Question 5996 — dangerous products

Summary

Mr. Gabriel Amard draws the attention of the Minister of Ecological Transition and Territorial Cohesion to the fact that the global environment is contaminated by PFAS, these 4,000 perfluoroalkyl substances with non-stick, waterproofing properties, resistant to high heat, used since the 1950s in the textile, food packaging, cosmetics, phytosanitary products, and food industries. manufacture of fire-fighting foams, non-stick coatings, etc. These “eternal pollutants” are very persistent and are found in consumer product waste, but also in the air, soil and water. 100,000 industrial sites would emit PFAS in Europe. Pollution is particularly strong around chemical factories, airports and military bases (use of firefighting foam) and in areas spreading sludge containing PFAS. 12.5 million Europeans drink water polluted with PFAS. Between 2 and 17% of the accumulation of PFAS in humans in Europe is due to intake via drinking water according to EurEau, European Federation of Water Operators. This poses two problems: it is mainly up to public or private operators to ensure the quality of drinking water and therefore to eliminate PFAS (when they spot them), which implies an additional cost passed on to water users and not to manufacturers. The obligations resting on the latter to change their production process to no longer use PFAS appear few and not very restrictive. Thus, in the Rhône valley, near Lyon and in particular in the commune of Pierre-Bénite, the tap water of more than 200,000 people is believed to be contaminated with PFAS due to industrial discharges. of two factories - Daikin Chemical (ICPE authorization) and Arkema (Seveso high threshold). The floor of a school in Irigny is polluted and contains 33 µg/kg of PFAS. It is even recommended that people living in Oullins, Pierre-Bénite, Irigny, Saint-Genis-Laval who have a henhouse not consume the eggs produced and not consume the flesh of poultry. The two companies in fact handle two PFAS (6:2 FTS, PFHxA) according to the agency regional health Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes (publication of February 20, 2023). Other PFAS have been used in the past. In the water discharged by the Arkema factory in the Rhône, the level of PFAS is 36,414 times higher than that recorded upstream, according to a journalistic investigation. The MP took good note of the fact that the State services have a different reading of the situation than that presented by the journalistic investigation, on the grounds that the Grigny and Ternay catchment fields do not directly use river water but have boreholes exploiting the alluvial aquifer of the Rhône. Considering the PFAS levels mentioned, the answer seems incomplete and the inhabitants and elected officials of the Rhône are hoping for more substantiated answers. Furthermore, the ARS recognizes problematic threshold exceedances and announces that it will “implement monitoring of PFAS in raw, treated water and distributed, from 2022 and without waiting for regulatory changes in 2026 ”. The MP notes with satisfaction that the journalistic investigation and the work of the associations have enabled the mobilization of public authorities on the issue of PFAS in the Rhône, with a monitoring program. Certain substances are already researched and regulated at international and European level, but still far too few. In fact, the association Générations futures published a report on the presence of PFAS in French waters on January 12, 2023, based on public data from 2020. 36% of the samples taken contain one or more PFAS. In 2011, ANSES identified PFAS in 25% of the water samples studied. However, the results of Future Generations could, according to the association, be below reality, especially since the number of samples is not carried out uniformly across the territory. Furthermore, the effects of PFAS are still poorly understood and the precautionary principle should prevail. The Government's plan on PFAS proposed on January 17, 2023 is content with major declarations without any binding reduction measures and with applying the PFAS threshold of 0.1 µg/L prescribed by the European directive relating to the quality of water intended for consumption human, known as drinking water, the provision of which will come into force in 2026. The executive does not provide any standards to reduce emissions from manufacturers who are most likely to release PFAS. The obligation to monitor PFAS is only planned for 2026, even though pollution is already very significant throughout the country. It is thus voluntarily that the Daikin factory put into service in 2017 a station of treatment of PFAS discharges used in water according to ARS AURA. However, environmental efficiency dictates not using the substance during production and substituting it with another process. Likewise, “Arkema announced the cessation of use of the main PFAS compound used by 2024, which was confirmed and prescribed by prefectural decree on September 23, 2022,” ARS AURA informs him. In other words, manufacturers decide according to their own productive schedule of the use or not of molecules dangerous to health and the State services follow. This method does not appear to be consistent with the ecological planning objective set by the Government. The Government's action regarding PFAS appears insufficient, especially since the European Chemicals Agency published, on Tuesday February 7, 2023, a proposal aimed at ban these compounds in 2025 (with exemptions, however), paving the way for “one of the largest chemical bans ever imposed in Europe”, according to the joint statement from Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden and Norway behind the proposal. France says it supports this ban. The delay in the fight against these pollutants is already considerable, so he calls for it to ban PFAS now.

Machine translation from French. The official text remains authoritative.

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