The PFAS Governance Tracker is maintained by the PFAS Project Lab, an interdisciplinary research group focused on social and environmental questions related to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). The PFAS Governance Tracker is designed to provide comprehensive and user-friendly information about policy and governance actions on PFAS in the United States at the federal level and in the 50 US States.
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Learn more about different categories you can search for by clicking on the Help icon next to the Type and Topic of Action filters.
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How to use this tool:
To search for all governance actions by keyword(s), type the keyword(s) into the search bar at the top of the page. This search could include, but is not limited to, keywords for different stakeholders, topics, and locations. For example, a search for “California water” will provide all governance actions that contain the keywords “California” and “water”.
To filter your search by State or Federal Agency, Type of Governance Action, Topic(s) of Governance Action, Date, or Legislative Outcome, select the dropdown menu from the filter options on the left of the page and select the desired search criteria. For example, to only see actions that are from “California”, select the dropdown menu for Federal Agency or State and select “California”. Multiple filter selections can be selected at once. If no filter options are selected, the output will contain all actions. The Reset All Filters button will erase all selected filters.
To sort the list of governance actions by date, select the Sort by: Date button found at the bottom of the advanced filter options on the left of the page. Select the desired category to sort by. If the Sort by: Date is not selected, the default sorting will show the federal-level governance actions first (alphabetized by federal agency), followed by the state-level governance action (alphabetized by state).
To download the output of an individual governance action, select the download icon next to the name of the governance action. This will download the information as a TXT file. To download the full list of governance actions, select the download icon to the right of the search bar. The downloaded list will only contain the governance actions that appear after the search and filter have been applied. This will download the information as a CSV file.
Methods:
The PFAS Project Lab began maintaining its PFAS Governance Tracker in 2021 with funding from the National Science Foundation.
To find federal actions, PFAS Project Lab research assistants searched through all relevant government agency websites in order to find federal actions concerning PFAS. They reviewed websites from the EPA, DOD, FDA, CPSC, and Congress.gov.
To find state actions, the PFAS Project Lab received information collected by Safer States, a network of environmental health organizations, about passed and unpassed legislation from 2019-2022, and entered all legislation related to PFAS.
Other governance actions were identified via news articles and searches of legislation for keywords such as “PFAS.” If the action was found through a news article or other secondary source, Lab researchers located the primary source as well.
For all legislative actions, the primary source is the state legislative webpage for a bill or Congress.gov. Next, the action was categorized using the definitions for topics created by the PFAS Project Lab. All relevant information (legislative outcomes, major players, summary, etc.) was entered manually.
PFAS Project Lab members will continuously track news articles, press releases, and other online sources that mention PFAS in order to add any new governance actions to the PFAS Governance Tracker.
Limitations:
The PFAS Governance Tracker is intended to provide comprehensive and user-friendly information about regulatory and legislative action on PFAS in the United States at the federal level and in the 50 U.S. States. While our goal is to maintain this database with the most accurate and up-to-date information, this database cannot be assumed to be completely exhaustive.
Additionally, despite our rigorous definitions for topics, policy and governance actions were reviewed and entered into the database by over half a dozen different individuals, making classification differences likely.
If there is information that is incorrect or missing, please submit a correction or suggestion so we can maintain a database that is accurate and up-to-date.