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Story Publication logo January 14, 2025

PFAS, a Family of 10,000 ‘Forever Chemicals’, Contaminating All of Humanity

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Environmental Hazard: Toxic PFOS Chemical Fire Foam Floating Down the Street, PFAS Firefighting Chemicals. Image by Peter Togel/Shutterstock.
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Industries are not giving up on the harmful chemicals.

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Per- and polyfluoroalkylated substances are synthetic chemicals that are widely used in our daily lives and in industrial processes. They are highly resistant and almost indestructible in the environment, and their toxicity is increasingly documented.


Unknown to the general public just a few years ago, PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkylated substances) are now considered to be the cause of the most serious pollution crisis ever known. These "forever chemicals" contaminate not only the entire planet but also the blood of all human beings. Le Monde and its 29 partners have revealed the staggering cost of pollution clean-up for our economies, and the extent of the lobbying campaign waged by industrialists to prevent PFAS from being banned. Here are the essential questions raised about these man-made chemicals.


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What are PFAS?

Per- and polyfluoroalkylated substances (PFAS) are a family of over 10,000 synthetic chemicals used in industry and consumer products since the late 1940s. They are non-stick, water-repellent, stain-proof and resistant to very high temperatures and extreme physical conditions. These valuable properties have made them the ingredients of choice in thousands of applications.

Myriad consumer products contain PFAS or are manufactured using these substances, sometimes both, like the best-known of them all: the famous Teflon-coated non-stick frying pan. Waterproofing such as Gore-Tex? PFAS. Scotchgard, which makes carpets and sofas stain-resistant? PFAS. Scotchban for grease and water resistance in food packaging? PFAS. Pesticides, fire-fighting foams, medical implants, paints and even guitar strings — all use PFAS.

It's hard to find an industrial sector that doesn't rely on PFAS. They are used in the chemical and aerospace industries, in construction, in electronics (where they are used in the manufacture of semiconductors) and in the energy sector (wind turbines, electric vehicle batteries, heat pumps, air conditioners, etc.).


Illustration by Léa Girardot/Le Monde.

Why are they problematic?

Their extreme persistence in the environment, which is their main common point, makes PFAS an eternal threat. Conferred by the carbon-fluorine chain of their chemical structure, the strongest bond existing in organic chemistry, this stability persists beyond the desired functions in objects and industrial processes. No storm or bacteria in nature can break down these "forever chemicals." Once emitted, they are there for hundreds and probably thousands of years.

PFAS are also mobile: They can be detected even in the rain in Tibet. Whether in rivers, soil, groundwater or food, they've spread in the smallest nooks and crannies of our environment, as well as to the innermost recesses of living things. From cucumbers to otters, they can be found in almost all organisms, especially humans. Our blood composition now includes PFAS, and children are born "pre-polluted" by these ultra-toxic compounds.

What are their effects on health?

The toxicity of PFAS, concealed by manufacturers for decades, has only been documented by research in the last 15 years. But exposure to these compounds is already associated with a dozen diseases.

In 2023, the International Agency for Research on Cancer respectively classified PFOA and PFOS, two legacy PFAS, as "carcinogenic to humans" (group 1) and "possibly carcinogenic" (group 2B). Meta-analyses of epidemiological studies, with strong conclusions, also point to a significant association with low birth weight (itself linked to a high risk of disease), obesity and dyslipidemia (abnormalities linked to cholesterol levels) in children, precocious puberty, hypothyroidism in women, kidney and testicular cancers.

Other reviews of scientific publications also point to a link with pneumonia in children; obesity and elevated cholesterol levels in adults; and, for women, breast cancer, diabetes and gestational diabetes, endometriosis, polycystic ovary syndrome and infertility. Several studies have also shown a diminished immune response to vaccination in children at very low doses of exposure.

Which companies manufacture PFAS?

Twenty PFAS manufacturing plants, 16 of which are still active, were identified in Europe for the first time in 2023 by the Forever Pollution Project, an international collaborative investigation conducted by Le Monde and 16 partner media. France alone has five — two at Pierre-Bénite, one at Villers-Saint-Paul, one at Tavaux and another at Salindres, whose closure was announced in October 2024 by Solvay.

As fluorine chemistry requires complex know-how and specific infrastructures, few companies have mastered it. Among the most important are: AGC, Arkema, Daikin, Gore and Syensqo (Solvay). The most famous, DuPont (now Chemours) and 3M, are also the companies that created these substances. Their practices have been the subject of numerous journalistic and academic investigations, which have revealed inside knowledge of the toxicity of PFAS since 1961 and their persistence in blood since 1975. In Todd Haynes's 2019 film Dark Waters, Mark Ruffalo plays the lawyer Rob Bilott, the man behind the discovery of the forever pollution scandal around the DuPont plant in Parkersburg, West Virginia, in the late 1990s. That discovery has since led to numerous lawsuits in the United States, costing the company billions of dollars in compensation.

How do PFAS find their way into the environment?

PFAS are, first and foremost, emitted into the environment by the facilities that produce them. Then comes a whole range of industrial activities that employ them in their processes and products, including metal, textile and leather processing; plastics and rubber manufacturing; paints; and food contact papers.

Another major source of emissions is fire-fighting foams used to extinguish fuel fires at airports, military bases, fire-fighting training centers and fire stations, and, of course, at fire sites of this type.


Illustration by Léa Girardot/Le Monde.

PFAS also concentrate in waste treatment sites (household and hazardous waste, wastewater), which, often lacking the equipment to filter them, discharge them as they are into the environment. In addition, humans actively disperse them into nature through the spreading of industrial sludge, sludge from urban wastewater treatment plants and pesticides (more than one in 10 active substances currently authorized as pesticides in the European Union are PFAS, according to the organization PAN Europe).

How are humans exposed to PFAS?

The populations most exposed to PFAS are the employees of the plants that manufacture or use them as well as the professionals who handle them, such as firefighters with foams. In the second group are people living near "hotspots," the most contaminated sites.

Discharged into wastewater or dispersed on soil, PFAS pollute groundwater and watercourses, and therefore drinking water. Released into the air, they fall back onto the surrounding soil and vegetation via precipitation. In France and elsewhere, authorities recommend not to use water from private wells or rainwater and to avoid eating garden fruit and vegetables, as well as eggs, which are veritable PFAS concentrates, within a 500-meter perimeter around hotspots.

For both local residents and the general population, food and water are the main sources of PFAS exposure. Consumption of seafood also seems to represent a major exposure factor. This is followed, to a lesser extent, by contact with air, dust and consumer products manufactured using PFAS or packaged in materials containing them.

Can you protect yourself from PFAS?

Reducing the intake of PFAS through food and water can help to reduce their impact on the populations most exposed to them. But these recommendations cannot stop them completely. Nor can they reduce the body burden accumulated over time in each organism.

Yet for PFAS, as before them for lead, asbestos or bisphenol A, the limit values set by the authorities fall as scientific knowledge builds. In 2002, the state of West Virginia set the first guideline level for PFOA in drinking water at 150,000 nanograms per liter. Twenty years later, in June 2022, the Environmental Protection Agency estimated that 0.004 nanograms per liter should not be exceeded to prevent any health effects. In other words, essentially none.

Only collective, large-scale measures can have an impact on the widespread contamination of our environment. That's why the idea of "turning off the tap" by banning all PFAS has gained ground in recent years. The European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) estimates that, if no action is taken, around 4.4 million tonnes of PFAS will be emitted into the European environment over the next 30 years.

What measures are being taken by public authorities?

Anticipating regulations, manufacturers gradually replaced ultra-toxic PFAS known as long-chain PFAS (6 to 14 carbon atoms), with short-chain PFAS, which proved just as harmful. To put an end to this "regrettable substitution" practice, four European Union member states (Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden) and Norway developed a proposal to ban the entire PFAS family.

Presented on February 7, 2023, by ECHA, this "universal restriction" aims to ban the manufacture, placing on the market and use of all PFAS within the European Union (EU). If successful, it would not come into force until 2026.

This restriction is based on the highly persistent nature of these compounds. And it targets all PFAS (at least 10,000) because it's materially impossible to identify or predict the harmful effects of each of them. After PFOS (perfluorooctanesulfonic acid) in 2009, other PFAS have been banned, but it can take an entire decade to ban a single chemical.

Although the draft restriction foresees long transition periods, it is the target of a lobbying campaign of rare intensity on the part of manufacturers.


For a complete list of articles from Le Monde and other media partners in this PFAS investigation, go to foreverpollution.eu/lobbying/.

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