Friend — this is bad: Congress just missed a major opportunity to regulate toxic PFAS chemicals — and we need to work quickly to make sure our shot doesn't slip away entirely.

The best thing you can do right now to help is to make an emergency year-end donation to the League of Conservation Voters. It will be TRIPLE MATCHED. Donate $5 or more right now to fight for the planet three times as hard in 2020 »

Here's the situation: in the midst of the impeachment vote earlier this week, Congress nailed down an agreement to keep the government open. The agreement was must-pass, which means it was a chance to get real positive changes through that might otherwise get sidelined by Mitch McConnell.

That's where PFAS comes in. These chemicals are terrible — they've been linked to thyroid issues, birth defects, and some cancers — but they're used in firefighting foam at military bases around the country and have found their way into our drinking water. We had a chance in the military budget to finally start regulating these dangerous chemicals, but pressure from chemical companies and Trump's White House stopped it from happening.

We have to work quickly. Pro-environment leaders in the House are working on another bill that would require the EPA to designate these chemicals as a hazardous substance, triggering clean up and protections for our drinking water.

The bill could receive a vote as soon as January, which means we need to raise hell now to have a shot at getting it to a vote.

The thing is, we're staring down the end of the year, and it's a major fundraising deadline here at LCV. What we can raise by the end of the year tells us just how big we can go with campaigns like this — and right now, we're still $48,000 away from our funding goal.

Until December 31, every gift to the League of Conservation Voters will be TRIPLE MATCHED by a generous donor. Donate $5 or more right now to fight for the planet three times as hard in 2020 »

PFAS chemicals are commonly known as "forever chemicals" because they persist in the human body and accumulate over time. In addition to cancer, they're linked to health problems including liver damage, thyroid disease, high cholesterol, and decreased fertility, to name only a few.

They're also estimated to be contaminating more than 1,500 drinking water systems serving more than 100 million Americans. A recent study found that even the rainwater in some parts of the U.S. has high enough levels of PFAS to adversely affect human health.

Congress has the power to take action where the Trump administration won't and force the EPA to set protective limits on PFAS in drinking water. But pro-polluter members of the House and Senate tanked the largely bipartisan agreement in the budget so their chemical company allies can continue to dump toxic chemicals into our water, air, and soil.

We're organizing in a major way to get PFAS restrictions passed — but we need your help to put it into action.

Every dollar you pitch in to power this and other environmental fights will immediately TRIPLE in impact, until the December 31 deadline — don't miss out »

There's a lot happening right now — from holiday preparations to historic impeachment proceedings. It's the exact kind of news environment that often allows egregious acts by corporate polluters and their allies in Congress to go unnoticed and underreported.

That's why it's so critical that LCV ramps up this fight — something we can only do with your help. Please, make your gift of just $5 or more today and every dollar will TRIPLE for the environment.

Thank you for sticking with us.

Sincerely,

Gene Karpinski
President
League of Conservation Voters