A lawsuit was filed by an environmental group in Tucson, Arizona, stating that the US regulators are failing to address concerns about toxic PFAS chemicals in foods despite having the scientific tools to do so, The New Ledge reported. The lawsuit was filed on Jan. 24 in the US District Court of Arizona, following the submission of a legal petition filed in November 2023 by the Tucson Environmental Justice Task Force that asked the FDA to establish limits for PFAS. The group wants the FDA to take action to remove products from grocery store shelves if PFAS residues are found at the minimum level of detection. The petition cites connections between seven types of PFAS and “serious life-threatening health effects,” including kidney and liver damage, cancer, neurotoxicity, immunotoxicity, and adverse reproductive effects. The FDA has been testing foods for PFAS contamination since 2019 but so far says it has found very little contamination. In an update of April 2024, the FDA said that exposure to PFAS at the levels it measured in the samples “is not likely to be a health concern for young children or the general population, based on evaluation of each PFAS for which there is a toxicological reference value. In 2023, the organization Alliance for Natural Health USA tested eight kale samples purchased from grocery stores in New York, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Arizona, finding PFAS in all but one sample. In 2024, the Consumer Reports tested 50 samples of whole milk from five states known to have PFAS contamination in their groundwater. They found two particularly harmful PFAS chemicals, PFOS and PFOA, in six samples. As the new Trump administration begins, it’s “anybody’s guess” whether or not the FDA will fulfill the petition’s request to set limits on PFAS in foods. @ https://www.thenewlede.org/2025/01/fda-must-set-limits-on-pfas-in-food-lawsuit-says/