U.S. senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Charles Schumer are proposing legislation that would require the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to develop safety standards for perfluorinated compounds and other unregulated industrial chemicals that have been found in public water systems.

Although some states have set strict safety standards for the chemicals, many others, including New York, have not. The measure proposed by New York's senators calls for the EPA to set legally enforceable standards for the acceptable levels of the chemicals rather than issuing only health advisories.

Perfluorinated compounds such as perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, were used in manufacturing of heat-resistant and nonstick products for decades until last year. Human health studies have found links between PFOA exposure and six diseases: kidney cancer, testicular cancer, ulcerative colitis, thyroid disease, pregnancy-induced hypertension and high cholesterol.

In the Capital Region, concerns about PFOA found in water supplies in Rensselaer County erupted in 2014 when Michael Hickey, a former village trustee whose father died of cancer, sent samples from the Hoosick Falls water system to a Canadian lab that reported levels of PFOA that the EPA had advised were not safe for human consumption.

Last year, the EPA declared that PFOA levels in water supplies should not exceed 70 parts per trillion. Some of the Rensselaer County water supplies tested for PFOA, including in Hoosick Falls, had levels significantly higher than the federal advisory level.

For years, New York followed a standard that did not raise health alarms unless unregulated contaminants such as PFOA exceeded 50,000 parts per trillion in drinking water systems. The legislation proposed by Gillibrand and Schumer would establish a federal standard for the contaminants.

The measure would also include standards for another perfluorinated chemical, PFOS, which has been used in the firefighting industry for decades., and the chemical has been found in ground water and drinking water supplies near military bases and other locations where firefighters have trained with or used the foam that contains the chemical. In addition, the legislation would regulate dioxane, a solvent stabilizer that is known to cause cancer, and perchlorate, another industrial chemical that may cause adverse health effects in humans.

"We've seen very clearly how much damage can happen to our local drinking water supplies when toxic chemicals like PFOA, PFOS, ... dioxane and perchlorate aren't monitored by the EPA," said Gillibrand, a member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. "My legislation would require the EPA to come up with strong and enforceable safety standards for these toxins, so that no other community has to experience what Hoosick Falls, Newburgh, and Long Island have gone through over the last year."

blyons@timesunion.com • 518-454-5547 • @brendan_lyonstu