4:2 FTS
Overview
4:2 fluorotelomer sulfonate, a short-chain PFAS with no federal drinking-water limit, rarely detected and measured under national monitoring.
In Florida, 4:2 FTS was found in 1 community water system serving about 242,172 people. Nobody has set a legal limit for it, so no reading here counts as an exceedance and no utility is required to do anything about it.
Where it comes from: Firefighting foam; industrial discharge.
The standards
Enforceable. A utility must stay at or under this.
Health-based, not enforceable. Often lower than the limit, sometimes zero.
No government body has assessed this compound at all. Florida Water Report sets one part per trillion, the level peer-reviewed research on perfluorinated compounds supports as a combined-exposure benchmark, because a measurement with nothing to read it against tells a person nothing.
Health effects the EPA associates with it: No federal drinking-water limit has been set. EPA links PFAS exposure generally to decreased immune response, increased cholesterol, and developmental effects.
The health goal is set on health alone. The legal limit is set as close to it as is technically and economically feasible, so treatment cost and available technology are written into the number a utility is measured against. A system at or under the limit is meeting the standard it is required to meet. Both numbers are shown so the distance between them is visible.
What removes it
Reverse osmosis or anion exchange; short-chain compounds pass through carbon quickly.
Treatment guidance describes the methods generally used for this contaminant. What your own tap actually carries depends on your plumbing and your service line as much as on the utility, which is what a test at the house tells you and an annual report cannot.
Where in Florida
Highest reported levels
Data Sources
These figures describe water as delivered by each utility, not what your home’s plumbing adds after it arrives. Informational; not a substitute for testing your own tap.