the...