in the “chemistry valley”, residents and elected officials are seeking solutions against drinking water contaminated with PFAS

According to the Regional Health Agency, more than 160,000 inhabitants of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes are supplied by water contaminated with “eternal pollutants”.

PFAS are on the menu of the national assembly, Thursday April 4. An environmentalist bill, from the Gironde deputy Nicolas Thiery, is being studied by the deputies. It aims to reduce exposure to these “eternal pollutants” by prohibiting the sale of certain products that contain them. It would also imply the obligation to control the presence of PFAS in drinking water with the application of the “polluter pays” principle.

South of Lyon, in the “chemistry valley”, the problem is so acute that the metropolis, led by environmentalists, has taken legal action against two manufacturers, Arkema and Daikin, in order to assess their responsibility.

In Saint-Symphorien-d’Ozon, at Fabien Charton’s, there is the large garden, the henhouse, the vegetable garden… A preserved setting, but with a downside, the contamination of the water. “It’s true that since we learned that the water was polluted with PFAS, we are very worried about the quality of our environment”, he confides. The family therefore installed a filter under the tap in the central room: “It is made up of two carbon filters, a reverse osmosis membrane which allows PFAS to be treated. We had the tap water analyzed before and after filtering. Effectively, we went from 180 nanograms to zero nanograms.”