Eternal pollutants: survey maps 17,000 PFAS polluted sites in Europe
Foam formed by PFAS pollutants in an artificial lake (illustrative image).
AP - Jake May
Text by: RFI Follow
2 mins
More than 17,000 sites contaminated in Europe, including 2,100 at levels dangerous to health by so-called "eternal" PFAS pollutants: 17 media, including
Le Monde
and the
Guardian
, published the conclusions of an investigation on Thursday 23 February of several months.
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Called the "Forever Pollution Project", in reference to these almost indestructible synthetic chemical compounds developed since the 1940s to resist water and heat, the investigation is based on expert methodologies, data and “
thousands of environmental samples
” having made it possible, according to them, to carry out the first European mapping of contaminated sites and suspected of being so.
A Norwegian lake, the Danube, a Czech river and vast areas surrounding most of the basins of industrial chemistry... the collective of journalists presents its validated cartography according to "a form of '
peer
-reviewed journalism',
on the model of peer-reviewed scientific work
.
“
According to our conservative estimate, Europe has more than 17,000
contaminated sites at levels which require the attention of public authorities
(above 10 nanograms per litre).
Contamination there reaches levels deemed dangerous to health by the experts we interviewed
(more than 100 nanograms per liter)
in more than 2,100
hotspots
, ”
indicates the French daily
Le Monde
.
The journalists also located twenty factories producing PFAS, including five in France, and 230 factories identified as users of PFAS, compounds with anti-adhesive and waterproof properties, used in industry and present in objects of life. common: Teflon products, food packaging, textiles, automobiles.
Factories mainly located in Germany
The production plants are mainly located in Germany, the cradle of industrial chemistry with the establishment in particular of the companies Archroma and the Americans 3M Dyneon and WL Gore, and in France with Arkema and Daikin south of Lyon, but also Chemours and Solvay.
From these locations, but also from the identification of current or past industrial activities, the journalists identified 21,500 "
presumed contaminated
" sites in Europe, in particular areas around airports, which use fire-fighting foam containing PFASs.
“
Collected by scientific teams and environmental agencies from 2003 to 2023, the tens of thousands of data collected show it: rare, now, are the places spared by this omnipresent contamination still largely unknown to the public, including the most intimate like ours. own bodies
”, adds the daily.
In mid-January, the German, Danish, Dutch, Norwegian and Swedish health authorities submitted a project to the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) aimed at banning these components, supported by other countries, including France, which recently presented
its own "
action plan
".
(
With
AFP)
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