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PFAS ban passed in France by Chem Trust, 20 Feb 2025
Today, France has passed a new law that will ban PFAS in several products including clothing and cosmetics.
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a family of over 10,000 highly persistent synthetic chemicals often called ‘forever chemicals’, because they do not break down easily in the environment. Exposure to some PFAS has been linked to numerous adverse health impacts, such as the promotion of certain cancers, disruption of the immune system and reduced fertility.
Despite some opposition the law was supported by the majority of members of the French Parliament. Prior to the vote, over 140,000 French citizens called on their MPs to back the Bill.
When the ban was first proposed in 2024 by French Green MP Nicolas Thierry it also included cookware, but this was excluded following intense industry lobbying and despite alternatives being readily available. The new law is however still a crucial step towards protecting French citizens and nature from these harmful chemicals. It will also take steps towards making polluters pay to clean up the contamination they are causing, by introducing a fee on companies emitting PFAS into the environment.
France now joins Denmark in leading the way on action on PFAS. CHEM Trust hopes that other member states similarly bring in protections for their citizens from these chemicals, whilst they wait for action at the EU level.
However, national bans are not a substitute for EU action. The proposed universal Restriction on PFAS must be implemented to provide protections for people and nature across Europe. This restriction will ban PFAS as a group across most uses, from clothes and cookware to cars, and allows generous transition times to allow industry to adapt.
Sandra Bell of CHEM Trust said
“This ban on PFAS in products like clothing and cosmetics is great news for French citizens worried about their exposure to these harmful chemicals. The not so good news is that some key products like cookware were exempted. Now France needs to get firmly behind an EU wide restriction on PFAS ensuring more products are included and citizens of all member states are protected”.
Find out more about the French ban here and about the universal PFAS restriction here.
Read more about PFAS here.
Bird study finds much larger volumes of toxic PFAS chemicals than previously reported by Steinar Brandslet, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Feb 20, 2025, phys.org
Researchers studying birds and the food they eat are now finding much larger volumes of the toxic PFAS chemicals than before. The substances either never break down or degrade very slowly, which is why they are called “forever chemicals.”
PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) are a large group of synthetic environmental toxins, and you are most likely full of them too. Forever chemicals do not break down; instead, they accumulate in the natural environment and inside your body.
“PFAS have received a lot of attention in recent years. This is because they are so widely used in industry, at the same time as these substances can also be harmful to many different organisms,” said postdoctoral fellow Junjie Zhang, who was recently affiliated with NTNU.
He is the lead author of an article published in the Journal of Hazardous Materials that addresses new findings regarding the toxins. PFAS contain fluorine, and have received particular attention in Norway because they are used in ski wax, Teflon and fire retardants.
Possible and confirmed harmful effects include various forms of cancer, liver damage, cholesterol disorders, reduced fertility, hormone disorders, developmental disorders in children, and a weakened immune system.
Finding more PFAS than before
Ideally, you do not want these substances in your body, but in practice, it is virtually impossible for humans and many other living organisms to avoid them.
Recent research and a new method for detecting PFAS bring both bad and good news. The bad news is that we are finding PFAS in places we have not previously found them. The good news is that this means we have become better at detecting these substances.
“The biggest increase is in the livers of wading birds. We found up to 180 times more PFAS than previously,” said Zhang.
Some of the increase may be due to a new analysis method.
“This suggests that previous methods have not been good enough at detecting certain types of PFAS,” said Zhang.
He was affiliated with the Department of Chemistry at NTNU during the study and collaborated with Professor Veerle Jaspers at the Department of Biology. He is now a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Copenhagen.
Investigating migratory birds and their food
The international research group analyzed samples from migratory birds and the shellfish they eat.
“The East Asian–Australasian Flyway is an important route for millions of migratory birds, including wading birds,” Jaspers said.
As the name suggests, this migration route extends between Siberia and East Asia and large parts of Australia.
However, the populations of many bird species along this migration route are rapidly declining. The researchers wanted to find out whether exposure to environmental toxins could be a contributing factor.
The researchers took samples from 25 wading birds. In addition, they collected samples from 30 shellfish found in areas of China where migratory birds often stop to feed.
Since birds—and humans for that matter—commonly ingest PFAS through food and water, it makes sense to test these sources for the substances too.
Easier-to-detect substances
The researchers took both liver and blood samples from the birds. They used a new method to analyze the samples, called the Total Oxidizable Precursor (TOP) assay, developed by co-author Lara Cioni. This method makes it easier to detect certain types of PFAS.
A lot of research has been done on one group of PFAS called PFAAs (perfluoroalkyl acids), but little is known about the substances that can be converted into PFAAs. PFAAs are formed when other substances break down, and these substances are more easily detected using TOP.
“The TOP results show a significant increase in several types of harmful substances in all of the samples,” said Zhang.
Some of the findings suggest that many forever chemicals originate from sources we are not yet aware of, which is not particularly good news.
According to the researchers, the findings highlight how important it is to conduct more research on the substances that PFAS come from.
“We need to find out more about the sources, but also about the effects PFAS have on wading birds, other animals and humans,” Jaspers said.
More information: Junjie Zhang et al, Shellfish and shorebirds from the East-Asian Australian flyway as bioindicators for unknown per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances using the total oxidizable precursor assay, Journal of Hazardous Materials (2025). DOI: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2025.137189
Journal information: Journal of Hazardous Materials
Provided by Norwegian University of Science and Technology