Pfas: Europe reverses bans

Like tobacco and sugar, the production of perfluoroalkyl substances, the notorious Pfas, has also been the subject of repeated fraudulent behaviour on the part of manufacturing companies.

These companies, like those that sell cigarettes and sugary drinks, willing to do anything to continue to increase sales, have consolidated habits that would later be difficult to break, and have continued to conceal very worrying data, while denying that these 15,000 substances, considered perennial, could represent a risk to human health.

But, as with the other two areas, the moment of truth has arrived for Pfas, after years of heated controversy, lawsuits, books and even films all pointing in the same, unequivocal direction: that of harmful effects that are increasingly difficult to hide and deny.

Researchers at the University of California at San Francisco have in fact just published, in the Annals of Global Health, an analysis of documents that have remained secret, almost always internal and confidential, from two of the main Pfas-producing companies, the giants DuPont and 3M, covering the period from 1961 to 2006, donated to the university by one of the key protagonists of the whole affair, lawyer Robert Bilott, the first to file a lawsuit against the chemical giants and win it. Bilott, on whose affair the film Bad Waters was also made, gave all the documentation he had collected to the producers of a documentary, who in turn gave it to experts to analyse in depth, and the result is a report with the explicit title: The Devil They Knew: Analysis of the chemical documentation on the influence of industry on Pfas science.

The study shows very clearly how the two companies were in possession of both epidemiological data, on employees working on Pfas production lines, and results obtained internally on animal models, the conclusions of which were very clear.

Lawyer Robert Bilott put the spotlight on Pfas pollution of the water surrounding a production plant

Among the many elements that emerged, here are a few:

• As early as 1961, the head of DuPont’s toxicology department reported that Teflon caused the liver of animal models to swell at low doses and urged that the substance be handled with extreme caution, absolutely avoiding any contact with the skin;
• In 1970, a report commissioned by DuPont from an external laboratory concluded that C8, one of the most commonly used Pfas, was toxic if inhaled or ingested in very low doses, and in another, from 1979, the same laboratory stated that some dogs had died two days after ingesting a single dose of another of the most common Pfas, Pfoa;
• In 1980, DuPont and 3M had learned that two of the eight pregnant employees working at C8 had given birth to children with malformations, but they had not told anyone, including the women, nor had they advanced any hypothesis of a connection; on the contrary, a few months later they declared that there was no evidence that C8 was dangerous to the foetus. According to DuPont, C8 was as stable and safe as table salt, while in the face of environmental contamination, in 1991, the company still maintained that there was no danger at the doses detected.

Shortly afterwards, following a series of lawsuits filed between 1998 and 2002, DuPont itself had urged the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to declare Teflon safe (within 24 hours), because the Pfoa (perfluoro-octanoic acid) it contained was a precisely safe substance and any fears on the part of consumers had to be dispelled.

Then, in 2004, came the first setback: the EPA condemned DuPont to a $16.4 million fine for failing to disclose data on the hazardousness of Pfoa: trifles, if you think that the company had earned a billion dollars from Pfas that year. But something changed then (and other lawsuits have since been lost), to the point that today many countries are questioning how to put limits on the use of Pfas and how to try to eliminate them from the environment.

The EPA, for its part, seems to be an exception: its top management, all appointed by Donald Trump and known to be, like the former president, much more interested in business than in the health of citizens, has just made a decision that sets the agency back decades. As reported by the Guardian, which has been following the Pfas affair with investigations and reports for years, the agency is allowing the company Inhance Technologies, which has followed in the footsteps of DuPont and 3M by lying repeatedly and is still involved in numerous lawsuits and class actions, to continue to produce plastic containers – mainly for foodstuffs – full of Pfas. Inhance produces about 200 million pieces per year and, according to various environmental and consumer associations, does so by treating plastics with a vaporisation of fluorine derivatives that generates at least nine different Pfas over time, directly in the plastic, releasing them into the contents: for example, very high concentrations have been found in pesticide containers and are generally found in plastic bottles, to the point that the EPA itself has called for more controlled procedures. In 2022, Inhance claimed to have modified the process to the point where plastics release negligible amounts of Pfas, which was promptly denied by a Notre Dame University study. But the agency seems to have no difficulty in allowing the same company to continue producing plastics that release Pfas.

Meanwhile, as the list of widely used products in which very high concentrations of Pfas can be found grows (among the latest: daily contact lenses and tampons), so do the studies associating them with negative health effects, such as on female fertility.

Below: DuPont and 3M have known for decades that Pfas, used for example in the production of Teflon, are dangerous to health