The EU Restriction on the class of PFAS is an urgent cross border solution to halt new contamination in Europe from these ‘forever chemicals’, prevent an increase in their long-term public health impacts and incentivize the widespread adoption of safer substitutes.
The EU Restriction on PFAS covers over 10,000 substances and is an urgent and cost-effective solution to the widespread public health threats and environmental contamination that Europe faces from these ‘forever chemicals’. It is precisely the fact that all PFAS are extremely persistent, or will transform into extremely persistent PFAS and remain in the environment for hundreds if not thousands of years, even after environmental releases cease. That makes this entire class of chemicals an urgent priority for restriction. The EU Restriction on PFAS will slow the cross-border contamination of Europe’s air, waterways and soil and prevent new exposure from PFAS production and use in domestic and imported products.
But some argue that the EU Restriction should not take a wide class-based approach because not all PFAS have been proven toxic, and persistence is not reason in itself to restrict this class.
The reality is that since the 1950s, as industry increased its use of PFAS, sometimes replacing one type of PFAS for another, many thousands of tonnes of PFAS have been released into Europe’s air, waterways and soils and no PFAS can be considered safe. Current annual emissions of PFAS from the use stage alone are estimated at between 56,000 to over 92,000 tonnes per year. The result is that all citizens, including children, now have a range of PFAS in their blood with long term health risks including damage to the liver, kidneys, thyroid, immune and cardiovascular systems. The bad news is that some PFAS are slow to be excreted, with PFOS and PFOA taking 3-7 years for half their levels to be eliminated, meaning they will have a prolonged and cumulative damaging effect. 1The shorter chain PFAS are also eliminated slowly in the order of weeks, with researchers pointing out that shorter chain PFAS have toxicity profiles similar to long-chain PFAS. This is important because the increased use of short-chain PFAS as replacements for many applications has caused widespread presence in drinking water. 2
POLICY BRIEFING: Toxic tide rising: time to tackle PFAS
Drinking water is an exposure route for PFAS and the use of fluorinated gases (F-gases) in refrigeration and air conditioning is one of the reasons why PFAS is building up in Europe’s waterways. When these F-gases escape from refrigeration and air conditioning, they convert in the atmosphere to the short chain PFAS, trifluoroacetic acid (TFA) which then descends in rainfall, and is deposited in fresh water and other places. TFA is highly persistent, with a half-life in centuries, and was recently measured as a dominant PFAS in Germany’s drinking water. 3
TFA experts see the situation as critical: >> [T]rends imply that TFA meets the criteria of a planetary boundary threat for novel entities because of increasing planetary-scale exposure, where potential irreversible disruptive impacts on vital earth system processes could occur. The rational response to this is to instigate binding actions to reduce the emissions of TFA and its many precursors.<< (Arp et al. 2024).
Is persistence enough justification to restrict all PFAS? Yes. Health Impacts from daily and cumulative exposure to PFAS will increase if the EU Restriction on PFAS is not adopted.
Because PFAS is so persistent and widespread, the cumulative risk to health will increase as more PFAS enters our environment, food and water supplies. A recent letter from Eureau, 4 the European Federation of National Associations of Water Services representing national drinking and waste water service providers from 32 countries, details the critical situation with wastewater contamination from PFAS and urges the Commission to pass the EU Restriction on PFAS.
Unless action is taken to restrict all PFAS production and use, authorities estimate that another 4.4 million tonnes of PFAS would end up in the environment over the next 30 years.5 This is not a legacy we should leave to future generations.
But some argue that persistence is not reason enough to restrict the entire class because it covers substances that do not have further hazardous properties of concern or entail unacceptable risk. 6
It is true we lack public data on the toxicity of every and each PFAS. This is because the traditional regulatory approach to assess one chemical at a time has allowed over 10,000 PFAS to proliferate in the economy, even though less than 1% of all PFAS have been tested for their hazardous effects.7 Also a complete understanding of all PFAS is complicated by the confidential nature of many PFAS chemistries, manufacturing processes, industrial by-products, and applications. 8
We know very little about PFAS toxicity, but the more we know, the more toxic PFAS are found to be.
Can governments deal with PFAS contamination in a timely and cost-effective manner? No. Current waste management cannot deal with PFAS at the end of life which is why the EU Restriction on PFAS is needed.
Since the 1950s, as industry increased its use of PFAS, sometimes replacing one type of PFAS for another, many thousands of tonnes of PFAS have been released into Europe’s air, waterways and soils.
It is estimated that some 17,000 sites are contaminated in Europe and that 12,5 million Europeans are living in communities with drinking water polluted with PFAS. 9 Deterioration of drinking water sources is of special concern, because drinking water is gradually becoming less available due to the effects of global warming.
The PFAS industry maintains that fluoropolymers, in particular and can be safely handled by separation and incineration at end of life.10 But the reality for fluoropolymers is that they cause emissions throughout their life cycle with special concern during their production 11 and PFAS emission from the end-of-life stage/waste management shall also be restricted.
[ChemSec Fluoropolymer webinar: Insights from the OECD, science updates and safer alternatives in focus]
Is a class-based approach to chemical restriction is workable? Yes, it is more effective, reduces business risk for companies and will hasten innovation for more PFAS-free alternatives.
The individual assessment of more than 10,000 PFAS would also be unrealistic and would delay regulatory action for centuries, during which thousands of tonnes of persistent chemicals would be dispersed into the environment every year. PFAS therefore require an assessment approach based on the risks of the entire substance group, as proposed by the authors of the dossier. A grouping approach to chemical regulation is not new. Chemical grouping approaches have been successfully used in the past by regulatory authorities for organophosphate pesticides, organochlorine pesticides, and organohalogen flame retardants.
A class restriction reduces the likelihood of ‘regrettable substitutions’ or replacing well-studied hazardous PFAS chemicals with poorly studied but structurally similar PFAS that have the potential to be similarly hazardous and eventually regulated.
A class based PFAS restriction can also be simpler and less expensive for setting procurement standards, for testing for compliance and communicating PFAS-free criteria through the supply chain. Simpler, cheaper, class-based testing methods also typically result in more frequent testing, which improves compliance.12
That is why a comprehensive restriction on this chemical class is needed. The EU Restriction on PFAS will slow the cross-border contamination of Europe’s air, waterways and soil and prevent new exposure from PFAS production and use in domestic and imported products. This gives regulatory certainty to the brands and retailers who have already phased out PFAS in refrigeration, heat pumps, electronics, apparel, furnishings, textiles and more. Furthermore, the EU Restriction includes time-limited derogations of 6,5 and 13,5 years for specific uses where PFAS-free alternatives are not yet readily available on the market. It is a well thought out and essential roadmap for the extraordinary contamination crisis we now face.
- Stephenson J. National academies report calls for testing people with high exposure to “forever chemicals”. JAMA Health Forum. 2022;3(8):e223313 ↩︎
- Wendee Nicole. Breaking It Down: Estimating Short-Chain PFAS Half-Lives in a Human Population. Environmental Health Perspective. 11 Nov 2020. https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/10.1289/EHP7853 ↩︎
- Isabelle J. Neuwald et al. Ultra-Short-Chain PFASs in the Sources of German Drinking Water: Prevalent, Overlooked, Difficult to Remove, and Unregulated. Environ. Sci. Technol. 2022, 56, 10, 6380–6390. May 4, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.1c07949 ↩︎
- EurEau. Open letter urges EU Commission President to take action against PFAS pollution. March 4, 2024. https://www.eureau.org/news/872-open-letter-urges-eu-commission-president-to-take-action-against-pfas-pollution ↩︎
- ECHA. ECHA Publishes PFAS restriction proposal. ECHA/NR/23/04. https://echa.europa.eu/-/echa-publishes-pfas-restriction-proposal ↩︎
- European Commission adoption of broad PFAS restriction could spark legal action. Chemical Watch News: 07 March 2023 ↩︎
- Carol F. Kwiatkowski et al. Scientific Basis for Managing PFAS as a Chemical Class. Environmental Science & Technology Letters 2020 7 (8), 532-543. DOI: 10.1021/acs.estlett.0c00255 ↩︎
- M. G. Evich et al., Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances in the environment. Science 375, (2022). DOI: 10.1126/science.abg9065 ↩︎
- The Forever Pollution Project. https://foreverpollution.eu/ ↩︎
- What happens when fluoropolymers reach the end of their lifespan?. Fluoropolymer Product Group. FAQ. https://fluoropolymers.eu/faq/ ↩︎
- Dalmijn et al. (2024) Emission inventory of PFASs and other fluorinated organic substances for the fluoropolymer production industry in Europe. https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlehtml/2024/em/d3em00426k ↩︎
- Carol F. Kwiatkowski. 2020. Op cit ↩︎
