EFCN Podcast features Dr. Clare Pace:  An Intro to PFAS

Dr. Clare Pace was interviewed by the Environmental Finance Center Network for a podcast titled “An Intro to PFAS with Dr. Clare Pace from Berkeley’s Water Equity Science Shop (WESS).” Dr. Pace discusses PFAS in small and rural water systems, including what PFAS are, where they arise, health risks, the current PFAS regulatory landscape for water and wastewater in the United States, and offers advice for policymakers. The podcast was released on October 15, 2025. Listen on Spotify or read the transcript below.

Transcript

Introduction: This program is brought to you with support from the U.S. EPA. We’re here to present the EFC Network Podcast. The Environmental Finance Center Network is a partnership of 12 centers serving 10 EPA regions. The EFCN provides training and technical assistance to small water and wastewater systems. This podcast series has been designed to help system personnel improve technical, managerial, and financial capacity of the utilities and communities they serve.

Sami Stroud: Hello, and thank you for joining us today. I’m your host, Sami Stroud. I am a communications and outreach specialist from the Southwest Environmental Finance Center. Today, we’re diving into a topic that’s becoming increasingly important for water and also wastewater systems across the country: PFAS. These forever chemicals are showing up in more places more frequently, and small and rural systems are feeling the pressure to understand what PFAS are, where they come from, and how to respond. Joining us today is Dr. Clare Pace, the assistant project scientist and co-lead of UC Berkeley’s Water Equity Science Shop, also known as WES. She’s here to help break it down. What small and rural systems should know about PFAS’s exposure and regulation, where the risks come from, and some advice for systems and regulators. So to start off, Clare, could you tell us a little bit about WESS and your role there?

Clare Pace: Sure, happy to. And thanks for having me on today. So the WESS is a community academic partnership between UC Berkeley, UCLA, CalEPA’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, or OEHHA, and the Community Water Center. And Community Water Center is an environmental justice and advocacy organization. So this partnership grew out of several decades of collaborative research that was around water justice. And we formalized the partnership in 2017 with the launch of the WESS. So I started out as a postdoc on the project in 2018. And now I co-lead our research efforts as a project scientist. Just to give you sort of a picture of what we do, we lead statewide mapping efforts in California around water quality and environmental justice. And one of our current projects is a tap water testing study that’s taking place in rural agricultural communities of California, where we’re testing for a variety of chemicals, including PFAS.

Sami Stroud: Awesome. Thanks for that, Clare. That sounds really interesting and I’m excited to dive into that a little more. But so just to set the stage a little bit, many of us may have heard of PFAS already, but for those of our listeners who might be unfamiliar, let’s just start from the beginning. What are PFAS?

Clare Pace: So PFAS stands for per and polyfluoroalkyl substances. They’re a group of thousands of man-made chemicals that have carbon-fluorine bonds, which makes them really strong, flexible, and resistant to heat and water. These are chemicals that have been around since the 1930s, when they were created by companies like DuPont, who invented Teflon, and 3M, who manufactured PFAS as an additive for firefighting foam. So today, PFAS are in a wide variety of products, like cosmetics and lotions and pesticides, some household cleaners, some plastic containers, and many more products. Again, they’re highly resistant to breaking down. They can exist in the environment for thousands of years.

Sami Stroud: And so why should water and wastewater systems, and particularly those in small or rural communities, why should they be concerned with PFAS? And what are the health risks that we know of already?

Clare Pace: Yeah, so PFAS have been linked to a variety of conditions, like decreased immune function, cancer, developmental effects, hormonal changes, and cardiovascular disease. Since PFAS are widespread in the environment, really all communities, both rural and urban, should be concerned. But we do know that many small rural water systems already struggle with issues like aging infrastructure, a lack of technical, managerial, and financial capacity in order that they need in order to meet drinking water standards for other regulated chemicals. But really, we need more data to know if that’s the same story with PFAS.

Sami Stroud: Right. That makes sense. So you spoke about this a little bit already, but where do PFAS generally come from? And for small and rural water systems, what are some potential sources of PFAS that they might not realize exist?

Clare Pace: So PFAS are manmade. They come from the manufacturing and the use of products that contain PFAS. They’ve been found in higher concentrations near certain industries, like chrome plating, and also near places that use a specific type of firefighting foam that contains PFAS. Also, they’ve been found close to wastewater facilities and close to landfills. Rural communities may face additional risks from some of these more recently recognized sources of PFAS, like pesticides, or biosolids that are applied as a soil amendment, and treated wastewater that’s used for agriculture.

Sami Stroud: Oh, that’s interesting. How do these non-industrial pathways that you’re talking about, how do these differ from more well-known PFAS sources?

Clare Pace: Well, the non-industrial PFAS sources haven’t been studied as extensively as the industrial sources. But based on where pesticides and biosolids are applied, they’re more likely to impact agricultural communities than we would see with industrial PFAS sources.

Sami Stroud: Right. Yeah, that makes sense. Although PFAS have been around for almost a century, our recognition of them as a pollutant and as a health problem is pretty new. So what is the regulatory landscape for PFAS look like in the United States right now? And what should water and wastewater systems know or expect from that?

Clare Pace: Well, on the plus side, six individual PFAS have received a regulatory limit as of 2024, but there are a few caveats. So more recently, the EPA has proposed to reverse four of these six regulations. And the existing limits, whether it’s two or six, won’t go into effect for a few years. Because of these delays, a few states have moved forward and passed their own regulations on PFAS and drinking water. For example, Michigan and Massachusetts have regulations that are even stricter than the proposed or than the accepted federal PFAS MCLs. And also, some states are going to start regulating PFAS in specific products. I would say that water systems should stay tuned, and they should be ready to meet enforcement levels, but with the understanding that there may be setbacks. Also, it’s worth noting that there are thousands of PFAS that are still unregulated. And at this point, there’s really nothing that’s stopping companies from synthesizing new PFAS and using those in place of PFAS that may have been banned.

Sami Stroud: Yeah. So what a lot of us can do is just sit tight and stay ready. So how and I’m speaking to this because of your work with WESS, but how is science and equity work informing PFAS regulation and what needs to be done to better understand PFAS in this context?

Clare Pace: So I think we need more research on the spatial distribution of PFAS and on the connection between PFAS sources and body burden. as well as the long-term health impacts, especially in communities that already face environmental and psychosocial stressors like pollution, poverty, and limited access to other resources. And I think this will be important because this sort of research can help inform community-led advocacy for policy change.

Sami Stroud: Well, I’m glad that we have people like you pursuing that kind of research right now. So, from your experience working in this area, what advice would you have for small and rural water communities who are concerned about PFAS in their water and wastewater systems?

Clare Pace: Well, this is a large-scale problem, and it’s going to require us to work together as a community with residents, utilities, farmers, regulators, and researchers. First and foremost, each community is going to need to understand the scope of the problem through water quality testing. And some of these short-term solutions may look like point-of-use water filters, whereas longer-term solutions will likely require improved infrastructure, regulatory intervention to prevent PFAS from entering the environment in the first place.

Sami Stroud: And also, what advice would you give to policymakers and regulators of PFAS?

Clare Pace: I’d remind policymakers and regulators that we’ve successfully tackled similar issues before by using a combination of policies, regulations, and infrastructure improvements. This is how the U.S. was able to reduce lead poisoning. We stopped letting companies add lead to paint and to gasoline. We treated the water, and we removed lead from pipes. In other words, regulation, policy and investing in infrastructure worked to protect public health and to save lives. I would suggest using a similar approach and similar strategies to tackle PFAS.

Sami Stroud: And so where can listeners who are interested in this learn more about the work that you’re doing or reports or data sets or community tools that you’re working on developing?

Clare Pace: Let’s see. Well, we have a online drinking water resource for California called the Drinking Water Tool that displays PFAS sources, water quality, and it displays those alongside socio-demographics. I’m happy to share the link for that. We also partner with a group called Silent Spring Institute who put together a website called the PFAS Exchange. which helps users understand exposure and figure out how to take action to protect health. And if folks are interested in specific PFAS data on the national scale, the EPA has put together some really useful PFAS analytic tools.

Sami Stroud: Awesome, yeah, and we can definitely post links to all of those on the Environmental Finance Center Network website. Thanks so much, Clare. This has been a really illuminating and fascinating conversation, and I just really appreciate you coming here to share your wisdom with us and keep doing the work that you do.

Clare Pace: Thanks so much for the opportunity. It’s been a pleasure.

Sami Stroud: Thank you to all our listeners for tuning in to this episode of the EFC Network Podcast, brought to you with support from the U.S. EPA. Be sure to stay tuned for future EFC Network Podcast episodes.