Rain and contaminated air are major sources of the pollution detected by a team of researchers from Indiana University and Canada’s top environmental agency. So are discharges from sewage treatment plants and industries.

The new study found airborne concentrations of PFAS — per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances — are much higher near Chicago and other urban areas than at rural monitoring stations in northern Michigan and upstate New York. Previous research recorded similar patterns for flame retardants and other toxic chemicals.

But unlike many other contaminants, PFAS in rain were consistent throughout the Great Lakes region, likely because the chemicals are so widespread in the environment.

Levels detected in rain were the same near Chicago and at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, 223 miles northeast across Lake Michigan near Traverse City.

As the most comprehensive tracking of PFAS in the lakes to date, the study provides another example of how it is impossible to avoid exposure to the chemicals — some of which build up in human blood, cause cancer and other diseases and take years to leave the body.

“We need to take a broader approach to control sources releasing PFAS into the atmosphere and into bodies of water,” Marta Venier, an environmental chemist at Indiana University and co-author of the study, said in an interview. “Eventually that pollution ends up in the lakes.”

PFAS are called forever chemicals because their bonds of carbon and fluorine are nearly impossible to break — a quality that makes them attractive to manufacturers of products resistant to grease, heat, stains and water. But for decades 3M, DuPont and other PFAS makers hid from government regulators and the public what the corporations knew about the health risks.

In April, President Joe Biden’s administration required every U.S. water utility to begin routinely testing for several PFAS in drinking water. Any utility that exceeds newly adopted federal limits will get five years to overhaul treatment plants to filter the compounds out of tap water.

Based on limited testing conducted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and some states, thousands of utilities face expensive upgrades to their treatment plants. For now, though, it appears Chicago and other Illinois communities that depend on Lake Michigan for drinking water will not be required to do anything other than test for the chemicals.

Testing by the Chicago Department of Water Management and the Illinois EPA detected forever chemicals in treated Lake Michigan water but at levels below the new federal standards.

Forever chemicals: They’re in your drinking water and likely your food. Read the Tribune investigation

All told the Great Lakes provide drinking water to more than 40 million people in the United States and Canada, including 6.6 million in Illinois.

The new study found all of the lakes are contaminated with two PFAS that initially drew attention from scientists and regulators: perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS), used by 3M for decades to make Scotchgard stain repellent, and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), sold to DuPont by 3M to manufacture Teflon coatings for cookware, clothing and wiring.

PFOS and PFOA no longer are made in the United States. Chemical manufacturers claimed other versions containing fewer carbon-fluorine bonds would be safer, but their own studies found the alternatives are just as dangerous, if not more so.

Levels of two alternative PFAS, known as PFBA and PFBS, are increasing in Lake Michigan and Lake Superior, the Indiana University and Canadian researchers found. PFOS, the original Scotchgard chemical, also is on the rise in the two lakes.

Lake Ontario had the highest PFAS concentrations, likely because it is downstream from the other Great Lakes. The chemicals also are flushing out of Lake Ontario more rapidly because it empties into the St. Lawrence Seaway and the Atlantic Ocean.

Venier said she welcomes the Biden administration’s drinking water regulations for PFOA, PFOS and a handful of other forever chemicals. At the same time, she noted, industry has put some 15,000 PFAS into the marketplace during the past half-century and federal regulators have continued to approve new versions.

“We know enough about these chemicals,” Venier said. “It’s a matter of how much is enough to decide to stop putting more of them into our environment.”

Naperville, St. Charles, Winnetka and 29 downstate municipalities are investors in the Prairie State Generating Station, a massive coal-fired power plant in southern Illinois that last year spewed 12.4 million tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere — more than only six other electricity providers in the United States.

The Illinois cities, towns and villages are under contract until 2035 to purchase a share of Prairie State’s electricity and help pay off $5 billion in construction debt. But instead of preparing to quickly shift away from the fossil fuel, like scores of other utilities across the country are doing, the Illinois communities could end up relying on Prairie State and another coal plant in Kentucky for most of their electricity until at least 2050.

Doing so would run counter to Biden’s goal of decarbonizing the nation’s electric sector by the middle of the next decade. Naperville and the other Illinois communities would also miss an opportunity to reduce their energy costs in an era when prices for renewable energy — paired with battery storage for when the wind doesn’t blow or the sun isn’t shining — are steadily declining.

Costs to operate Prairie State already just break even with what it would take to replace the plant’s output with new wind farms, according to a 2023 analysis by Energy Innovation, a nonprofit think tank.

“I would be nervous as a consumer about the fact I’m locked in until 2035,” said Eric Gimon, a physicist and senior fellow who co-authored the analysis. “Extending your reliance on coal to 2050 is an entirely different story. That is crazy.”

In their sales pitch to Naperville and the other communities, officials at the Illinois Municipal Electric Agency vow to balance heat-trapping emissions with carbon-removal technologies by 2050 — a concept known as “net zero.”

Meeting that target would hinge upon a 45% reduction in CO2 emissions from Prairie State by 2038, shutting down the plant and a unit at the Trimble County coal plant in Kentucky by 2045 and full retirement of Trimble County in 2050, according to an IMEA slide presentation.

Staci Wilson, the agency’s director of government affairs, said if member communities extend their contracts they will ease the shift to cleaner sources of electricity — something scores of utilities across the nation are doing by abandoning coal now.

Left unaddressed by the IMEA are the health and climate costs of relying on coal for at least another 15 years after the current contracts expire.

When burned, the fossil fuel emits more carbon dioxide than any other fuel source. Levels of the heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere are higher than at any point during the past 800,000 years. If emissions aren’t dramatically reduced soon, scientists say, climate-influenced catastrophes could kill millions of people and devastate the global economy.

Burning coal also contributes to lung-damaging smog and soot pollution that triggers respiratory ailments and shaves years off lives.

Prairie State, Illinois’s largest emitter of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide pollution, is increasingly an outlier in a fast-changing sector of the U.S. economy.

Coal’s share of the nation’s energy mix dropped to 16.2% last year, down from more than 50% a decade ago, largely because gas-fired plants are less expensive to build and operate. The decline has been so steep that renewable energy now generates more electricity than coal.

In Illinois, investor-owned companies are closing what is left of their coal fleet within the next few years. But that trend doesn’t apply to Naperville, St. Charles, Winnetka, and other members of the IMEA, owner of a 15% stake in the Prairie State plant.

The IMEA and other Prairie State investors could face additional costs to comply with newly adopted federal regulations requiring coal plants planning to operate past 2039 to eliminate 90% of their carbon dioxide emissions by 2032.

There is no proof such an ambitious target can be met.

Last year management at the Prairie State plant solicited bids to build equipment that would capture 45% of the coal burner’s heat-trapping gases and either pump them deep underground or somehow ship them far away for other uses such as oil recovery from depleted wells.

If the scheme worked, it would comply with the state’s latest clean-energy law. Yet no power provider has shown it can cost-effectively sequester large amounts of carbon dioxide, let alone the levels required under the Biden administration’s far more stringent regulations — a reality acknowledged by IMEA officials during their presentations to member communities.

Owners of a Texas coal plant equipped one of their four coal-burning generators with the largest carbon capture project attempted to date in the United States. It only prevented 55% of the unit’s CO2 emissions from escaping into the atmosphere and required so much energy the owners had to build a separate power plant, creating more climate-changing pollution.

“It’s all smoke and mirrors,” said William Burns, co-director of the Institute for Responsible Carbon Removal at American University and a visiting professor at Northwestern University. “Some of these coal plant owners are just trying to run the clock out and keep going as long as they can.”

Based on their bid request, Prairie State’s management appears to be banking on federal tax credits worth up to $85 per ton of carbon dioxide sequestered. The document seeks outside investors to install the technology at no cost to municipal investors.

“Our nation’s energy supply is in a state of transition, and Prairie State and its public power owners are committed to working with policy leaders on ways to further mitigate CO2 in the future while still maintaining grid reliability and efficiency,” said Alyssa Harre, the plant’s spokeswoman.

Wilson, the IMEA lobbyist, said with only 11 years left on the current contracts with Naperville, St. Charles, Winnetka and other member communities it is too late to broker long-term deals for low-cost renewable energy.

Her claim rings hollow with clean energy advocates. They fear their elected leaders place too much trust in the IMEA, which unlike ComEd or Peoples Gas, does not face oversight from professional energy experts at the Illinois Commerce Commission.

Greg Hubert, a member of the Clean Energy Alliance of Naperville group, said he first learned in late 2019 that the IMEA was interested in extending contracts with its members. Since then details of several key discussions have remained secret, Hubert said, because they occurred during closed-door meetings between the agency and Prairie State management.

“I think it’s a safe bet to say that many citizens are still unaware of the heavy carbon footprint of our Naperville electricity, primarily from our IMEA ownership of coal-fired generation,” Hubert said during one of his appearances at City Council meetings. “Many may not be aware of the growing risk of this coal-fired electricity to Naperville’s reputation and our wallets.”

Another opponent, Jean Korte, questions why the agency is pressuring communities now to continue relying on coal after the Prairie State construction bonds are paid off in 2035.

Could it be a guarantee needed by potential investors in a carbon capture system, Korte has asked elected leaders in Highland, another IMEA city northeast of St. Louis. If so, she said in an email, nobody is willing to admit that.

“Why do we have ‘public power’ if citizens do not know what they are signing up for?” Korte said. “It is time to pause and have a bigger discussion.”

Energy experts also are skeptical.

Emily Grubert, an associate professor of sustainable energy policy at the University of Notre Dame, has urged elected officials and other policymakers to be straight with Americans about impending job losses in the fossil fuel industry. Leaders should prepare now for a decline in local tax revenues after coal plants close, she has said.

“Who exactly is paying for (the potential carbon capture project at Prairie State) is unclear,” Grubert said in an interview. “Who would be responsible if they go two or five times over budget?”

Understanding why Naperville and the other communities are in this position requires a look back to the mid-2000s when St. Louis-based Peabody Energy, a major financier of climate denial campaigns, hatched plans to build the Prairie State plant and burn coal from one of its nearby mines.

Peabody managed to get the coal plant built even as investors abandoned dozens of similar projects, scared off by skyrocketing construction costs and the likelihood that climate pollution eventually would be regulated.

Prairie State ended up costing more than twice as much as the $1.8 billion Peabody promised. But by persuading the IMEA and other municipal electric agencies to absorb the construction debt, Peabody avoided a huge hit to its bottom line.

The coal company later sold its 5% stake at a steep loss.

Naperville played a key role in the construction of the coal plant. In 2007, the IMEA persuaded the city to become its largest member and joined the Prairie State consortium after Michigan-based CMS Energy backed out.

Now Naperville officials could determine whether IMEA members continue relying on coal after 2035.

Brian Groth, the city’s electric utility director, said Naperville plans to hire a consultant “to explore options on how to procure energy and services beyond 2035 as well as provide projected energy and capacity pricing past 2035.”

Josie Clark, Winnetka’s spokeswoman, repeated the IMEA’s claim that extending contracts until 2055 will clear the way for low-cost renewable energy deals in the future. St. Charles officials did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Two other Chicago suburbs, Batavia and Geneva, belong to a separate municipal group that invested in the Prairie State plant. They are on the hook until 2041 to help pay off the construction debt and buy electricity from the coal burner.

“If Prairie State isn’t operating anymore, we still have to pay off the bonds and then we have to go acquire a whole new source of power in order to serve our customers,” Gary Holm, president of the Northern Illinois Municipal Power Agency and Batavia’s director of public works, said during a January forum.

Prairie State and IMEA officials contend the power plant is needed as a reliable source of electricity, an argument that might have made sense in the 1970s when many of the nation’s other huge coal burners were built.

Interest groups funded by coal companies have seized upon concerns about reliability as a reason why coal plants should continue operating. Those groups also are behind legal campaigns to persuade right-wing justices in the U.S. Supreme Court majority to throw out the Biden administration’s climate regulations.

But in 2020 a team of energy experts at Princeton University concluded every remaining coal plant in the United States could close by 2030 without destabilizing the electric grid or driving up energy prices. The researchers also found the nation could slash greenhouse gas emissions to zero in all sectors of the economy by 2050 by making a monumental commitment to clean transportation, electricity and home heating.

“This is a national project we need to embark on that’s good for our economy,” Jesse Jenkins, one of the study’s co-authors, told reporters during a February workshop organized by the nonprofit Institute for Journalism and Natural Resources. “It’s good for our public health. It’s good for our reliability. And by the way, it helps avert dangerous climate change.”

“I think the playbook for the next decade is pretty clear,” Jenkins said. “If we are going to add new wind and solar capacity to the grid at a record pace, the first thing that needs to be retired is our coal-fired fleet.”

President Joe Biden’s administration moved Thursday to speed up the demise of the climate-changing, lung-damaging fossil fuel while attempting to ease the transition to cleaner sources of energy.

A package of new regulations adopted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency requires coal-fired power plants to reduce emissions of heat-trapping carbon dioxide by 90%, demands steeper reductions of brain-damaging mercury pollution, clamps down on toxic metals dumped into lakes and rivers and orders the removal of hazardous coal ash from scores of unlined pits across the nation.

The Biden administration also put the gas industry on notice it might not continue to enjoy its recent economic advantages compared to coal. New gas-fired plants built in the United States will need to meet the same stringent limit on carbon dioxide pollution as existing coal plants.

“We are ensuring that the power sector has the information needed to prepare for the future with confidence, enabling strong investment and planning decisions,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said Wednesday during a call with journalists. “These actions will also allow us to tackle the full array of threats that power plants pose to clean air, safe water and healthy land.”

U.S. power plants are second only to transportation in the amount of climate change pollution emitted into the atmosphere.

For now, though, existing gas-fired plants are exempt from the administration’s demand to limit carbon dioxide emissions. In February, Regan said the EPA plans to adopt separate rules for existing gas plants including other types of pollution disproportionately affecting low-income, Black and Latino neighbors — action that almost assuredly depends on the results of the 2024 election.

The regulations directed at coal plants will increase costs for energy companies that still rely on the fossil fuel and could force the closure of generators operating on slim margins. Activists who clamored for changes and repeatedly sued the EPA said the new policies will force the industry to account for decades of damage to public health and the environment.

“Power plants for far too long have been able to get away with treating our waterways like an open sewer,” said Thomas Cmar, an attorney with Earthjustice, a nonprofit legal organization that challenged weaker coal ash and wastewater rules adopted by the Obama and Trump administrations. “It is long past time for this dangerous, damaging practice to end.”

Despite dozens of coal plants closing in recent years, the industry has still been responsible for about a third of the heavy metals released into water nationally — more than any economic sector.

Operators of about 250 coal plants also dumped toxic ash into unlined pits regulated more loosely than household garbage landfills.

One of the sites that will face more stringent federal oversight is the former Waukegan Generating Station on Lake Michigan, a former ComEd coal plant ringed by two unlined ash ponds and an unlicensed landfill. Others include a Joliet quarry where ComEd and other companies dumped coal ash and a coal plant in Michigan City, Indiana, owned by the Northern Indiana Public Service Co., which had planned to excavate and safely dispose of only half of its waste.

Donnita Scully, environmental justice chair at the LaPorte County branch of the NAACP, said the only thing keeping the Michigan City plant’s waste from spilling into Lake Michigan is a fast-deteriorating steel wall.

“I’m concerned about the people who don’t know about this threat to their health,” Scully said.

The new regulations come at a time of rapid change in the nation’s energy mix.

Coal provided just 16.2% of the electricity generated in the United States last year, down from more than 50% a decade ago. Gas accounted for 42%, but in some states a combination of wind and solar energy, paired with battery storage for when the wind isn’t blowing or the sun doesn’t shine, provides most of the electricity during various times of year.

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm announced the Biden administration will attempt to add more renewable energy to the electric grid by speeding up environmental reviews of new transmission lines and providing regulatory incentives to overhaul existing lines to carry more energy.

Republicans and their patrons in the fossil fuel industry vow to challenge the power plant regulations. The Supreme Court blocked an earlier version of the climate rules adopted during President Barack Obama’s administration, then President Donald Trump scrapped the regulations and replaced them with an industry-friendly alternative.

Trade groups for coal burners contend the Biden administration’s package will cause blackouts and raise electricity prices — the same arguments they’ve made every time the federal government takes steps to limit pollution. But some major business groups had more tempered reactions.

“With near daily reminders that electricity demand will increase exponentially — for data centers, AI, new manufacturing facilities, and the ever-increasing electrification of the economy — we are concerned the rule would significantly restrict electricity supply necessary to meet that demand,” said Marty Durbin, senior vice president of policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce,

Ali Zaidi, Biden’s climate adviser, noted there is enough carbon-free energy on the grid today to power 70 million homes. Projects expected to be completed this year could add more renewable capacity than all of the installations that came online during the past two decades, Zaidi said.

In many ways, Illinois is ahead of the federal government in moving toward cleaner energy.

A 2021 state law brokered by Gov. J.B. Pritzker and the Democratic-controlled General Assembly outlaws coal- and gas-fired electricity by 2045. Even without a government mandate to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, most of what is left of the state’s once-robust coal fleet is scheduled to close by the end of the decade.

Illinois also provides a cautionary tale about the transition.

During the mid-2000s, five Chicago suburbs and dozens of downstate communities agreed to help pay off more than $5 billion in debt for the Prairie State Generating Station — one of the nations Top 10 industrial sources of climate-changing pollution.

Municipal investors in the massive coal burner, including Batavia, Geneva, Naperville, St. Charles and Winnetka, helped block Pritzker’s more aggressive plans. So did Springfield, the state capital, which built a new coal plant around the same time even as private investors abandoned dozens of similar projects, scared off by skyrocketing construction costs and the likelihood that climate pollution eventually would be regulated.

Under the Biden regulations, coal plants will need to reduce most of their carbon dioxide emissions by 2039. Prairie State is among several testing carbon capture technology, but it hasn’t been proven to work at the necessary scale. In the long run, installing more pollution-control equipment would raise operation costs and likely make the power plants less competitive in an era when prices for wind and solar energy continue to drop.

“Today is the culmination of years of advocacy for common-sense safeguards that will have a direct impact on communities long forced to suffer in the shadow of the dirtiest power plants in the country,” said Ben Jealous, executive director of the Sierra Club. “It is also a major step forward in our movement’s fight to decarbonize the electric sector and help avoid the worst impacts of climate change.”

The new policy from President Joe Biden’s administration is the latest attempt to prevent the further spread of perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS), used for decades by 3M to make firefighting foam and Scotchgard stain repellent, and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), sold to DuPont by 3M to manufacture Teflon coatings for cookware, clothing and wiring.

Declaring the chemicals hazardous substances under the federal Superfund law gives the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency broad powers to require companies responsible for fouling the environment to pick up the tab for investigating and cleaning up PFOA and PFOS pollution.

Though the toxic compounds are no longer made in the United States, they are called forever chemicals because they don’t break down. Both have been found in the drinking water of 200 million Americans, including at least 2 million in Illinois.

“President Biden understands the threat that forever chemicals pose to the health of families across the country,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said Friday in a statement. “Designating these chemicals under our Superfund authority will allow EPA to address more contaminated sites, take earlier action and expedite cleanups.”

The new regulations are part of the administration’s broader campaign to address the widespread threats to people and wildlife. Last week the EPA adopted the first nationwide limits on PFOA, PFOS and four other forever chemicals in drinking water.

Government action to protect Americans from the chemicals has been slow-coming. For decades manufacturers kept secret what they knew about the dangers of PFOA and PFOS, which are among thousands of compounds known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances or PFAS. Then multiple presidential administrations failed to regulate forever chemicals or limit their spread.

PFAS end up in lakes, rivers and wells after flushing through sewage treatment plants and spreading from factory smokestacks. They also leach out products resistant to water, grease, heat and stains. Examples include carpets, clothing, cookware, cosmetics, dental floss, fast-food wrappers, food packaging, microwave popcorn bags, paper plates, pizza boxes, rain jackets and ski wax.

“It’s long past time for the polluters who poisoned all of us to be held responsible,” said Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit group that has studied PFAS and advocated for federal action since the early 2000s.

“This comes too late for all the people who were poisoned without their knowledge or consent and have paid the price for one of the greatest environmental crimes in history,” said Cook, who called the Biden administration’s Superfund designation “the first step to bring justice to those who have been harmed.”

Including the former Scotchgard and Teflon chemicals in the Superfund law is “great news for the many communities grappling with PFAS contamination, many of which are also low income and communities of color,” said Dr. Tracey Woodruff, director at the Program on Reproductive Health & the Environment at the University of California at San Francisco.

Industry lobbyists contend the policy change could bog down cleanups. Many fear the prospect of multi-billion dollar cleanups dictated by the federal government.

Invoking the Superfund law “appears to prioritize creating new opportunities for litigation,” Chuck Chaitovitz, vice president of environmental affairs and sustainability at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said in a statement. “Local governments, landowners, and businesses will now likely have to devote resources that could have been used to improve our environment to fighting frivolous litigation.”

“EPA already has sufficient enforcement tools at its disposal to address PFOA and PFOS without the designation (of) them as hazardous substances,” Stephen Risotto, senior director at the American Chemistry Council, said in comments filed after the EPA introduced a draft of the regulations last year.

Some industries are lobbying Congress for exemptions, arguing PFAS manufacturers should be solely responsible for cleanups.

Sewage treatment operators are particularly concerned. Many offer sludge to farmers as free fertilizer, a practice encouraged by the EPA, but during the past decade studies by academic researchers and state regulators have found human and industrial waste is contaminated with PFAS.

“The reality of this final rule means that utilities will face increased operational costs and uncertainties, and most worrisome, will be the target of endless litigation from the manufacturers of PFAS,” a coalition of drinking water and wastewater industry trade groups said in a statement.

EPA officials are considering regulations that would limit forever chemicals in sewage sludge, perhaps by requiring industries to remove the chemicals before discharging waste into municipal sewers. The use of fertilizer on farmland already is exempt from the Superfund law.

Minnesota-based 3M agreed last year to pay at least $10.3 billion to settle thousands of claims accusing the company of contaminating public water systems with its forever chemicals. DuPont and two other companies reached a $1.19 billion settlement in the same cases, filed by cities and water systems across the nation.

DuPont and 3M earlier paid nearly $2 billion combined to settle other PFAS-related lawsuits without accepting responsibility for contaminated drinking water or diseases suffered by people exposed to the chemicals.

The companies have long maintained forever chemicals are not harmful at levels typically found in people. But top 3M executives knew as early as the 1950s about the harmful effects of PFAS, according to documents obtained in series of lawsuits filed since the late 1990s. The company didn’t begin telling the EPA what it knew about PFOA and PFOS until 1998 — more than two decades after Congress approved the nation’s first chemical safety law.

3M has said it will stop making PFAS next year.

U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin wants to begin shutting off the tap by outlawing per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, commonly known as PFAS, unless they are used in medical devices or other essential products.

Legislation introduced Thursday by the Illinois Democrat would give manufacturers a decade to phase out most uses of PFAS and eliminate air and water pollution that for now is largely released from factories without limits.

The bill also would attempt to prevent corporations from seeking protection under bankruptcy laws to avoid lawsuits seeking compensation for health damages.

“PFAS surround us,” Durbin said. “They are in the pots and pans we cook with, in our drinking water supply, in the air we breathe.  We must act to ensure that harm brought on by these forever chemicals is mitigated.”

This is the latest of several measures introduced in Congress to address PFAS problems across the nation. Most likely will not make it through the Senate and House of Representatives in a period of divided government, but Durbin and other top lawmakers in the Democratic-controlled Senate often manage to include their priorities in broader, must-pass legislation such as the annual budget for national defense.

A companion bill to Durbin’s introduced in the Republican-controlled House is sponsored by U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum, a Minnesota Democrat.

Forever chemicals, pioneered after World War II by the global conglomerates 3M and DuPont, have been added for decades to products featuring brand names such as Scotchgard, Stainmaster and Teflon. Industry has promoted PFAS as miracles of science, but since the late 1990s lawsuits have revealed that 3M and DuPont hid from regulators and the public what the companies knew decades ago about the harmful consequences.

PFAS are called forever chemicals because they don’t break down in the environment. Some build up in human blood, take years to leave the body and trigger testicular and kidney cancer, birth defects, liver damage, impaired fertility, immune system disorders, high cholesterol and obesity.

In 2022, a Chicago Tribune investigation revealed that more than 8 million people in the state — 6 out of every 10 Illinoisans — get their drinking water from a utility where at least one forever chemical has been detected.

President Joe Biden’s administration last week announced the nation’s first limits on six PFAS in drinking water — to date the most significant action taken by the federal government to protect Americans from the compounds, two of which the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has concluded are unsafe at any level.

Durbin noted another 12,000 PFAS have been introduced to the marketplace during the past 70 years without thorough assessments of health risks. Scientists estimate about 600 are in production today.

Another measure introduced Thursday, sponsored by two Democrats and a Republican in the House and Democratic U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, would require the EPA to develop water quality standards for all PFAS within three years. The measure also would set deadlines for the agency to limit the chemicals in sewage from several industries.

Chemical manufacturers contend forever chemicals aren’t harmful. The American Chemistry Council accused the EPA last week of overstating the non-cancer risks of PFAS and of failing to prove the benefits of limiting them in drinking water outweigh the costs.

But 3M — which recently agreed to pay communities with contaminated water at least $10.3 billion and faces scores of other lawsuits — announced last year it will stop making PFAS in 2025.

Until now the federal government’s response to PFAS pollution has mostly been limited to studying it. Amid the slow response, several states have taken action to ban the chemicals in certain items, including personal care products, food packaging, firefighting foam and fabric treatments.

“Firefighters, farmers and families are demanding solutions and state leaders on both sides of the aisle are stepping up to stop use, clean up, identify safer solutions and hold polluters accountable,” said Sarah Doll, national director of the nonprofit Safer States coalition. “That said, we need all levels of government to address the crisis.”

New regulations announced Wednesday will require every U.S. water utility to begin routinely testing for several of the chemicals. Any that exceed federal limits will get five years to overhaul their treatment plants to reduce, if not eliminate, alarming concentrations of the compounds in tap water.

More than 100 million Americans are expected to benefit, including at least 660,000 in Illinois who get their drinking water from a utility that violates the new standards for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, commonly known as PFAS.

In 2022, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency declared there effectively is no safe level of exposure to perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS), used by 3M for decades to make Scotchgard stain repellent, or perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), sold to DuPont by 3M to manufacture Teflon coatings for cookware, clothing and wiring.

These versions of the chemicals build up in human blood, cause cancer and other diseases and take years to leave the body.

Water utilities will need to limit concentrations of the forever chemicals to 4 parts per trillion — an amount the EPA said is the lowest at which PFOS and PFOA can be accurately detected. Four other PFAS, including replacements for the original Scotchgard and Teflon chemicals, also will be regulated for the first time.

“There’s no doubt that these chemicals have been important for certain industries and consumer uses,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan told reporters during a Tuesday briefing. “But there’s also no doubt that many of these chemicals can be harmful to our health and our environment.”

Forever chemicals end up in lakes, rivers and wells after flushing through sewage treatment plants and spreading from factory smokestacks. They also leach out of products such as carpets, clothing, cookware, cosmetics, dental floss, fast-food wrappers, firefighting foam, food packaging, microwave popcorn bags, paper plates, pizza boxes, rain jackets and ski wax.

Based on limited testing by the EPA and some states during the past decade, thousands of utilities face expensive upgrades to their treatment plants. For now, though, it appears Chicago and other Illinois communities that depend on Lake Michigan for drinking water will not be required to do anything other than test for the chemicals.

Testing by the Chicago Department of Water Management and the Illinois EPA detected forever chemicals in treated Lake Michigan water but at levels below the new federal standards.

Peoria, where PFAS have been detected as high as 12.9 parts per trillion, is the largest Illinois city that will need to improve its treatment processes, according to a Chicago Tribune analysis of water testing conducted by the state during the past three years.

Forever chemicals: They’re in your drinking water and likely your food. Read the Tribune investigation

In the Chicago area, the state’s testing found PFAS levels exceeded the new federal standards in Cary, Channahon, Crest Hill, Fox Lake, Lake in the Hills, Marengo, Rockdale, South Elgin and Sugar Grove. All of those communities rely on wells; several have stopped using their most contaminated sources of drinking water.

Biden and Regan came into office pledging to make regulating PFAS a priority after years of promises but little action by the federal government.

Ken Cook, president of the nonprofit Environmental Working Group, called the Biden EPA’s action “easily the most consequential and difficult decision(s) to protect drinking water in the past 30 years.”

Cook’s group has studied PFAS and advocated for federal action since the early 2000s. He noted forever chemicals have been found in the bodies of nearly every American. Babies are born with PFAS in their blood.

Industry groups, as they almost always do, challenged the science EPA officials relied upon and raised the specter of skyrocketing water bills to comply with the agency’s standards.

The American Water Works Association, a utility trade group, urged the EPA last year to set a less stringent limit of 10 parts per trillion for the original Scotchgard and Teflon chemicals, which haven’t been manufactured in the United States for years but are still commonly found in drinking water.

One study commissioned by the association estimated that complying with EPA regulations will cost water utilities $3.8 billion a year, far more than the agency projects. Another questioned whether limiting PFAS in drinking water will protect public health.

On its website, the American Chemistry Council, a trade group for chemical manufacturers, accuses the EPA of overstating the non-cancer risks of forever chemicals and of failing to prove the benefits of limiting them in drinking water outweigh the costs.

Other industry groups fear their members could be sued for emitting forever chemicals into the air or discharging them into water.

The potential liabilities for corporations are staggering.

3M brokered a deal last year to pay at least $10.3 billion to settle thousands of claims accusing the company of contaminating public water systems with its forever chemicals. DuPont and two other companies reached a $1.19 billion settlement in the same cases, filed by cities and water systems across the nation.

DuPont and 3M earlier paid nearly $2 billion combined to settle other PFAS-related lawsuits without accepting responsibility for contaminated drinking water or diseases suffered by people exposed to the chemicals. The companies have long maintained forever chemicals are not harmful at levels typically found in people.

Many water utilities will get a share of the settlements. Congress and the Biden administration also are chipping in with $21 billion that will be shared over time to upgrade treatment plants.

“When you look at what’s happening today, whether it’s in the courts, our regulatory actions, or the actions Congress has taken, I have to say it is a good day for the people in this country who have long borne the impact of pollution from these forever chemicals,” Regan said.

Government action to protect Americans from PFAS has been slow-coming, in part because chemical manufacturers kept secret what they knew about the dangers.

Documents obtained during lawsuits show top executives at Minnesota-based 3M knew as early as the 1950s about the harmful effects of forever chemicals the conglomerate pioneered after World War II. 3M didn’t begin telling the U.S. EPA what it knew about PFOA and PFOS until 1998 — more than two decades after Congress approved the nation’s first chemical safety law.

“It has taken far too long to get to this point,” said Rob Bilott, a Cincinnati lawyer who uncovered scores of the once-secret industry documents during lawsuits against DuPont in Ohio and West Virginia, “but the scientific facts and truth about the health threat posed by these man-made poisons have finally prevailed over the decades of corporate cover-ups and misinformation campaigns designed to mislead the public and to delay action to protect public health.”

Regulations unveiled Thursday by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency would require commercial sterilization operations to reduce ethylene oxide emissions by 90%, largely by installing pollution-control equipment already required in Illinois and a handful of other states.

The once-obscure industry drew attention in 2018 when the EPA reported some of the nation’s highest cancer risks from toxic air pollution could be found in communities near manufacturers and users of ethylene oxide, also known as EtO. Some of the most alarming results came from west suburban Willowbrook and north suburban Waukegan.

Under pressure from community organizers and a bipartisan group of politicians, Oak Brook-based Sterigenics closed its Willowbrook sterilization plant a year later and took steps to reduce pollution from eight of its other facilities across the country. A state law prompted by Chicago Tribune reporting required Northfield-based Medline to significantly reduce EtO emissions at its Waukegan facility.

All told the new federal regulations target about 90 sterilization plants in 30 states and Puerto Rico. Nearly 14 million people live within 5 miles of one or more of the facilities, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists.

During a Wednesday teleconference with reporters, EPA officials noted many of the plants are located near low-income, Black and Latino communities disproportionately affected by toxic pollution.

“We have followed the science and listened to communities to fulfill our responsibility to safeguard public health from this pollution — including the health of children who are particularly vulnerable to carcinogens early in life,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said in a statement.

When elevated cancer risks near EtO manufacturers and users first came to light in 2018, top aides to then-President Donald Trump promised Willowbrook-area residents the federal government would adopt more stringent regulations. The Trump EPA later backed away from those statements amid lobbying from the major producers of ethylene oxide: Dow, Huntsman and Shell, which use the chemical to synthesize ethylene glycol, a raw material in antifreeze, polyester and plastics.

Environmental groups later sued the EPA for stalling an overhaul of its regulations to reflect the latest science.

Manufacturers of medical devices cautioned the EPA that the new regulations could disrupt supply chains for products sterilized with EtO. Though Medline showed it could reduce emissions fairly quickly, the agency extended the compliance deadline for all commercial sterilizers from 18 months to two years for large operations and up to four years for smaller facilities.

National nonprofit organizations and Stop Sterigenics, a community group formed in response to the Willowbrook findings, aren’t happy with the final version of the rules, either. They criticized the EPA for failing to require EtO monitoring beyond sensors at the remaining sterilization plants, noting that community monitoring in Willowbrook provided alarming evidence of the dangers posed to neighbors.

There also are concerns that enforcement will be left to states, some of which aggressively oppose the new regulations and others with a polluter-friendly track record.

Moreover, the EPA failed to address off-site warehouses storing products fumigated with ethylene oxide. In February, an investigation by Grist, a nonprofit news operation, and Atlanta TV station WANF found there has been little scrutiny of storage facilities where residual EtO can escape into workspaces and surrounding neighborhoods, in part because neither the EPA nor state regulatory agencies know where they are located.

“It’s devastating to see the human toll of regulatory loopholes,” said Urszula Tanouye, a scientific adviser to Stop Sterigenics. “The situation in Willowbrook … serves as a poignant reminder that behind every statistic is a life impacted by these failures.”

Chemical companies and government health agencies have known since at least the late 1970s that ethylene oxide mutates genes and causes breast cancer, leukemia and lymphomas.

Time and time again, a 2019 Tribune investigation found, the multibillion-dollar chemical industry and its political allies in Washington have thwarted, weakened or delayed efforts to limit exposure to EtO, relying on the same tactics that stalled protections from more well-known hazards such as lead and asbestos.

After reviewing studies of sterilization workers and animals, EPA scientists concluded in 2006 that EtO effectively is dangerous at any level. It took the agency another decade to formally adopt a more protective limit intended to protect plant workers and neighbors.

Two panels of independent scientists generally agreed with the agency’s findings and rejected industry-financed studies that claimed to show EtO isn’t harmful at typical exposure levels. Chemical manufacturers and the sterilization industry continue to cite those studies as proof the new regulations aren’t necessary.

“Scientific studies of real-world data conducted over the past decades consistently have found that low levels of EtO are safe and do not increase the risk of cancer for employees who regularly work around facility levels of EtO, let alone for people who live or work in areas near EtO facilities,” Sterigenics wrote in June after the Biden EPA released a draft of its proposed rules.

Based on air quality monitoring at parks, schools and homes when Sterigenics still operated in Willowbrook, the EPA concluded the facility’s pollution could trigger more than 10 cases of cancer for every 10,000 people exposed during their lifetimes — a rate 10 times higher than what the agency considers acceptable.

The Willowbrook plant increased the risk of cancer for people living up to 25 miles away, EPA officials said during a 2019 community forum.

As federal officials repeatedly delayed taking action to limit emissions from the industry, courts have stepped in. A Cook County jury ordered Sterigenics and two corporate predecessors in 2022 to pay a Willowbrook breast cancer survivor $363 million for exposing her to ethylene oxide. The company later agreed to settle lawsuits filed by nearly 900 other neighbors for $408 million.

The Food and Drug Administration has said it is nudging the industry to find safer alternatives.

In January, the FDA announced it considers vaporized hydrogen peroxide an effective substitute. But for many medical devices, the FDA says on its website, “sterilization with ethylene oxide may be the only method that effectively sterilizes and does not damage the device.”

Regulations unveiled Wednesday by the Illinois Pollution Control Board are intended to protect millions of people from per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances or PFAS, some of which build up in human blood, cause cancer and other diseases and take years to leave the body.

Nearly 300,000 Illinoisans rely on utilities where PFAS in well water exceed the state’s proposed standards, according to a Chicago Tribune analysis of testing conducted between 2020 and 2022. Chicago-area communities with contaminated wells include Fox Lake, Lake In The Hills, Marengo, Rockdale, South Elgin and Sugar Grove.

It is unknown how many of the 1.4 million people in the state who depend on private wells are drinking PFAS-contaminated water. The Tribune reported last year that state officials had decided it is up to individual well owners to have their water tested.

The new Illinois initiative comes as President Joe Biden’s administration is proposing the first-ever national drinking water standards for two of the most widely studied PFAS: perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS), used by 3M for decades to make Scotchgard stain repellent, and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), which 3M sold to DuPont to manufacture Teflon coatings for cookware, clothing and wiring.

If adopted, utilities will be required to limit concentrations of the two forever chemicals in drinking water to 4 parts per trillion, an amount the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency determined is the lowest at which PFOS and PFOA can be accurately detected. Four other PFAS, including replacements for the original Scotchgard and Teflon chemicals, also would be regulated for the first time.

Illinois plans to adopt similar limits for treated drinking water if and when the Biden administration finalizes its plan. For now the state’s action to restrict PFAS in groundwater addresses widespread contamination of “a vital resource that needs to be protected for current and future uses,” the Pollution Control Board wrote in a 70-page opinion.

Corporations and government agencies potentially responsible for contaminating groundwater have spent the past two years lobbying against the state’s proposal. They fear the standards would prompt legal action by the Illinois EPA and private lawsuits intended to force the cleanup of contaminated sites and ensure well owners have safe water.

Other states with PFAS limits include Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Maryland, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin.

Lawyers for 3M persuaded a Michigan appellate court last summer to throw out that state’s standards for PFAS in groundwater, a decision under appeal before the Michigan Supreme Court.

During the Illinois proceedings, witnesses hired by 3M questioned the science state officials relied upon and attempted to raise doubts about the reliability of testing methodologies, among other things. The state rule-making board rejected the company’s arguments, noting the U.S. EPA and the World Health Organization have concluded that PFOA and PFOS are carcinogens.

The largely hidden health costs of PFAS exposure are staggering. A 2022 study by New York University researchers estimated it will cost the current U.S. population nearly $63 billion.

Government action to protect Americans from PFAS has been slow-coming in part because chemical manufacturers kept secret what they knew about the dangers.

Documents unearthed during lawsuits show top executives at Minnesota-based 3M knew as early as the 1950s about the harmful effects of forever chemicals the conglomerate pioneered after World War II. 3M didn’t begin telling the U.S. EPA what it knew about PFOA and PFOS until 1998 — more than two decades after Congress approved the nation’s first chemical safety law.

3M and DuPont have paid nearly $2 billion combined to settle PFAS-related lawsuits without accepting responsibility for contaminated drinking water or diseases suffered by people exposed to the chemicals. 3M has long maintained the chemicals are not harmful at levels typically found in people.

In June, 3M announced the company will pay at least another $10.3 billion to settle thousands of other claims accusing the company of contaminating public water systems with forever chemicals. DuPont and two other companies earlier said they had brokered a $1.19 billion settlement in the same cases, filed by cities and water systems across the nation and consolidated in a South Carolina federal court.

The money is expected to be paid out over time to test for and treat PFAS-contaminated water. 3M said last year it will stop making the chemicals by 2025.

The policy change resolves a civil rights lawsuit filed four years ago in response to the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency’s approval of a scrap shredder in Chicago’s predominantly Latino Southeast Side after the owners closed their often-troubled General Iron operation in wealthy, largely White Lincoln Park.

Lawyers for community groups petitioned for federal intervention, accusing the Illinois EPA and city agencies of colluding with developers to concentrate polluters in a corner of the city where residential yards already are contaminated with heavy metals and toxic chemicals from nearby industries.

Under an agreement with U.S. EPA investigators, the state agency promised to require more effective pollution-control equipment and consider air-quality monitoring if industries want to build or expand in environmental justice communities throughout Illinois.

Past violations of environmental laws will be taken into consideration as well.

Polluters near schools, day care centers and medical facilities will face increased scrutiny. Neighbors will get more notifications about permit applications and the state will require public hearings when requested.

“Segregation is alive in Chicago, and it’s a future that I don’t want my kids to live through,” said Gina Ramirez, a senior adviser to the Southeast Environmental Task Force. “Illinois should treat permitting these dangerous facilities with the seriousness that it deserves. That means actually taking into account the health of the people living in the communities where they are operating.”

After the Illinois EPA approved a permit for the RMG scrap shredder in 2020, community groups focused their efforts on then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot, protesting outside her home and filing a civil rights complaint against the city with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Some opponents staged a hunger strike to draw attention to what they considered environmental racism.

Lightfoot ended up denying the final permit Ohio-based RMG needed to begin shredding scrap metal along the Calumet River near 116th Street and Avenue O.

RMG is appealing. For now, the company’s machinery stands idle a few blocks away from Washington High School, where state monitoring equipment routinely detects some of the city’s dirtiest air.

The agreement between federal and state officials did not revoke RMG’s state permit. Another part of the deal absolved the Illinois EPA from admitting any wrongdoing during its review of the project.

Lightfoot settled the HUD complaint shortly before leaving office.

In September, Mayor Brandon Johnson pledged to overhaul zoning, planning and land-use ordinances that encourage heavy industry to move out of predominantly white neighborhoods into other parts of Chicago disproportionately burdened by pollution, poverty and disease.

City Hall hasn’t followed through on those promises yet.

“We’ve been caught in the middle in a constant struggle to protect our health while industry continues to pile up in neighborhoods like mine and while government agencies continue to rubber stamp permits,” said Cheryl Johnson, executive director of People for Community Recovery, another nonprofit group behind the civil rights complaints.

Said Johnson: “This is a huge step in the right direction that will finally end some of the worst practices of the (Illinois EPA) that helped create Chicago’s sacrifice zones.”

At the urging of his independent scientific advisers, Michael Regan, administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, is pushing to lower the annual standard for the deadly air pollutant to 9 micrograms per cubic meter of air, down from the current restriction of 12 micrograms per cubic meter.

Regan estimated during a Tuesday call with reporters that the proposed changes would provide up to $77 in health benefits nationwide in 2032 for every dollar polluters spend to clean up their operations.

Soot, also known as fine particulate matter, can penetrate deep into the lungs and trigger myriad health problems including cancer, heart disease, respiratory ailments, diabetes and brain damage, shaving years off lives. The type of soot targeted by the EPA proposal, PM2.5, is so small that thousands of the particles could fit on the period at the end of this sentence.

“The impact of this pollution disproportionately affects our most vulnerable communities, including low-income communities, communities of color, children, older adults, and those who struggle with heart or lung conditions,” Regan said.

In Illinois and nearby states, communities that would violate the new standard include Chicago and its suburbs; Decatur; Rockford; Milwaukee; Gary, Indianapolis and Evansville, Indiana; Detroit, Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo, Michigan; and the St. Louis metro area, according to a Chicago Tribune analysis of monitoring data from 2000 through 2022.

Chicago ranks 3rd in US in deaths and health costs related to diesel pollution, analysis shows

Iowa and Minnesota are the only Midwest states where all counties would meet the more stringent soot standard.

The final list of scofflaws will be based on pollution data collected during the next few years. Regan noted that soot levels generally are declining nationwide, but he said a growing body of research shows the current standard fails to adequately protect public health.

Some environment and public health groups clamored for an even tougher standard of 8 micrograms of soot per cubic meter of air. Breathing soot above that limit leads to more than 21,000 deaths and 3,000 cases of lung cancer each year, according to a study published last year in the Annals of the American Thoracic Society.

The EPA’s own regulatory analysis concluded that setting the limit at 8 micrograms would prevent 9,200 premature deaths annually, compared with 4,200 premature deaths prevented each year at 9 micrograms.

“Any way you look at this issue, tens of thousands of people are needlessly losing their lives every year, including many in areas that meet existing (standards),” Brian Urbasewski, director of environmental health programs at the Chicago-based Respiratory Health Association, told the White House Office of Management and Budget during a November meeting.

Aware that new soot regulations were on the horizon, industry groups have been airing television ads and lobbying members of Congress with many of the same arguments they made during past battles about clean air rules.

Maps produced by several trade groups depict most of the nation affected by the Biden EPA’s proposal, despite monitoring data showing the dire forecast isn’t grounded in readily available information.

Statements from the American Petroleum Institute and U.S. Chamber of Commerce implored the EPA to maintain the current soot standard, which both organizations insisted when it was adopted would bankrupt the U.S. economy.

Strengthening the soot standard, the oil industry trade group said, “is the latest in a growing list of short-sighted policy actions that have no scientific basis and prioritize foreign energy and manufacturing from unstable regions of the world over American jobs, manufacturing, and national security.”

By contrast, Earthjustice, an environmental group that backs the Biden administration’s proposal, recently conducted an analysis that found cities have boosted their economies while reducing soot pollution. In the Chicago metropolitan area, for instance, annual soot levels declined by 11.5% between 2012 and 2021 while the unemployment rate declined by 3% and the gross domestic product increased by by 10.4%, the analysis showed.

Other studies have determined that reducing soot pollution would particularly benefit low-income Black and Latino communities near highways, railways and industrial facilities.

A 2014 Tribune analysis found that nearly 340,000 people, including 38,000 children younger than 7, live within a half-mile of one of the region’s intermodal terminals that transfer freight between diesel locomotives and trucks. More than 80% are Black or Latino.

Diesel soot costs the region more than $3.7 billion a year in hidden health costs, according to a 2022 analysis by the Clean Air Task Force, a Boston-based nonprofit group.

At least 340 people die each year from diseases triggered or made worse by exposure to diesel soot in the metropolitan area that stretches from Kenosha to Naperville to Gary, the group estimated by using a computer model developed by EPA consultants.

Only Los Angeles and New York record more deaths and health costs from diesel soot each year, the group estimated.

“When (industry groups) use these scare tactics to misrepresent the standard,” said Dr. Doris Browne, past president of the National Medical Association, a trade group for Black physicians, “just remember the actual tens of billions in health benefits these strengthened soot pollution limits provide and the people who will be alive because of them.”