A federal judge set the FDA a deadline to finally rule on "forever chemicals" in food. The agency's answer, filed right on time, was no.
On June 17, 2026, FDA denied a citizen petition asking it to set temporary legal tolerances for 30 PFAS compounds across nine food categories — lettuce, blueberries, ready-to-eat bread, milk, eggs, salmon, clams, and two corn products used in animal feed. The Tucson Environmental Justice Task Force and two co-petitioners filed the request in November 2023. FDA sat on it for more than two years, until a federal judge in the District of Arizona, hearing Tucson Environmental Justice Task Force v. FDA, ordered the agency in April 2026 to issue a substantive response by June 30. FDA's letter arrived eighteen days ahead of that deadline, and it said no on both counts the petitioners asked for: no temporary tolerances, and no commitment to permanent ones either.
FDA's reasoning had two parts. Legally, the agency said PFAS that reach food through environmental contamination — soil, water, biosolids — are contaminants, not food additives, so the Delaney Clause, the law barring any additive found to cause cancer in humans or laboratory animals, doesn't apply to them the way the petitioners argued. Scientifically, FDA said PFAS toxicology, detection methods, and the understanding of cumulative exposure across dozens of related compounds are still changing too fast to lock in a permanent number now. The agency left the door open to narrower, food-specific action levels later — the same regulatory tool it has already used, repeatedly, for a different contaminant: arsenic.
That petition covered PFAS entering food from the environment, which FDA doesn't control at the point of manufacture. A narrower problem — PFAS used on purpose, as grease-proofing coatings on paper and paperboard food packaging — had already gone the opposite direction. In a Federal Register notice effective January 6, 2025, FDA determined that 35 food contact notifications covering those PFAS coatings were no longer effective, after the manufacturers holding them told the agency they had stopped making or supplying the substances. Manufacturers were given until June 30, 2025 to sell off existing stock. Since that date, there is no FDA-authorized use left for the specific PFAS grease-proofing coatings that used to line things like popcorn bags and fast-food wrappers.
That packaging phase-out traces back to a voluntary industry commitment FDA first announced in July 2020. It took until January 2025 — four and a half years — for the agency to formally revoke the underlying authorizations, closing the gap between manufacturers saying they had stopped and the legal permission actually disappearing. The toxicology backdrop shifted in the meantime: in December 2023, the International Agency for Research on Cancer classified PFOA, one of the most-studied PFAS compounds, as Group 1, carcinogenic to humans — IARC's highest-certainty tier, the same one tobacco smoke occupies — citing sufficient evidence in humans for kidney cancer. IARC classified a related compound, PFOS, as Group 2B, possibly carcinogenic to humans, citing more limited evidence. A hazard classification is not a food tolerance; IARC evaluates whether something can cause harm at all, not the dose a person actually gets from eating a piece of salmon. But it is the strongest scientific signal behind the petition FDA just turned down, and part of why petitioners argued that "evolving science" should point toward more caution rather than less.
The clearest comparison here isn't across an ocean. It's inside FDA's own contaminant portfolio. For inorganic arsenic, the agency has been willing to draw a hard numeric line in specific foods: 100 parts per billion in infant rice cereal, finalized in August 2020, and 10 parts per billion in apple juice, finalized in June 2023, both issued under FDA's Closer to Zero contaminant-reduction effort. Those numbers show FDA can set an enforceable limit for a contaminant in a specific food category when it decides the evidence supports one. For PFAS, so far, it hasn't taken that step for any food. Abroad, Denmark got to the packaging question first and moved faster: its Order No. 681 of May 25, 2020 banned PFAS in paper and cardboard food contact materials outright, effective that July, with a narrow exception for PFAS layers that never touch food directly. The European Union hasn't followed with food-specific PFAS rules of its own, but a much broader restriction covering many product categories is moving through the European Chemicals Agency, with a public comment period that closed in May 2026 and a final EU-wide decision still pending. This is a case where one member state acted years ahead of Brussels — and where the U.S., through its own packaging-notification pull, ended up landing on a similar practical outcome around the same time, by a completely different legal route.
PFAS won't appear on an ingredient list, because it isn't added to food on purpose — it's a contaminant, not an additive, and there is no "contains PFAS" disclosure requirement anywhere in U.S. law. The practical shopper-facing tell was always about the packaging, not the food: grease-resistant wrappers, some molded-fiber bowls, and takeout containers were where the coatings FDA just pulled authorization for tended to show up. Since the June 2025 sell-off deadline passed, new FDA-compliant paper packaging shouldn't legally carry those specific coatings anymore — though that covers only the notifications FDA knows about, and a "compostable" or "eco-friendly" packaging claim is not the same thing as a PFAS-free one. For food itself, there is currently no FDA number to check anything against, because the agency was just ordered by a court to consider setting one, and declined.
PurityIQ doesn't fill that gap with a number of its own, because there isn't a government one to point to yet. What the app does is put the actual state of the record in front of you when it matters — which contaminants have an FDA or EPA action level, which don't, and what's still pending — cited to the guidance document or Federal Register notice itself, updated as agencies act. No score, no verdict. You see what's regulated, what isn't yet, and why not — and you decide what that's worth to you.
As of: August 10, 2026
Sources:
FDA response letter denying PFAS temporary-tolerance petition, Docket FDA-2023-P-4826-0015 (June 17, 2026) | https://downloads.regulations.gov/FDA-2023-P-4826-0015/attachment_1.pdf
Citizen Petition, Docket FDA-2023-P-4826-0001 (Nov. 1, 2023) | https://downloads.regulations.gov/FDA-2023-P-4826-0001/attachment_1.pdf
Tucson Environmental Justice Task Force v. FDA, No. 4:25-cv-00035-JAS (D. Ariz.), case docket | https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69576923/tucson-environmental-justice-task-force-v-united-states-food-and-drug/
Federal Register, Food Contact Notifications That Are No Longer Effective (Jan. 6, 2025) | https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/01/06/2024-31692/food-contact-notifications-that-are-no-longer-effective
FDA, FDA Determines Authorization for 35 Food Contact Notifications Related to PFAS Are No Longer Effective | https://www.fda.gov/food/hfp-constituent-updates/fda-determines-authorization-35-food-contact-notifications-related-pfas-are-no-longer-effective
Federal Register, Action Level for Inorganic Arsenic in Apple Juice; Guidance for Industry (June 2, 2023) | https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/06/02/2023-11769/action-level-for-inorganic-arsenic-in-apple-juice-guidance-for-industry-availability
Federal Register, Inorganic Arsenic in Rice Cereals for Infants: Action Level; Guidance for Industry (Aug. 6, 2020) | https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/08/06/2020-17169/inorganic-arsenic-in-rice-cereals-for-infants-action-level-guidance-for-industry-availability
IARC, Monographs Evaluate the Carcinogenicity of PFOA and PFOS (Dec. 1, 2023) | https://www.iarc.who.int/news-events/iarc-monographs-evaluate-the-carcinogenicity-of-perfluorooctanoic-acid-pfoa-and-perfluorooctanesulfonic-acid-pfos
Danish Veterinary and Food Administration, Order No. 681 of 25 May 2020 on Food Contact Materials (official English translation) | https://en.foedevarestyrelsen.dk/Media/638204383156890144/Danish%20Order%20No%20681%20of%2025%20May%202020%20on%20Food%20Contact%20Materials.pdf
ECHA, Q&A on the PFAS Restriction Proposal Opinions | https://www.echa.europa.eu/documents/d/guest/echa_qa_pfas_opinions_final_en