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Roula Khalaf, editor of the FT, selects her favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.
The writer is a science commentator
The film of 2019 Dark Waters, starring Mark Ruffalo, helped push “chemicals forever” into the public consciousness. He dramatized a lawsuit filed against DuPont for contaminating water supplies in West Virginia, allegedly contributing to livestock deaths and cancer outbreaks among locals. The case ended in 2017 with a $671 million settlement for about 3,500 plaintiffs.
Concern about the chemicals – more properly known as perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS – has grown dramatically in recent times. Thousands of U.S. lawsuits have been filed against major chemical companies, and agencies around the world are tightening regulation. The lawsuits have drawn comparisons to past “toxic torts” involving substances such as asbestos and tobacco, rattling investors and insurers.
The legal dimension is also spurring scientific investigations to find out exactly who is responsible for chemicals found in the environment, wildlife and humans. “We know that PFAS are everywhere,” says Patrick Byrne, a researcher in hydrology and environmental pollution at Liverpool John Moores University in England, who last month published research showing that the River Mersey had one of the worst levels on record globally for a river basin. “To do something about the problem we need to understand how, where and when PFAS enter the environment so we can trace it back to its source.” Rapidly evolving scientific methods, such as chemical fingerprinting, could make a difference in the ever-widening war against these eternal pollutants.
Forever chemicals, featuring a backbone of carbon atoms with fluorine atoms attached, were first developed in the 1940s for their commercially useful properties. Their molecular structure makes them resistant to water, grease and oil; they have been used in non-stick pans, waterproof clothing, firefighting foam, fast food packaging, and cosmetics. But these qualities also make them virtually indestructible.
They remain in surface water, groundwater, soil and air, finding their way into drinking water. They persist through the food chain. The chemicals can build up in human blood and organs and could be more harmful than microplastics. Some PFAS are suspected of disrupting hormones and being carcinogenic, with links to obesity, hypertension, fertility problems and breast, thyroid and testicular cancers.
The greatest health impacts, Byrne says, are related to maximum exposure, both at work and through contaminated water supplies near plants, but the long-term effects of low exposure are less understood. The most common substances are produced by household names such as DuPont or 3M; the latter says it will abandon them by 2025.
The EU has lowered permitted levels in drinking water. The Union is considering a total ban, although the industry wants a reprieve until alternatives are found. The US Environmental Protection Agency in the United States is also recommending legally enforceable consumption limits and introducing better testing of wastewater, landfill waste and fish tissue. In the UK, the Royal Society of Chemistry is campaigning to reduce levels in drinking water after a third of waterways in England and Wales were found to contain medium or high risk levels of PFAS.
US lawsuits vary between consumers seeking compensation for personal injuries, US states seeking bills for environmental cleanup, and water companies seeking the costs of pollutant monitoring and decontamination. But forever chemicals, which are found everywhere, seem like a more complicated legal proposition than asbestos, an occupational hazard, and tobacco, which poses a specific risk to smokers.
Globally there could be up to 15,000 different substances; some are no longer produced; some have never been documented. Their individual chemical signatures can be difficult to distinguish. Last year, a lawsuit on behalf of nearly 12 million Ohio residents failed because PFAS levels in residents could not be apportioned among individual defendants, including 3M.
Scientists are now refining chemical fingerprinting techniques to assess which PFAS chemicals come from which source. Byrne is exploring the use of “mass balance” studies, sampling how the chemical load in a river changes as the water flows past agricultural or industrial sites, to infer how much each contributes.
As chemicals forever accumulate around us, so do informed suspicions and evidence of harm. Given this knowledge, the world needs to adapt: not only companies, who should take responsibility and change course, but also us consumers, who crave miracle products without understanding their true price.