The US Food and Drug Administration has rejected a legal petition demanding it set limits on toxic Pfas “forever chemicals” in food, marking another setback for public health advocates’ push to limit exposures to the dangerous compounds.
The agency is refusing to set limits despite a growing body of science and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finding food is the biggest source of Pfas exposure. Testing has found the levels of Pfas in single servings of some contaminated foods to be equivalent to drinking many glasses of contaminated water.
While regulators have focused on reining in Pfas in water, the chemicals are widely used throughout the food system, and there was hope that the agency under Robert F Kennedy Jr would take the threat more seriously. Kennedy leads the “make America healthy again” (Maha) movement, of which eliminating toxic chemicals from food is a cornerstone.
The FDA’s decision is “disappointing”, said Sandra Daussin, an attorney for the Tucson Environmental Justice Task Force (TEJTF), which in November 2023 filed the legal petition. The group is planning to sue and ask a court to order the FDA to set thresholds.
“If it’s important enough to regulate in water then we need to regulate it in food – that’s a no-brainer,” Daussin said.
Pfas are a class of at least 16,000 compounds most frequently used to make products water-, stain- and grease-resistant. They have been linked to cancer, birth defects, decreased immunity, high cholesterol, kidney disease and a range of other serious health problems. They are dubbed “forever chemicals” because they can persist for thousands of years in the environment, and are designed to be indestructible.
The November 2023 petition called on the FDA to check for up to 30 Pfas compounds in a range of produce, fish, eggs, milk and bread. The agency did not respond within the six-month timeframe required by law, but TEJTF scaled back its petition in 2025 to ask the agency to set advisory thresholds for PFOA and Pfos, two of the most common and dangerous Pfas compounds, in seafood and milk.
Recent FDA testing found 70% of seafood samples contain the chemicals, while independent milk testing found it in 12% of 50 samples, including extremely high levels in Whole Foods and Kirkland Signature brands. The FDA rejected the revised petition, stating it plans to take action on setting standards for Pfas, and there is “insufficient evidence to support [TEJTF’s] request”.
The agency said it plans to set less non-binding “action levels” that do not require contaminated food to be removed from shelves. “Tolerance levels”, or limits, make it illegal to sell food contaminated beyond a set threshold.
Pfas gets into food because it is commonly used in pesticides, food packaging and sewage sludge used as fertilizer. It is also often found in non-stick cookware and kitchen products, and polluted water used in processing or growing can contaminate food.
It is partly difficult to gauge the scale of the problem because technology used to test food for the chemicals is not as advanced as that which looks for Pfas in water, and there is no robust government testing program. However, a patchwork of independent testing suggests a broader problem.
Meat and crops produced on farms that use sewage sludge have been found by independent tests to contain high levels of Pfas, and some state agencies have ordered contaminated food and milk to be taken off the market.
Some independent testing has found high levels of Pfas in blueberries, kale and other water-rich produce because the chemicals are attracted to water. Independent testing also found beer to be contaminated, and EPA testing of seafood found the chemicals in all but one sample.
The levels of the Pfas compound gen X that were consumed when eating 10 blueberries grown near a Pfas plant in North Carolina was found to be equivalent to drinking a liter of water with levels of the chemical above the federal limit. An analysis of FDA and EPA fish testing data by the Environmental Working Group non-profit found eating one serving of US freshwater fish contaminated with median Pfas levels could be equivalent to drinking highly contaminated water every day for a month.
Regulating one route but not the other leaves people unprotected.
“Your body doesn’t know how the PFAS got in there,” Daussin said.
Still, the FDA only conducts limited annual testing and in 2019 adjusted its methodology so it will only catch what consumer groups say are extremely high contamination levels and ignore relatively low to moderate levels that can still pose a health risk.
In 2019, the FDA initially found 182 food samples to be contaminated with Pfas, but, after changing its methodology partway through the study, that figure dropped to 78, drawing accusations that it was intentionally covering up contamination.
“Imagine using a radar gun to detect speeding in cars, but then manipulating the radar so that it only detects speeding in cars going over 100 mph,” wrote Brian Ronholm, a former deputy under secretary of food safety at the US Department of Agriculture, in Consumer Reports after the FDA announced the change.