In February, the French parliament passed a bill to curtail the use, import and sale of products containing “forever chemicals” – so named because it is almost impossible to get rid of them once they have entered an environment.
Man-made per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are highly durable. Waterproof and resistant to heat and grease, they have been ubiquitous in a host of industrial and consumer products since the 1950s, including packaging, cleaning products, non-stick cookware and firefighting foam.
Those same properties that make PFAS so useful are what make them so hard to break down. In recent years, conversation has grown around the adverse health effects associated with exposure to the chemicals. The European Environment Agency says per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances can lead to problems like liver damage, thyroid disease, obesity, fertility issues and cancer.
While the commission promised a restrictions roadmap in 2022 that would seek to ban PFAS under their chemical strategy, it has taken time to iron out the specifics of that legislation. France, following in the footsteps of Denmark and the Netherlands, is now pressing ahead with its restrictions.
French legislation
France’s legislation bans PFAS in clothing, cosmetics and ski wax – all products for which clean alternatives exist. It also adds PFAS substances to a list of substances monitored in French drinking water and imposes fines on corporations emitting PFAS (€100 per 100 grammes of PFAS emissions).
“With this law that they’re proposing, it’s mainly consumer products at the moment where PFAS isn’t necessarily needed,” says Dr Éadaoin Carthy, an assistant professor at DCU.
“We should adopt that here as well. The fact that a member state in the EU can fire ahead with implementing the banning of non-essential PFAS is definitely encouraging. I think at the EU level, one of the issues is there are a lot of lobbyist groups putting a lot of money behind lobbyists going to the EU to delay the PFAS ban for as long as possible,” adds Carthy
That lobbying is evident in the French Bill. Kitchen utensils were made exempt from the ban after manufacturers of frying pans and saucepans applied pressure on the National Assembly.
How can we regulate PFAS?
In Ireland, sweeping PFAS regulations would be particularly unpopular among pharmaceutical and IT companies. Earlier this year, a group of corporations, including Intel and Pfizer, warned that they would move their business outside of the European Union if a broad ban on PFAS was introduced.
“A lot of drug formulations, medical devices all use PFAS,” says Carthy. “If we’re looking at PFAS we can directly ban which will have no effect on us, it would be the likes of cosmetics and food packaging. Something like pharmaceuticals or drug formulations containing PFAS – a lot of time and effort and R&D will have to go into looking at alternatives if [it is even possible].”
In 2023, US multinationals 3M and DuPont (and two related companies) were at the centre of high-profile cases involving PFAS contamination, agreeing to pay $10.3 billion and $1.2 billion, respectively, to settle liability claims with the US public water systems. They faced allegations of knowingly contaminating drinking water supplies around the country.
“So even if these companies threaten to go to America, yes, they can produce [PFAS], but they still might get hit with these massive fines if they’re known to be knowingly polluting the local area with PFAS compounds,” says Carthy.
Water is likely to be the priority for PFAS regulation in Ireland, as updated restrictions will arrive next year under the EU’s Drinking Water Directive. Carthy highlights a need for significant improvement in our water infrastructure. Ireland has previously failed to meet obligations under EU legislation around drinking water standards.
“Our wastewater treatment facilities in Ireland are very outdated – it’s very poor infrastructure and a lot of money has to be pumped into this to get them up to date and to contain these new filtration processes that can potentially remove all of the PFAS that it’s contaminated with,” she says.
“It’s about resources – what we have and where best they should go. Wastewater treatment facilities would be the ideal candidate to receive these resources to improve infrastructure and safeguard water, not just with PFAS compounds but with other harmful contaminants there as well.”
Getting rid of forever chemicals
With colleagues from University of Limerick and Technical University of Munich, Dr Soumya Mukherjee was involved in developing a new material for filtering harmful chemicals from drinking water last year.
Their research was published in the Journal of Advanced Materials. Mukherjee’s work generally addresses freshwater purification, but the porous, metal-organic frameworks he helped develop could also be used to filter drinking water.
“Typically, the kind of materials we look into are porous materials,” says Mukherjee. “Something like a sponge which can breathe and accommodate toxic molecules, such as PFAS, into it. Then, if you expose them to different sets of conditions, they will release those toxic molecules and allow you to purify your water stream.”
Carthy mentions reverse osmosis as a good method for PFAS removal – a “massive filtration unit” that could be fitted in households or wastewater treatment facilities. Both she and Mukherjee acknowledge, however, that capturing PFAS is only half of the problem. Destroying the compounds is another big issue.
“In my opinion, that is the single most important strand of improvement that needs to happen in this area,” Mukerjee says. “Incineration and destructive treatment for chemicals like PFAS is always going to be the least desired method. [Ideally], we could reuse the captured PFAS in a commodity chemical stream.”
Problems down the line
With so many chemicals under the PFAS umbrella, regulation needs to be expansive enough to cover a wide range of compounds and their variations. Tad Kirakowski, chief executive of environmental NGO Voice of Irish Concern for the Environment, says broad legislation makes more sense than a series of restrictions that could end up getting in the way of each other.
“We’re seeing PFAS having to be addressed through the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulations as well,” he says. “It’s starting to pop up now within conversations about textiles. Whereas I think the sustainable chemicals strategy was the initial document that was being looked at – if you have that holistic umbrella approach to it in the first instance, you avoid all of this downstream clutter, for want of a better term.”
The Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals (Reach) – is the primary regulation for chemicals in the EU. The European Chemicals Agency is responsible for Reach, and they are in the process of evaluating a proposal for the EU-wide restriction of PFAS submitted by authorities in Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden.
That proposal has been on the table since January 2023, though the countries involved are considering altering their conditions to allow for the use and manufacture of PFAS in necessary situations until alternative options are made available. It gives an idea of the administrative complexity involved. Kirakowski says that regardless of restrictions, there is an onus on industry to take action.
“If you look at the history of the Reach chemicals, there’s a big list there,” he says. “It’s a lot of work to go through them. Small changes create a new chemical – it’s still PFAS and it has the same qualities, but it goes back to the bottom of the list again. You have to look at it with that wider scope and in terms of industry, they have to look at how they’re using it. There are strategies for sustainable chemicals and a lot of these companies have sustainable strategies and ideas as well.
“We’ve seen investors in the Medtech industry as well coming together and asking the industry to find alternatives to PFAS already. The pressure should be coming on them, not only regulatory, but also from their own investors who see the damage and the impact and liability that is coming out of it at the moment, through cases in the US primarily. They should be feeling pressure from a number of different areas at the moment.”
A spokesperson for the Department of Trade, which is the lead department for chemical policy and Reach, says there is no scope for Ireland to follow France’s lead in terms of national regulation.
“Mindful of the need for a balance between investment needs, occupational safety and environmental safety, there is no consideration being given to bring forward a PFAS restriction in Ireland while the work of European Chemicals Agency is ongoing.”
