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Mélanie Laurent, Guillaume Meurice, Nathan Ambrosioni, as well as ten other French celebrities donated a lock of their hair to test their level of exposure to eternal pollutants, PFAS. With the exception of three of them, all the personalities who participated are contaminated by at least one substance from the PFAS family.
Commonly referred to as “forever pollutants,” PFAS are compounds that are toxic to the planet, animal species and human health. Omnipresent in everyday products and with a very robust chemical composition, these substances take hundreds of years to degrade. Among the thirteen personalities who agreed to take part in the experiment, only comedian Guillaume Meurice, decathlon champion Kevin Mayer and director Nathan Ambrosioni showed no trace of PFAS in their body. Locks of hair belonging to the ten other celebrities revealed the presence of at least one compound of perennial pollutants, including perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS) and perfluorocarboxylic acid, all classified as carcinogenic.
The results of this experiment initiated by the Europe Écologie-Les Verts (EELV) deputy for Gironde Nicolas Thierry were presented to the National Assembly on Thursday March 21. A Law proposition aimed at protecting the population from the risks linked to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances carried by the elected official will be debated on April 4. However, this is not the ecologist’s first attempt. In June 2023, he carried out a similar experiment by collecting the locks of hair of 14 EELV deputies. Results of the races: all the politicians who played the game were contaminated with PFAS, without exception. The hair of Rhône MP Marie-Charlotte Garin even contained eight PFAS out of the twelve tested!
This is also not the first time that French celebrities have given their time to raise awareness among the general public of the health and environmental dangers of different forms of pollution. In November 2023, the citizen mobilization movement We are ready called on 19 well-known names including the singer Pomme, the host Jean-Luc Reichmann and the influencer Camille Chaudron. Entitled “SickOfPlastic”, this campaign aimed to test the level of exposure to endocrine disruptors of these personalities, again from a lock of their hair. The experiment revealed that all the celebrities who participated are contaminated with 6-10 endocrine disruptors on average.