A view of the Loire gorges in France. 100% of reported water bodies exceeded PFAS thresholds in France (Stock Image)
By AFP - Agence France Presse
Chemicals spread forever in European waters: Report
Contamination of European waters with so-called “forever chemicals” often exceeds regulatory limits set to reduce potential risks to human health and the environment, the EU's environmental agency has warned.
Presenting an overview of the presence of per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) - often called eternal chemicals - the European Environment Agency (EEA) said that perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS), which was banned in 2019, was found “in all European waters.”
“We have a problem with PFOS that is both persistent and widespread,” EEA expert Nadia Cerioli told AFP.
Between 2018 and 2022, depending on the locations for which data is available, 51 to 60 percent of rivers, 11 to 35 percent of lakes, and 47 to 100 percent of coastal waters exceeded environmental quality standards for PFOS, according to the report that Cerioli co-authored.
The report, the first inventory in Europe, gathered data on reported concentrations of PFOS, one of the two most widespread PFAS, classified as a “possible carcinogen” by the World Health Organization.
Reported voluntarily, the data collected by the EEA does not offer a complete overview because not all of its member states - which include several non-EU countries - report it.
In 2022, 14 countries reported data on the concentration of pollutants in surface water.
In Belgium, France, and Iceland, 100% of the reported water bodies had levels that exceeded the quality standards, while five countries (Spain, Ireland, Poland, Croatia, and Estonia) reported levels that exceeded the threshold at less than 20% of the sites.
In three countries, Bulgaria, Latvia, and Montenegro, no sites recorded levels exceeding the guidelines.
“We still need more monitoring data to map the contamination and get a complete picture of where the PFOS hotspots are,” said Magnus Lofsted, another co-author of the report, lamenting the lack of knowledge about the occurrence of the chemicals.
“This points to the need to increase PFAS monitoring efforts using methods that have sufficient sensitivity to detect the substances also at very low levels,” he added.
According to Lofsted, it is impossible to determine the trend of the spread of the pollutants despite the ban, as the data has not been recorded for a sufficient period of time.
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