10 Apr 2025
Image description: Wide shot of the houses of Parliament. Image by Dominika Gregušová / Pexels. The UK Parliamentary Perfluoroalkyl and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) inquiry is currently considering whether enough is being done to address the risks of PFAs in the UK and whether research institutions and the Environment Agency are equipped to detect and […]
22 Jan 2025
A cross-border investigation by Unearthed into forever chemicals was released this week, turning up a number of interesting findings into a toxic chemicals crisis we’re only beginning to understand. The reporting effort – 46 journalists and 18 experts across 16 countries – has so far detailed the jaw-dropping cost of cleaning up these toxic forever […]
11 Dec 2024
Concerns about PFAS pollution have increased in many European countries but comprehensive monitoring data are often limited. A European Environment Agency (EEA) briefing ‘PFAS pollution in European waters’, shows that most monitored rivers, transitional and coastal waters and a large part of lakes in Europe are polluted with at least one of the many extremely […]
22 Oct 2024
Research conducted by the Marine Conservation Society and the University of Portsmouth has revealed that sewage discharges are a significant source of PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) pollution in marine environments. PFAS also known as ‘forever chemicals’ are a complex group of nearly 15,000 substances used in consumer products around the world since the 1950s. […]
10 Apr 2024
A new international study, led by the University of New South Wales and published in Nature Geoscience, assessed the levels of PFAS contamination in surface and ground water around the globe. It found that much of our global source water exceeds PFAS safe drinking limits. “Many of our source waters are above PFAS regulatory limits,” says […]
07 Feb 2024
The Guardian reports that seventeen landfills across England are known to be producing a highly toxic liquid substance containing some banned and potentially carcinogenic “forever chemicals”, in some cases at levels 260 times higher than that deemed safe for drinking water. However the government says it does not know where these landfills are. Over a […]
05 Dec 2023
The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the cancer agency of the World Health Organization (WHO), has evaluated the carcinogenicity of perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS). PFOA and PFOS are widely used chemicals in a large group of fluorinated compounds called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), sometimes called “forever chemicals” because they […]
29 Nov 2023
Potentially toxic “forever chemicals” have been detected in the drinking water sources at 17 of 18 England’s water companies, with 11,853 samples testing positive, something experts say they are “extremely alarmed” by. Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) – a group of 10,000 or so human-made chemicals widely used in industrial processes, firefighting foams and consumer […]
