Bill pushing ‘sound science’ would impact future regulations on ‘forever chemicals’

Tennessee lawmakers are exploring a measure that would transfer the cost of recycling from local governments to producers. (Photo: Getty Images)

A bill proffered by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce seeks to block state agencies from creating new regulations for chemicals in drinking water or hazardous waste handling in Tennessee — unless lawmakers can show their proposed rules are based on “sound science.”

Rutherford County Republican Sen. Shane Reeves said he brought the bill at the chamber’s request. 

“The goal with this legislation is to promote the use of the best available science in state-level regulatory decision making, and try to move away from public policy overreaction to events influencing environmental regulatory actions” to promote stability for businesses, Reeves said during a Senate Government Operations Committee meeting on Feb. 26. 

The bill would require any regulatory action passed after July 1 that is more stringent than federal rules to be based on the “best available science” published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal that does not charge authors publication or submission fees. 

Those critical of the bill have highlighted that many highly reputable scientific journals do charge authors processing fees, including the Journal of American Medical Association.

U.S. Chamber of Commerce opposes ‘sweeping’ bans on ‘forever chemicals’

Mark Behrens, a representative of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Institute for Legal Reform, said the bill is aimed at the regulation of man-made chemicals, including those often called “forever chemicals” or PFAS — per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances — found in wares like water-repellent products, non-stick cookware and firefighting foam. 

“The point here is not to stop regulatory actions,” Behrens said. “We all want clean air, clean water, (a) clean environment. That’s important, but … the bill is just saying that those decisions have to be based on the best available science, so the regulators are not acting on a whim or pseudoscience.”

The bill, he said, is trying to nix the “precautionary principle,” or “getting ahead and saying we’re going to regulate even if we don’t know that this substance may cause a harm.” If science shows that “emergent chemicals” do have human health effects, then regulators can step in.

But researchers contend that reliable scientific research has already shown PFAS exposure to increase health risks. 

Exposure to seven PFAS being monitored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been linked to decreased antibody response, abnormal levels of fats in the bloodstream, and higher risk of kidney cancer in adults, according to the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine. It’s also linked to decreased infant and fetal growth.

Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti filed a lawsuit against multiple firefighting foam manufacturers in May 2023 alleging that they knew of the dangers of PFAS but did not take steps to reduce risks, causing damage to the state’s property and citizens. Tennessee’s case was consolidated along with hundreds of similar cases to South Carolina District Court, and the multidistrict litigation is ongoing.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce launched a lobbying effort in March 2024 opposing “sweeping bans that would treat all PFAS the same and restrict access to innovative fluorochemistries,” according to the chamber’s website.

Chamber publications have warned policymakers that stringent regulations or widespread bans on PFAS could disrupt industries that employ about 6 million people in the United States. According to one report published by the chamber in August, about 192,000 jobs in Tennessee are “dependent” on the chemicals — the ninth most in the nation.

The Tennessee Chamber of Commerce and Tennessee Manufacturers Association were among dozens of industry representatives to sign a December 2024 letter to the Trump administration seeking, in part, a rollback of “overly burdensome and unworkable regulations of PFAS chemicals.”

A similar bill has been introduced to the West Virginia legislature this year.

Regulating PFAS

PFAS and their effects on human health have been studied in labs for more than two decades, said Suzanne Fenton, a professor of biological sciences and director of the Center for Human Health and the Environment at North Carolina State University. 

Areas contaminated by PFAS are found all over the world, according to the National Academies report. The chemicals are released from places where they are manufactured, used or disposed of, and rainwater runoff transports them into other bodies of water, including groundwater. 

“Today, all kids are born with some PFAS in their bodies, and that wasn’t the case 20 years ago,” Fenton said.

Report: ‘Forever chemicals’ in northeast TN pose longterm risk to region’s drinking water

Eleven states have set limits for certain types of PFAS in drinking water; Tennessee is not one of them. The Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation is sampling 29 PFAS in all of the state’s public drinking water systems in an effort expected to be complete in summer 2025.

The state was also selected to receive $26.7 million in federal funding under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to address PFAS in drinking water. Under former President Joe Biden, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed designating two PFAS as hazardous substances, but the future of those efforts are unclear under President Trump’s administration.

“Forever chemicals” have been detected in 60% of rivers and lakes tested in Northeast Tennessee, according to a Sierra Club report released in January 2024.

Tracey Woodruff, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of California, San Francisco, researches how chemicals impact health, pregnancy and child development. She said PFAS are long-lasting and build up in the environment.

Woodruff draws a comparison to the lasting effects of DDT — dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane — one of the first synthetic insecticides. Traces of the chemical can still be found in people around 50 years after its use was banned, she said. 

“Even when we have signals of harm, it’s really important to act now on these persistent and bioaccumulative chemicals, because their health effects — their exposures — are forever … and it’s really the public that ends up having to pay the cost of the cleanup,” she said.

Sen. Charlane Oliver, a Nashville Democrat, said during the Feb. 26 meeting that she understood the bill to essentially require proof that a chemical has harmed people before the state can step in. 

Behrens said the bill stipulates that lawmakers who create regulations based on human health must show it’s “justified by the science,” but “says nothing in it that you have to show that people have been injured.”

Behrens referenced the regulation history of asbestos and cigarettes: When doctors began seeing more cases of cancer, researchers looked into the causes, and regulatory agencies moved in once they identified the cause, he said.

“It takes years, sometimes, for government to catch up with technologies and science and … it seems like with this bill we’re further hamstringing government to be able to respond to real-time emergencies — pandemics and such,” Oliver said.

The committee voted 7-2 to move the bill to the Senate Energy, Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee with a positive recommendation. 

The House Agriculture and Natural Resources Subcommittee will take up the bill, sponsored there by Jackson Republican Sen. Chris Todd, on March 5.

What makes science ‘sound’

Regarding the bill’s stipulation that research published in journals charging author fees cannot be used as a basis for regulations, Behrens said the intent is to exclude “predatory journals” that aren’t reliable. 

Both Fenton and Woodruff have served as an associate editor of Environmental Health Perspectives, a journal that has published scientific work since 1972. They agree that predatory journals — or journals that seek out people to publish — are an issue. They agree that peer-reviewed research is the standard for decision-making. 

The publication process in reputable, reliable journals “may take months to make sure that details of the work are transparent and clear,” Fenton said. Typically, each submission is peer-reviewed by at least three experts in the field who have not worked with the paper’s author. The process is anonymous. 

Woodruff said the push to make journals open-access to the public has led to the cost of publishing being transferred to researchers, so many journals do charge processing fees.

The University of California San Francisco’s Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment has published recommendations and guides for lawmakers to “safeguard science integrity, stop corporate interference in regulatory decision-making, use best available science, and protect health for all.”

Its principles include identifying and accounting for industry conflicts of interest in research funding.

“I think if you use these systematic review methods, which are about a consistent, transparent approach to evaluating the evidence base, and then you use empirically based tools for how to evaluate the bias of the studies, that generally will catch poorly conducted studies and identify their flaws,” Woodruff said.

Behrens said the U.S. Chamber of Commerce would work with the bill’s sponsors on adjusting language to be more clear about the bill’s intent to exclude predatory journals if needed.

“I don’t think there’s going to be questions about the intent,” he said. “It may just be over the details of how that’s worded.”