New Federal Lawsuit Option Targets PFAS Manufacturers, Shifts Medical Monitoring Costs to Polluters

The PFAS Accountability Act of 2025 is aiming to create a major new legal path for individuals harmed by exposure to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)—often called “forever chemicals.” The bill establishes a federal cause of action, meaning people can sue in federal court if they’ve been significantly exposed to these chemicals, which the CDC confirms are widespread and linked to serious health issues like cancer and reproductive harm (Sec. 2).

The New Legal Hammer: Making Polluters Pay for Checkups

Right now, if you suspect you’ve been exposed to PFAS, you’re generally on your own to figure out the legal and medical costs. This bill changes that by codifying a federal legal claim (Sec. 3). The biggest shift is the creation of a medical monitoring award. If a court finds you were significantly exposed and now have an increased risk of a PFAS-linked disease, they can order the responsible company to pay for your ongoing, specialized medical exams (Sec. 4).

Think of it this way: If you live near a factory that contaminated the local water supply with PFAS, and your doctor says you need annual specialized screenings that cost thousands of dollars, the company that caused the contamination would have to foot the bill. The stated purpose is to shift these medical monitoring costs from the exposed individual to the parties responsible for the exposure (Sec. 3).

Cutting Through the Red Tape: Proving Exposure

One of the toughest parts of toxic exposure lawsuits is proving exactly how much exposure you had. This bill tries to make that easier by creating a strong legal presumption of “significant exposure.” You meet this bar if you can show either that you spent at least one cumulative year in an area where the defendant released PFAS, or if a test shows PFAS or its metabolites in your body or blood serum (Sec. 4).

For class action lawsuits—where hundreds or thousands of people sue together—this presumption can be established for the whole group using representative samples. If a manufacturer wants to fight this presumption, they have to pay for independent testing themselves to prove the person wasn't significantly exposed. The cost of challenging the claim is on the defendant, not the potentially exposed person.

The Science Problem and the Court’s Power

Here’s where things get interesting, and potentially complicated. If there isn't enough scientific data yet to reliably link a specific PFAS compound to a specific disease risk, the court is allowed to lower the standard of scientific proof required to show that increased risk (Sec. 4). This is a big deal. It grants courts significant power to move forward with cases even when the science is still catching up, which is common with newly recognized chemical threats.

To help close those data gaps, the court can also order new scientific studies on the PFAS compound as part of the medical monitoring award. This essentially forces the industry to fund the research needed to understand the full scope of the danger they created. While this is great for public health research, the broad authority to lower scientific proof standards could lead to inconsistent legal rulings across different states or federal districts.

Impact on Manufacturers and Existing Laws

This bill targets any person or company that engaged in manufacturing processes that created the PFAS, provided they "foresaw or should have foreseen" that their actions would lead to human exposure (Sec. 4). This could open the floodgates for litigation against a wide range of industries that use or produce these chemicals, imposing potentially massive, long-term financial liabilities for medical monitoring. It’s a major economic burden shift.

Crucially, the bill explicitly states that this new federal cause of action does not replace or block any existing claims or remedies under state law. State-level lawsuits for these injuries remain fully available (Sec. 4). This means manufacturers could face legal action on two fronts—federal and state—for the same exposure, giving exposed individuals maximum legal flexibility.