These chemicals accumulate in the air, soil, river water, food and even in the human body.
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Thousands of industrial sites will have to carry out a campaign “identification and analysis” of their releases of PFAS chemicals, according to a decree published Tuesday, June 27 in the Official Journal. Almost indestructible, per- and polyfluoroalkyls or PFAS accumulate over time in air, soil, river water, food and even the human body, hence their nickname “eternal pollutants”. The text provides that twenty of these substances must be analyzed.
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The Ministry of Ecological Transition specifies that“about 5,000 sites are concerned by the realization of this inventory”. The campaign is “targeted on the industrial sectors most likely to release these substances” : chemicals, textile processing, surface treatment, paper mills, wastewater treatment plants and the waste sector. The decree provides that the company must establish “within three months, the list of PFAS substances used, produced, processed or released by its installation, as well as PFAS substances produced by degradation”.
Government urged to act “without delay”
The approach provides “a first phase of three monthly campaigns to measure PFAS in discharges” And “will extend over nine months to take into account the availability and the capacities of the laboratories which will carry out these samples and analyses”, details the Ministry of Ecological Transition. The terms of a “permanent monitoring” will then be clarified according to this first phase of diagnosis.
In April, a report by the General Inspectorate for the Environment and Sustainable Development (IGEDD) recommended that the government take action “without delay” on products whose “carcinogenicity is suspected”. “French regulations on industrial emissions still regulate PFAS releases too little and their monitoring in databases is almost non-existent”worried the authors in particular.