Environment advocates have condemned Trump administration plans to spend at least another year considering whether to restrict toxic chemicals increasingly found in drinking water across the country.

The chemicals – known as PFOS and PFOA – are found in nonstick pots and pans, food packaging, and firefighting foam sprayed in drills on military bases. They seep into soil and groundwater in areas where they are manufactured and used.

In high levels, the chemicals are linked with kidney and testicular cancer, ulcerative colitis, thyroid disease, high cholesterol and problems in pregnancy. The chemicals are so prevalent that they are estimated to be in the bloodstreams of nearly all Americans.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s assistant administrator of water, David Ross, told reporters on Thursday that the agency plans to publish a proposal about setting a maximum level of the chemicals allowed in drinking water. But the full regulatory process could take years, and the agency could ultimately decide against establishing a requirement.

“Whatever we do, we’ll have to defend in court,” Ross said. “So part of this process is making sure whatever we do is legally defensible.”

The Environmental Working Group accused the EPA of “foot-dragging” and said the plan “would not stop the introduction of new PFAS chemicals, end the use of PFAS chemicals in everyday products, alert Americans to the risk of PFAS pollution or clean up contaminated drinking water supplies for an estimated 110 million Americans.”

Betsy Southerland, a career staffer who was the science and technology director of EPA’s water office under Barack Obama, said the Trump administration is trying to create confusion about the chemicals to delay regulation.

“They want to say: wow, we’re really paralyzed. We can’t make industry clean this stuff up, there’s too much uncertainty. We need years more study,” she said. “I think they’re very happy that they’ve managed to waste an entire year.”

Rob Allen, the mayor of Hoosick Falls in New York, which has suffered with water contamination, said the announcement showed “the lack of guidance & leadership at the highest levels” of the EPA.

The vast majority of what @EPAAWheeler just announced already exists. The science, in particular for #PFOS and #PFOA, already exists. We know how to respond (and how not to) to the situation. There is so much literature out there related to this. This is very disappointing. — Rob Allen (@RobAllenHF) February 14, 2019

EPA is publishing a broader action plan for handling the chemicals, but it was not immediately available to reporters.

Without rules from EPA, water providers will not be required to test for or remove the chemicals. The agency has previously advised against levels of 70 parts per trillion or higher. The Trump administration has since delayed publishing a study suggesting even lower levels of the chemicals might be dangerous, according to Politico.

PFOS and PFOA have been phased out of production but replaced with other chemicals that are not as well studied.

In May, Scott Pruitt, the former head of the Environmental Protection Agency, said the agency would evaluate whether the federal government should set a limit on the level of the chemicals allowed in drinking water. Pruitt said EPA would also weigh in on what level of two replacement chemicals – GenX and PFBS – is toxic.

Nine months later, the agency is still working on those steps.

The broader class of chemicals, known as PFAS, are discussed by some experts as this generation’s DDT, a now-banned pesticide that was used to control malaria and associated with widespread environmental damage and public health concerns. EPA has been considering their risks for nearly two decades.

Chemical companies say the newer chemicals are safer because they are short-chain and don’t persist in the human body as long, but Southerland said scientists don’t have enough information to come to that conclusion.

Without federal rules, some states are setting their own standards. But doing so can be difficult with limited advice from EPA, Southerland said. While government officials typically know which communities might have been exposed to PFOS and PFOA, they don’t know as much about the production or use of the newer, related chemicals, she said.

EPA is moving forward to classify the chemicals as hazardous substances, which could force producers and users of the chemicals to help pay for site cleanups. Ross said the agency will soon release interim recommendations for cleaning up sites where groundwater has been contaminated.

Democratic senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a senior member of the Senate’s environment and public works committee, said in a statement: “After a year of hemming and hawing, Scott Pruitt and Andrew Wheeler’s EPA is punting on action to tackle a serious public health risk lurking in Americans’ drinking water.

“Meanwhile, Wheeler is pushing as hard as humanly possible to roll back vital environmental protections he thinks stand between his polluter patrons and bigger profits. It’s another example of an administration captured by polluter donors and their minions embedded in federal agencies.”