Advanced Textiles Expo 2025

Sessions Speakers Exhibitors Floor Plan

PFAS & the Textile Industry: 2025 Challenges, Solutions, and Regulatory Updates (Room Education Booth 748)

PFAS are a group of more than 10,000 man-made chemicals resistant to heat, water, and oil that have been used in the manufacturing of a number of consumer products, including stain-, water-, and oil-resistant fabrics. The regulatory framework and science of PFAS are rapidly evolving, creating business and environmental risks related to storage, management and use of PFAS-containing materials. Designed and formulated for persistence, PFAS resist decomposition and can migrate from manufacturing process, various waste streams and emissions to our drinking water and atmosphere. Health concerns have influenced many states to sample water supplies and establish guidelines and/or enforcement limits. Environmental regulations and product bans surrounding PFAS continue to be developed.

The textile industry is especially targeted due to their use of water, grease, and stain resistant chemicals such as PFAS on finished textiles, as these properties are often used and preferred by consumers. USEPA is planning to target approximately 2,200 textile manufacturing facilities within the United States with a mandatory information collection request (ICR). This ICR is anticipated to focus on facilities that perform one or more of the following operations and discharge process wastewater to surface waters or to publicly owned treatment works (POTWs): Wool scouring; Wool finishing; Yarn and unfinished fabric manufacturing; Woven fabric finishing; Knit fabric finishing; Carpet finishing; Nonwoven textile products of wool, cotton, synthetics, or blends of such fabrics. USEPA may also require wastewater sampling from a subset of these facilities, based on the responses, to characterize wastewater discharges from the textile industry. Ultimately, the responses may also support USEPA’s efforts to develop and propose new regulations if deemed appropriate. USEPA plans to estimate current pollutant mass loads and achievable reductions for available technologies for the industry and to determine if the effluent limitations guidelines (ELGs) limiting pollutant discharges from industrial point source categories under the Clean Water Act should be revised.

This presentation is designed to give industry professionals a practical understanding of the complexities and challenges PFAS can introduce to strategic planning, risk liability evaluations, and environmental sites and approaches to manage these in an uncertain technical, regulatory, and legal environment. This presentation looks beyond the PFAS basics.

Discussion will be provided on the following topics:
  • Site risk/liability assessments: Do you have to be concerned with PFAS and is there a way to determine this without sampling? If your site is determined to have a higher PFAS risk, how can you mitigate and manage this risk? What risk management tools are available? What kind of changes have we seen with the new administration?
  • Federal and state legal requirements, prohibitions, and implications for the textile industry: What are the issues/tensions for the parties in a transaction? The scope and requirements of the TSCA 10-year look-back notification requirements. How will a CERCLA Hazardous Substance designation and MCLs for certain PFAS affect our actions? Will the TRI Supplier Notifications for PFAS change my facilities’ reporting? Are PFAS going to be added to NPDES permits? What state laws/regulations drive some of the bigger challenges?