New Jersey Institute of Technology researchers detected trifluoroacetic acid in tap samples from every county, while the state's PFAS limits, EPA's rules and the PFAS bill now before the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee all name other chemicals.
Trifluoroacetic acid (TFA), a small "forever chemical" that no state or federal drinking-water limit covers, turned up in tap water drawn in each of New Jersey's 21 counties, New Jersey Institute of Technology researchers found.
The team detected the chemical, known as TFA, in 64 of the 70 tap samples it collected, according to a university release issued Oct. 13.
The researchers describe the work as "the first statewide U.S. monitoring study" of ultra-short-chain PFAS, the smallest members of the per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances family. The journal Environmental Science & Technology Letters published the paper online Sept. 12.
PFAS carry the forever label because they resist breaking down, a Rutgers release noted in March.
New Jersey limits three PFAS in drinking water: PFOA, PFOS and PFNA. In 2018 it adopted the nation's first enforceable drinking-water limit on any PFAS, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection wrote last year. TFA is not one of the three.
Federal rules leave it out, too. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency wrote in a July proposal that TFA and the other compounds it listed are "not currently subject to national primary drinking water regulations (NPDWRs)."
A PFAS bill now moving in the state Senate names five chemicals for limits and not TFA. S4468 would require the DEP to match the EPA's drinking-water standards; the Environment and Energy Committee advanced it Oct. 8, the amended bill shows.
"I think it is important for consumers to understand that detecting a chemical in drinking water or beverages does not necessarily mean there is an immediate health risk," Arjun Venkatesan, director of NJIT's Emerging Contaminants Research Laboratory, said.
Scientists still know little about what long-term exposure to TFA does to people, the release said, though some toxicology studies have pointed to possible effects on development and reproduction.
Siwei Gu, a postdoctoral researcher in the lab and the study's lead author, said PFOA and PFOS are the names people know because regulators and water testers have concentrated on them for years. "TFA is different," Gu said. "It is much smaller in molecular size, highly soluble in water, and does not bind strongly to many filter materials that work well for capturing traditional PFAS."
TFA can form as some fluorinated refrigerants, pesticides and other compounds break down, one of several ways it enters the environment, the release said. Rain and snow can then carry it into the surface waters that feed drinking-water systems.
Among tap samples with detectable TFA, the median concentration was 352 nanograms per liter. Several northern and northeastern counties, including Essex, Hudson and Bergen, showed higher county averages. The highest tap reading was 1,360 nanograms per liter, NJIT reported.
TFA also turned up in 34 of the 43 bottled beverages the team tested. Formulated drinks had an average concentration approximately 52 times that of the bottled waters, and some sports drinks and electrolyte waters were especially high, the release said.
"One possible explanation is that ingredients used in these beverages or certain manufacturing processes may be contributing to the elevated TFA concentrations," Gu said. The team did not analyze ingredients or look at how manufacturers produce the drinks, so it "cannot definitively identify the sources of TFA in these products," Gu said.
The International Bottled Water Association said in a written statement: "There are currently no U.S. regulations from either the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) or the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for TFA and we do not track how companies test for unregulated agents." The association said its members must test their bottled water for PFAS every year.
The researchers call the study an initial snapshot, not a full assessment of New Jersey's drinking water.
New Jersey's limits cut the chemicals they name
PFOA levels in the state's public water systems fell 55 percent and PFNA levels fell 50 percent after the state's drinking-water advisory panel recommended limits, Rutgers researchers reported in March.
The team, with Rutgers cancer epidemiologist Hari Iyer as a lead author, analyzed about 12,000 monitoring results from 47 water systems.
"When we put these regulations in place, they do lead to these really steep reductions in these harmful exposures," Iyer said in April.
Removing PFAS costs money. Willingboro has put close to $10 million into clearing forever chemicals from its water, Diallyo Diggs, vice chair of the Willingboro Municipal Utilities Authority's board of commissioners, said in April. Keeping the equipment running will likely take up to another $20 million, and ratepayers will cover it, Diggs said.
"The residents definitely want better water, but I think they feel it's unfair that the polluters don't really pay the brunt of the cost to fix it," Diggs said.
The Rutgers team also saw signs that some PFAS the state does not regulate went up, possibly because manufacturers swapped one chemical for another, the university said.
Common PFAS filters are less effective against TFA
The granular activated carbon and ion-exchange resins that utilities usually rely on for PFAS filtration let much of the TFA through, the NJIT release said.
A German water-sector research center, Technologiezentrum Wasser, says reverse osmosis is the only treatment that removes TFA, but that installing it widely in public water supplies "is inadvisable for many reasons."
Europe has begun setting numbers for TFA
Some European governments have moved further. Italy has set a binding drinking-water value of 10 micrograms per liter for TFA under a 2025 decree, with measures to meet it due by Jan. 12, 2027.
European Commission guidance says the international definition of PFAS, revised in 2021, "now includes" TFA. Raw-water monitoring across European Union countries indicates TFA in treated drinking water "may significantly exceed" the bloc's cap on total PFAS, the Commission wrote.
In July, the European Food Safety Authority set an acceptable daily intake for TFA of 0.014 milligrams per kilogram of body weight, based on lower thyroid hormone levels in a rat study. It also found "a substantial margin of exposure," because blood levels at the no-effect and lowest-effect doses in the animal studies ran several orders of magnitude above levels reported in people. Its report also records that a European Chemicals Agency committee recommended in June classifying TFA as toxic to reproduction, based on effects on development.
Neither EPA nor the bill in Trenton sets a TFA limit
EPA has proposed testing for TFA, not limiting it. Under the rule the agency proposed July 1, water systems serving more than 10,000 people would sample for the chemical, and many smaller systems would too if Congress provides the money. The sampling would run from 2028 through 2030, and the rule remains a proposal.
The same proposal says TFA does not fit the structural definition of PFAS that EPA used for a list of candidate contaminants. It adds that these ultrashort compounds are "persistent in the environment, highly mobile, used widely in industry," and that the agency has health-effects data on them.
New Jersey's own review of its PFAS limits started from EPA's list. In a May 2025 letter, the DEP asked the state Drinking Water Quality Institute, the advisory panel that recommends New Jersey's drinking-water limits, to evaluate all six PFAS that EPA had set limits for.
The institute's May 2025 agenda listed a work-plan item on "PFAS as a Class," and its September 2025 agenda included an update on its PFAS evaluation. Neither agenda mentions TFA. The DEP has not said whether that work reaches the chemical.
Sens. Shirley K. Turner (D, 15th District) and Linda R. Greenstein (D, 14th) sponsor the Senate bill, S4468, introduced June 15. It would require the DEP to adopt PFAS standards no less strict than EPA's national rules as they stood Jan. 1, 2026, and to do so by April 26, 2029, according to the amended bill.
The bill would set PFOA and PFOS at 4.0 parts per trillion and three other PFAS at 10 parts per trillion.
Committee amendments would allow the DEP to adopt limits for other PFAS the bill does not name, the Senate Environment and Energy Committee's statement says. The amendments also provide that the state would still enforce its own limits, even if EPA loosens or abolishes the federal ones.
EPA proposed in May to rescind its decisions to regulate four PFAS, PFNA among them. It also proposed giving systems that ask for it until April 26, 2031, to meet its PFOA and PFOS limits.
The bill would also create a program to help pay for PFAS testing of private wells. Owners of wells found over a limit could get help with filters and follow-up testing, with low-income households first in line. At least 3 percent of the PFAS settlement money the state receives from 2026 on would go to the program's fund.
A separate bill from Greenstein and Sen. Raj Mukherji (D, 32nd), introduced March 10, would have the DEP review unregulated PFAS every five years to decide whether any need a drinking-water standard. It remains in the Senate Environment and Energy Committee.
The NJIT team plans to widen its sampling beyond New Jersey and track down where TFA comes from, according to the release.
For now, S4468 waits in the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee, which Sen. Paul A. Sarlo (D, 36th) chairs. The Environment and Energy Committee sent it there on a 5-0 vote Oct. 8, and it has had no action since, the Legislature's records show.
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European Food Safety Authority, "Scientific Report on consumer health-based guidance values for trifluoroacetic acid" (July 22, 2026)
Government of Italy, Legislative Decree No. 102 of June 10, 2025, on water intended for human consumption (July 4, 2025)
Gu, Siwei, et al., Environmental Science & Technology Letters, "Occurrence of Ultra-Short Chain PFASs in Bottled Beverages and New Jersey Tap Water" (Sept. 12, 2026)
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U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, "Rescission of Regulatory Determinations and Removal of Related Provisions for Four PFAS Substances," proposed rule (May 20, 2026)
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Photo: EPA