See which U.S. cities report 'forever chemicals' in drinking water
See which U.S. cities report 'forever chemicals' in drinking water
Water pouring from the faucets of at least 42 million Americans is contaminated with unacceptable levels of 'forever chemicals,' according to a USA TODAY analysis of records the Environmental Protection Agency released on June 2.
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, are a family of manmade chemicals engineered to be nearly indestructible. Studies have shown they can accumulate over time in human bodies, leading to certain cancers and other health complications.
Over the past two years, the EPA has collected complete sets of test results from about 6,900 drinking water systems, with thousands more expected as the PFAS testing initiative continues another year.
USA TODAY's analysis of these systems with complete results shows nearly a quarter of large water utilities serving at least 100,000 customers exceeded limits the EPA approved last year on two chemicals: PFOS and PFOA.
Water systems in Fairfax County, Virginia, and San Juan, Puerto Rico – each serving over 1 million customers – have now joined the list of utilities with test results that averaged over the limits in the EPA's latest data.
USA TODAY's analysis also shows that Tempe, Arizona, which provides water to over 165,000 people, has joined that list. Multiple test locations there failed to meet the EPA standards. PFOS at one sample site averaged 55 parts per trillion (ppt), several times higher than the acceptable limit of 4 ppt.
Altogether, USA TODAY found 774 systems don't meet the limits for forever chemicals. These utilities will likely need to install advanced filtration systems or find alternative sources of drinking water by 2031.
The deadline for systems to meet the water standards was originally set for 2029, but in May, the EPA proposed an extension and announced it intends to rescind limits on four other types of PFAS set under the Biden administration in 2024.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said the delay was to provide 'common-sense flexibility' to 'support water systems across the country, including small systems in rural communities, as they work to address these contaminants.'
Industry groups representing water utilities have sued the EPA, alleging the agency did not follow the proper procedures when approving PFAS limits last year. Last month, Zeldin said rescinding the limits on the other four forever chemicals would ensure they 'follow the legal process laid out in the Safe Drinking Water Act.'
The lawsuit has been on hold since February to allow time for the new administration to review the issues. On June 4, the hold was extended through July 21 'while the United States determines the most appropriate course of action for this litigation in light of EPA's decision to reconsider portions of the challenged rule.'
Advocacy organizations have denounced the EPA's proposed changes on forever chemicals. Melanie Benesh, vice president of government affairs for the Environmental Working Group, described the move as a 'public health betrayal.'
'Communities have waited decades for protection – now the EPA is pulling the rug out,' Benesh said. 'Science is clear: PFAS are dangerous even in tiny amounts. The agency must protect all Americans, not just from two chemicals, but from the entire class of harmful PFAS.'
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Politico
an hour ago
- Politico
How MAGA learned to love psychedelics
Presented by Driving the Day THE PSYCHEDELICS FLIP-FLOP — Historically, the Republican Party hasn't jumped to embrace cutting-edge medical treatments that involve drugs commonly used recreationally (see: 'Marijuana'). But things are shifting when it comes to psychedelics for PTSD — and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. could be just the person the movement has been looking for, POLITICO's Erin Schumaker reports. Driven by a desire to help ex-servicemembers with post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental illnesses, GOP lawmakers led a failed campaign last year to persuade the Biden administration to approve psychedelic drugs. The campaign ended when, in August, the FDA rejected drugmaker Lykos Therapeutics' application to offer ecstasy, alongside therapy, as a PTSD treatment. FDA advisers expressed concern that the company's researchers were more evangelists than scientists and determined they'd failed to prove the regimen was either safe or effective. The advisers also raised concerns that ecstasy had the potential to damage the heart and liver. But Kennedy has been known to embrace medical treatments that fall well outside of the mainstream. A friend in MAHA: A longtime believer in psychedelics' potential to help people with illnesses like PTSD and depression, Kennedy is ramping up government-run clinical studies and telling the disappointed lawmakers that doctors would soon be prescribing the drugs, even though Biden officials found no evidence of their effectiveness. 'These are people who badly need some kind of therapy; nothing else is working for them,' Kennedy said at a House hearing Tuesday. 'This line of therapeutics has tremendous advantage if given in a clinical setting. And we are working very hard to make sure that that happens within 12 months.' The shifting political landscape: The GOP's embrace of psychedelics is another — and perhaps one of the more jarring — examples of cultural transformation that President Donald Trump's populist politics have brought. Veterans seeking cures for mental illnesses associated with combat, combined with the Kennedy-backed Make America Healthy Again movement's enthusiasm for natural medicine, have strengthened a libertarian strain on the right in favor of drug experimentation. Meanwhile, the left, where hippies are giving way to technocrats, has become more skeptical. Key context: Earlier this month, Texas' Republican governor, Greg Abbott, signed a law to put $50 million into clinical trials of the psychedelic ibogaine as a mental health treatment. Like ecstasy, ibogaine also poses heart risks. The Drug Enforcement Administration lists both drugs on its schedule of drugs with no currently acceptable medical use and a high risk of abuse. That would have once been enough to make law-and-order Republicans say no. But top Kennedy adviser Calley Means says not anymore. 'Ten years ago, nobody expected the Republican Party as the party of healthy food, as the party of exercise, as the party of questioning pharmaceutical companies, as the party of psychedelic research — but that's where we are,' Means said. WELCOME TO MONDAY PULSE. The GOP's massive domestic policy bill could pass today. For the latest coverage, check out POLITICO's Inside Congress Live blog. Send your tips, scoops and feedback to khooper@ and sgardner@ and follow along @kelhoops and @sophie_gardnerj. In the courts OBAMACARE SCOTUS RULING FALLOUT — On Friday, the Supreme Court upheld a provision in the Affordable Care Act that mandates insurance companies cover preventive health services at no cost to patients, POLITICO's Lauren Gardner reports. The ruling hinged on the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force — an independent advisory panel of experts who recommend what preventive care should be covered free of charge. The court, in a 6-3 decision, ruled that the USPSTF is constitutional because the HHS secretary has the power to appoint and fire members and to reject their screening and drug recommendations. Some public health experts, including Kathy Hempstead, senior policy officer at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, expressed concern about how Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. may use that power. The lawsuit was brought by individuals and businesses with religious objections to covering preexposure prophylaxis drugs, which are key to preventing HIV. Key context: Kennedy's recent decision to remove all members of the CDC's vaccine advisory panel and reconstitute it with individuals skeptical of immunizations illustrates the extent of that authority. 'It's sort of the end of one threat but the beginning of another,' Hempstead said. Kennedy said that the decision was needed to root out 'persistent conflicts of interest.' It's unclear whether Kennedy plans to alter the task force's membership, too. But federal law stipulates that policy decisions stemming from both groups' advice be based on science, said Andrew Pincus, a Supreme Court attorney at the law firm Mayer Brown who represented public health groups that filed a brief supporting the government's defense in the case. 'To the extent that they don't rest on science, I think they would be subject to being set aside by the courts,' he said. PHARMA WATCH WHO's WEIGHT-LOSS DRUG WARNING — The World Health Organization is cautioning health care professionals and regulatory authorities that weight-loss and diabetes drugs containing semaglutide have caused rare cases of sudden blindness, POLITICO's Carmen Paun reports. 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GOP colleagues chalked up Tillis' private warnings to his fears of a tough general election in the swing state, where popular former Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper could be a formidable candidate. Names in the News Anindita 'Annie' Saha will take on the lead policy role on artificial intelligence at the Food and Drug Administration's drug division, according to an internal email reviewed by POLITICO. Saha is a 20-year agency veteran who will also keep her role as associate director for strategic initiatives at the Digital Health Center of Excellence within the FDA's device division. Saha replaces Tala Fakhouri, who is leaving the FDA. WHAT WE'RE READING The Wall Street Journal's Dominique Mosbergen reports on researchers' hopes that preemptive treatment for early-onset Altzhimer's could slow or even halt a disease that has no cure.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Obsessive step counts are ruining walking
According to my phone, I've been averaging about 6,600 steps a day so far this year. My meager effort pales in comparison to the 15,000, 20,000, or even 30,000 steps I see influencers on my feed bragging about regularly. The algorithm likes to remind me of my shortcomings. Although the long-held standard benchmark of 10,000 steps has been debunked, it seems many are aiming even higher these days. TikTok and Instagram feed me clip after clip of productive people racking upward of seven miles over the course of three-plus hours and multiple walks. They wake up at 4 am to walk. They walk and check emails. They walk and read. They walk to the grocery store or during meetings. They stride on walking pads, treadmills, and outdoors. They flash their Apple Watches to the camera to show their progress. View Link To be clear: There is nothing wrong with walking — it's a free and low-impact exercise that, compared to running, has greater mass appeal. Americans are overwhelmingly sedentary, spending an average of 9.5 hours a day seated, and anything that inspires people to move more is good news. But quantifying your every step, tracking every ounce of protein ingested, or hours slept can border on obsessive. The current cultural fixation on nutrition and fitness also speaks to a shift toward beauty standards that once again idealize thinness. Mix that with American hustle culture, and you have a recipe for turning a low-key activity into a compulsion. 'This all comes down to how much our culture values productivity above everything else,' says Keith Diaz, an associate professor of behavioral medicine at Columbia University Medical Center. 'It's just another metric that we measure ourselves by.' Walking is perhaps one of the most functional and accessible forms of movement: It gets you where you want to go, and you don't need any special equipment to do it. The vast majority of people walk at some point during their day without having to think too much about it. It makes sense, then, that walking has come in and out of fashion as a form of exercise throughout history. In the late 1800s, leisure walking became a popular sport. A century later, at the height of the fitness boom in the 1980s, walking got a rebrand and a refresh, thanks to a book called Heavyhands touting the benefits of walking with weights. 'That became,' says Danielle Friedman, the author of Let's Get Physical: How Women Discovered Exercise and Reshaped The World, 'a way to make walking not seem weak.' To achieve a textbook hot girl walk, you must walk four miles while expressing gratitude and envisioning your goals. The pandemic was a major boon for walking. With gyms and fitness studios closed and cabin fever setting in, many took to strolling as a way to get moving out of the house. Walking was gentler and less punishing than the high-intensity fitness trends of the early 2000s, Friedman says. 'The pendulum swung a little bit more toward just appreciating movement for movement's sake,' she says. But as social media caught on — the original 'hot girl walk' clip was posted on TikTok in January 2021 — walks became more performative. Walking now had a purpose. To achieve a textbook hot girl walk, for instance, you must walk four miles while expressing gratitude and envisioning your goals. Over time, the step counts ballooned. Keeping careful track of your mileage also has a long history. The first modern pedometer was designed in 1965 in Japan. Called the manpo-kei, or 10,000 steps meter, this simple act of marketing helped cement the 10,000-step threshold as a benchmark that one should strive to hit for good health and well-being. The science doesn't quite back up the marketing. Recent research has found that among women in their 70s, as few as 4,400 steps a day is related to lower mortality, compared to 2,700 steps or less. Those who walked more had even less risk for early mortality, but those benefits tapered off at more than about 7,500 steps. Another study of middle-aged adults found that those who took 8,000 steps were less likely to die early from heart disease and cancer compared to those who only took 4,000 steps. Again, the benefits plateaued after 8,000 steps. Similar findings suggest that 7,000 steps was the magic number (the studies, it should be noted, were observational and could not prove causation.) If you're walking for health, 7,000 to 8,000 steps, however, seems like a pretty good bet. These days, everyone's got a step counter in their pocket or on their wrist. Health tracking apps on phones and wearables like the Apple Watch, Oura, Fitbit, and Whoop have made it much easier to account for every single step. Health-related tracking can be extremely motivating when it comes to behavior change. When you have specific health or fitness goals, tracking is a good way to measure success. 'You have a target and you have a means to measure it,' Diaz says, 'which is great.' At the same time, you should want to engage in that activity because you like it and not because your watch or an influencer is telling you to move. Unless you're intrinsically motivated to achieve that goal — I walk because I like the way it feels — tracking can veer into compulsion. Once you've hit a benchmark of 10,000 or 15,000 or 20,000 steps, you may feel compelled to meet, or exceed, it every day or else fall into a shame and anxiety spiral. 'When the Fitbit first came out,' Diaz says, 'I used it for a couple weeks, and I just had to put it away because I couldn't do it anymore. If I didn't hit 10,000 steps in a day, it'd be nine o'clock at night and…I'd be circling my little, tiny living room for 20 minutes just to get my steps to where I need them to be. I'm sitting there, like how is this healthy in any way, shape, or form that I'm obsessing over a number?' Although quantifying an activity increases how often you do it, you start to enjoy it less. Soon, something that previously brought you enjoyment can start to feel like work. Although quantifying an activity (like counting steps or the number of pages read) increases how often you do it, you start to enjoy it less, a 2016 study found. This change can happen within a few days of tracking, the study's author Jordan Etkin, a professor of marketing at Duke University, says. When participants were able to see their results, they would continue the activity. But when they weren't shown their data, they lost the motivation to continue. 'The reasons for doing the activity shift from being because you like it or find some other value in it,' Etkin says, 'to being because it gives you this sense of accomplishment and productivity. When you don't get that anymore, because you're not tracking how many of these things you're doing, it's less valuable to you.' Instead of just moving for movement's sake, perpetual tracking assigns status and morality to basic bodily functions. Hitting a certain step count is 'good' and having a low readiness score is 'bad.' The number acts as a marker of wellness. These days, the ideal embodiment of that wellness has pivoted back toward thinness. No longer is a step just a step or a gram of protein a bit of nourishment — it's all in service of optimization of a skinnier, healthier self. People who track their health want every step to count, to matter, Etkin says. If it isn't being documented, it may as well not have happened. 'That introduces new dynamics into how people decide what and whether and when to do things,' she says, 'based on whether it's going to be recorded.' By no means should you stop walking if it improves your mental and physical health. But if the pressure of hitting a specific target every day causes anxiety or you're unable to forgo walking for a day, you may need to reconsider your relationship with your goals. This is 'because you're obsessing over this outward signal, and it becomes this unhealthy striving for perfectionism,' Diaz says. People can start to ignore their body's cues for rest and push themselves to injury. In order to maintain a more flexible outlook on your goals, Diaz suggests setting a range target — maybe 8,000 to 12,000 steps a day — or weekly benchmarks. If you know you're going to be moving a lot on the weekend, you won't be so fixated on a weekday where your step count is lower. Any wellness lifestyle should be sustainable. If your body and schedule allow for 20,000 steps a day, go for it. If it feels like a chore, you run the risk of burning out. It's worth asking yourself if any of your fitness-related hobbies are still enjoyable or if they inspire stress or obligation, Diaz says. Fitness isn't always fun, but it should, hopefully, relieve anxiety, not cause it.
Newsweek
an hour ago
- Newsweek
FBI Warns Americans of Fraudulent Health Insurance Emails, Text Messages
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) issued a warning cautioning Americans about a rising trend of fraudulent emails and text messages in which criminals pose as health insurers or their investigative teams. The report, issued on June 27, warned against messages designed to mimic communications from trusted health authorities, which have targeted patients and health care providers across the U.S. Why It Matters The scams aim to extract sensitive personal and financial information under the guise of insurance matters, such as alleged overpayments or requests about non-covered services. The information can be used to commit fraud, or even blackmail. Thousands of Americans fall prey to medical identity theft scams each year, according to with a large number of victims belonging to older age groups. The FBI issued a warning cautioning Americans about a rising trend of fraudulent health-related emails and text messages. The FBI issued a warning cautioning Americans about a rising trend of fraudulent health-related emails and text messages. Getty Images What To Know According to the FBI, criminals use emails and texts that appear to originate from known health insurers or insurance investigators. The messages pressure recipients to share protected health information, medical records or financial details, frequently under claims of processing refunds or handling service disputes. "These criminals are sending emails and text messages to patients and health care providers, disguising them as legitimate communications from trusted health care authorities," the warning reads. "The messages are designed to pressure victims into disclosing protected health information, medical records, personal financial details, or providing reimbursements for alleged service overpayments or non-covered services." The FBI advised Americans to remain cautious of unsolicited communications requesting personal details, never to click suspicious links, use strong passwords and multi-factor authentication, keep device software updated, and confirm any requests directly with their actual insurer before responding. FBI's Advice For Avoiding Scams Be suspicious of unsolicited messages emails, texts and calls requesting personal information. Never click on links that are included in suspicious and/or unsolicited emails. Use strong passwords and enable multi-factor authentication for all accounts. Keep operating system software updated and use antivirus software on all devices. Always contact your health insurance provider directly to verify the legitimacy of any messages before sharing personal or health care information. What People Are Saying Steve Weisman, cybersecurity expert and editor of the Scamicide newsletter, told Newsweek: "Many of these scams target older Americans. It is easy to get lists of the names of older people, who as a group are significant users of medical services and are responsive to offers for discounted medical care. "In addition, research at the University of Iowa found changes in a part of the aging brain that controls belief and doubt thereby making older people less skeptical and therefore more likely to be scammed due to their being more trusting and less skeptical. "Like so many scams, they appeal to fear and needs, offering often a too good to be true solution." What Happens Next Victims of these scams are urged to report incidents to the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center at Provide details such as the scammer's name, contact information and message contents.
