EPA Issues Draft PFAS in Biosolids Guidance

What Happened? The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently released Draft Guidance for Reducing Risk from Perfluorooctanoic Acid (PFOA) and Perfluorooctane Sulfonic Acid (PFOS) in Biosolids (Draft Guidance) for comment. EPA issued the Draft Guidance in response to uncertainty stemming from its January 2025 Draft Risk Assessment for PFOA and PFOS in Sewage Sludge (Draft Risk Assessment). The Draft Guidance provides voluntary recommendations for mitigating potential risks from PFOA and PFOS associated with biosolids recycling for wastewater treatment plants, land appliers, residuals managers, landowners, farmers, and the public. While the Draft Guidance neither endorses a particular method of risk management nor quantifies risks, it clarifies EPA’s support for continued land application of biosolids pending its consideration of revisions of the Draft Risk Assessment and its ultimate decision of whether to regulate PFOA and PFOS in biosolids. EPA will accept public comments until September 4, 2026, and may use public comments to help inform future agency actions, which could include revisions to or ultimate regulation stemming from the Draft Risk Assessment.

Who is Impacted? The Draft Guidance includes voluntary risk management recommendations applicable to stakeholders that generate, recycle, and use biosolids. The Draft Guidance—in particular, its expressions of doubt regarding the science behind the Draft Risk Assessment and support for land application—will likely influence state biosolids policy, permit expectations, and public scrutiny of biosolids. Any final version of the guidance could be the sole EPA authority on per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in biosolids for years pending EPA’s ultimate revision of the Draft Risk Assessment.

Next Steps? Stakeholders should evaluate how the Draft Guidance could affect biosolids management, land application practices, source control programs, monitoring, industrial pretreatment, public communications, and consider commenting to ensure the final guidance accurately reflects the realities of biosolids management and recommends a workable interim approach to managing risks from PFAS in biosolids.

EPA’s Current Stance on the 2025 Draft Risk Assessment

The Draft Guidance critiques several major issues with the Draft Risk Assessment, which received over 25,000 comments, and reiterates EPA’s longstanding endorsement and encouragement of land application of biosolids. The Draft Guidance states that the Draft Risk Assessment “exhibited a number of serious flaws that have caused confusion among the public and regulated community,” including creating a “misconception” that “all biosolids and sewage sludge use, and disposal practices will negatively affect the public.”

EPA presents three overarching critiques of the Draft Risk Assessment providing a preview of potential changes stakeholders can expect to see:

1. The prior administration’s departure from EPA’s typical practice to conduct a national survey to document the occurrence of PFOA and PFOS in biosolids in conjunction with undertaking the risk assessment;
2. The Risk Assessment’s focus on “management practices with higher potential for human health risks in hypothetical scenarios,” which resulted in a finding that PFOA and PFOS in biosolids might contaminate food crops, livestock, soil, drinking water, and fish, and failure to estimate how often these hypothetical scenarios actually occur in the U.S. or assess risks to the general public, who often have diverse food sources and do not live near or on land application sites; and
3. The Risk Assessment’s suggestion that “sometimes risks of adverse health effects were possible” from the use or disposal of biosolids containing 1 part per billion (ppb) of PFOA or PFOS, when, in reality, the 1 ppb concentration was intended to serve as a starting concentration for the evaluation of potential risks of PFAS in biosolids, not some ceiling “safe level” of PFOA or PFOS in biosolids.

The 1 ppb clarification is important for stakeholders, as some activists have misinterpreted the 1 ppb concentration to argue for bans and severe limits on land application of biosolids. Uninformed application of a 1 ppb concentration limit could have created immediate operational, contractual, and biosolids management problems and triggered extraordinary costs, with little public health benefit. EPA’s current approach leaves room for site-specific evaluation, risk management, and source control, while still signaling that biosolids programs should account for PFOA and PFOS exposure pathways.

State Programs Remain a Key Driver

The Draft Guidance also provides an overview of the various state approaches to managing PFOA and PFOS in biosolids. These approaches include source control programs, employed in Michigan, Virginia, and Maryland; monitoring policies and permits, used in Florida, Washington, and Oregon; and restrictions or bans on land application, enforced in Connecticut and Maine. This state-by-state variation will remain important for wastewater utilities, industrial dischargers, land appliers, and agricultural operations.

Risk Reduction Recommendations

In place of endorsing any particular model for managing potential risks, the Draft Guidance articulates several general commonsense recommendations for land appliers to reduce potential risks from PFOA and PFOS in biosolids. Several of these recommendations overlap with existing federal or state regulatory requirements. For instance, EPA states that land appliers could consider avoiding land applying “near” fishable waters, drinking water sources, and areas with “higher risks for potential groundwater impacts,” avoiding land application in areas where children under age five could have access, and limiting human exposure to crops grown on land-applied areas. EPA includes similar recommendations for home users of biosolids and biosolids products, including avoiding use where children may have access to the soil and in gardens intended to grow “higher risk food most likely to uptake PFOA and PFOS,” including “leafy greens and root vegetables,” or in areas where egg-laying hens have foraging access.

For the general public, the Draft Guidance recognizes that current data does not indicate that biosolids containing PFOA and PFOS have a widespread impact on the national food supply or that the general public is likely to be exposed to impacted foods. This is attributed, in part, to the fact that biosolids are applied annually to less than 1% of U.S. farmland and that many farms that land apply biosolids grow crops not intended for human consumption. EPA also notes that FDA monitoring “very rarely” finds PFOA or PFOS in foods available in U.S. grocery stores, except for fish.

Landowners should also be aware that PFAS may be present on, or could affect, their land through sources beyond the “consumer products” and “other dietary sources” EPA broadly and briefly recognized in the Draft Risk Assessment. Indeed, the many ongoing scientific investigations of trace PFAS in biosolids continue to indicate that land application is not a significant contributor of PFAS to the environment or water supplies. See, e.g., Ian L. Pepper et al., National collaborative study on the incidence and mobility of PFAS following land application of biosolids, 1012 Sci. of the Total Env’t 181197 (2026). For wastewater treatment plants, EPA recommends source identification, pollution prevention and monitoring, adding composite liners to surface disposal units, and performance testing of incinerators to better understand potential releases from incomplete combustion.

Next Steps

While the Draft Guidance’s support for land application could influence future state decisions regarding whether to regulate or restrict biosolids, federal guidance does not displace existing federal and state requirements. With no clearly endorsed risk management method from EPA, states will likely continue imposing monitoring obligations, source control expectations, disposal restrictions, and land application limits that go beyond existing federal regulations until EPA has determined whether and how to regulate PFOA and PFOS in biosolids.

Municipalities, biosolids contractors, and farm users of biosolids should consider commenting on the Draft Guidance, including the lack of detail of the current recommendations, the overlap of several recommendations with existing regulations, and the current, evolving state of the science on crop uptake of PFOA and PFOS from biosolids, in response to EPA’s blanket statement that certain categories of crops have higher risk of crop uptake. Stakeholders should also consider whether a clear endorsement of a particular risk management model from EPA, such as the Michigan approach, would be useful. While the Draft Guidance includes strong statements of support for land application and recognizes the value and need for it as a biosolids management option, stakeholders could provide additional context for EPA to include in the final version of the guidance. Additional topics that EPA is soliciting feedback on are listed here.

While the recommendations in the Draft Guidance are sweeping, general, and voluntary, stakeholders should also consider evaluating their land application programs for general compliance with the recommendations, in anticipation of potential state incorporation of the recommendations into binding standards. This would include:

• Reviewing biosolids management practices and identifying land application sites that could pose higher exposure.
• Evaluating whether existing industrial pretreatment and source control programs adequately address likely PFAS contributors.
• Assessing monitoring data, contracts, permits, and public communications related to biosolids use.

Beveridge & Diamond’s robust Chemicals, Water, Litigation, Biosolids, and Wastewater practices have represented municipalities, contractors, trade associations, and farmers regarding biosolids issues since the firm’s founding in 1974. B&D helps companies and trade associations navigate the increasing regulation of PFAS and other chemicals. Our lawyers frequently assist in commenting on and bringing legal challenges to EPA rulemakings and risk assessments. For more information, please contact the authors.