In collaboration with the program “Vert de rage” (France 5), “Special Envoy” took samples of soil, air, water and breast milk around the industrial site of Pierre-Bénite, in the metropolis from Lyon. Mothers who live opposite the plant or who drink drinking water drawn downstream from the industrial site provided samples of their breast milk – thirteen volunteers in total.
These samples were analyzed with the help of a toxicologist and chemist, the Dutch professor Jacob de Boer, a European specialist in perfluorides. The results of the analyzes are final. They concluded that there was serious pollution with PFAS, the scientific name for perfluorinated compounds, around the site.
In the air, we find a perfluoride so toxic that it was banned in 2020 in France: PFOA – we detect up to eight times more than the average values indicated by the UN. Near the Arkema factory, in the ground of the stadium, the levels of another perfluorinated compound, PFUnDA, exceed the Dutch standard by 83 times (retained in the absence of a French standard on perfluorinated levels in soils). In the vegetable garden of a former employee of the Arkema factory, this perfluoride is present at a rate seven times higher than the Dutch standard.
Excessive perfluorinated levels in tap water
At the level of discharges from the Arkema plant, the perfluorinated levels exceed… 36,414 times the levels of the standard water taken upstream from the site. This contamination is also found in the water drawn from the Rhône after Arkema’s discharge pipes. As far as tap water is concerned, all the samples taken exceed the maximum value authorized by Europe for perfluorinated substances: up to twice above. This European standard does not yet apply in France.
Finally, the average perfluorinated content in the mother’s milk of women in the Lyon region is twice as high as that of Dutch women, and three times as high as that of American women.
Excerpt from “Alert to eternal pollutants”, a report to see in “Special Envoy” on May 12, 2022.
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