US Drinking Water PFAS Levels May Be Twice as High as Reported

A study in Cell Reports Sustainability found that standard reporting captures only 44% of the average concentration of 25 PFAS types in US community water systems. The gap stems from treating results below reporting limits as zero, even though about 98% of the 1.86 million EPA test results from January 2026 fell below those limits.

• Standard reporting captures just 44% of modeled PFAS concentrations
• 98% of 1.86 million EPA test results fell below reporting limits
• Analysis covered 25 PFAS types across 9,991 water systems
• EWG previously found PFAS in water serving about 176 million Americans