A first French roadmap, while waiting for Brussels. Tuesday, January 17, the French government presented a first “action plan on PFAS” (perfluoroalkylated substances) before their ban on a European scale. The target is a family of 4,500 chemical compounds widely used in industry… but ultratoxic. Synthesized in the laboratory in the 1950s, used for their resistance to high heat or their non-stick and waterproof properties, these chemicals are found in baking paper, textiles, carpets, as well as in paints, pesticides or more food packaging.
The “action plan” must make it possible to “have standards on discharges to guide public action”, but also “to improve knowledge and the impregnation of environments to reduce the exposure of populations”. The plan also seeks to ask manufacturers to control their discharges, as well as to put in place measures to avoid them. In the viewfinder, in particular, the Arkema factory, located in the chemical valley, near Lyon, since the revelations in May 2022 of the magazine Green with rage pointing to significant PFAS pollution in the surrounding area. In September, the Rhône prefecture also asked the plant to reduce its discharges in stages (-65% in March, -73% in December and -80% in September 2024).
All over the world, PFAS have contaminated the entire environment. A study published in 2019 by Public Health France even showed that 100% of the French population was impregnated with these compounds. Possibly dangerous for humans, PFAS have given rise to long legal battles in the United States. The most resounding was led by lawyer Robert Bilott, whose story was told in the film Dark Waters. In 1998, a farmer in West Virginia asks him for help, trying to understand why his cows are dying by the dozens. During his investigation, Bilott demonstrates how the titan of chemistry DuPont poured PFOAs – a subfamily of PFAS – into the Ohio River for years, contaminating nearly 100,000 people. And this, knowingly.
Since then, Bilott has waged his battle against the giants of chemistry, and closely follows scientific developments. In 2011, a group of independent researchers thus demonstrated a “probable link” between PFAS and various cancers of the kidney, testicles or thyroid diseases. For L’Express, he reacts to announcements by the French government to shed light on these eternal pollutants.
L’Express: What do you think of the plan presented by the French government?
Robert Bilott: It’s a first step. It is important that governments recognize, already, that these chemicals are a problem that must be taken seriously. This is not only a threat to the environment, but also to public health. But it’s frustrating that the companies responsible for creating these products aren’t being held liable for the cost of the damage caused. These pollutants have been entirely produced by man. When we find them in the ground, in water, or in our blood, we know where they came from.
We know which companies created them. After twenty years of litigation on these issues in the United States, we know the story by heart. We know who is responsible. We know that the contamination we are experiencing in our country will occur everywhere else in the world. We are also aware of the cost of this pollution, both to detect it, to measure it, and to clean it up: it is enormous. This price should not be paid by citizens, nor by municipalities, nor by our governments. Companies should be held accountable.
Do we have enough evidence to claim this?
The scientific evidence is there, in particular for two chemicals, which we call PFAS – or polyfloroalkylated – and PFOS (perfluorooctane sulfonate). Action must be taken now, not in the future. This situation is particularly frustrating: we have had multiple “action plans” like yours. Some were proposed more than a decade ago. Like the one announced by the French government, our programs listed a series of measures including sampling. A first step before thresholds are established to limit the presence of perfluorides in water. But these plans were never actually implemented. Deadlines continue to be pushed back. And we are still waiting for regulations to be put in place.
We have known about the existence of these chemical compounds in the environment for more than twenty years. This story has already been told in the media and in my book, Exposure, or even in its adaptation to the cinema, Dark Waters. This information is public, and much has been done in twenty years to demonstrate the dangerousness of these products. Independent studies have been done proving that exposure to these compounds causes disease. This data eventually prompted the United States Environmental Protection Agency to regulate their presence in drinking water. This regulation should impose its cleaning. But we’ve been working on it for twenty years, and it hasn’t happened yet. Let’s hope the French government doesn’t take so long to take matters into its own hands.
How do you explain that legislation is not advancing at the same pace as scientific discoveries in terms of pollution and the harmfulness of these substances?
One of the most important arguments that industry has made for decades is that we never know enough. That we should do more studies, collect more data. That we shouldn’t rush. This technique has a name: it is called manufacturing doubt. These companies hire consultants and lobbyists to convince governments, scientists and the public. Their goal is that we remain in uncertainty. If we are not really sure of the dangerousness of a product, why act? Why regulate?
This argument is faced with a fundamental problem: it has been proven in court that these companies have long been aware of the dangerousness of these chemicals. They know they are releasing them into the air, into the water, into nature – without telling anyone. Now that this information is leaking to the public, these companies are trying everything they can to stop the US government from doing anything at the federal level. The battle is also waged State by State, inside the country. Some have tried to pass regulations to protect their people. But they are slowed down by these companies, which always repeat the same speech: we need to do more studies, to have more time. The scientific research is already there. Obviously, if no massive sampling has been done so far in France, or it has not been done sufficiently, it must be done. This is an essential step to understand the situation, to know where exactly the pollution is. But the dangerousness of these products no longer needs to be demonstrated.
In this case, what to do? What do you recommend to combat these products?
This situation is unprecedented. I don’t know of any other contamination story like this, where man-made elements in the lab have contaminated all living creatures on this planet. With the water cycle, even the sea ice and polar bears in the Arctic are affected. That being said, what to do? Our #1 priority should be to stop any release of these products around the world. Stop them at the source. For this, we must resolve the debate that we have at the global level concerning the definition of these chemical compounds. Which ones should be classified as PFOA? Which should we focus on?
The debate is all the more important today as a certain number of companies want to continue to produce them, and therefore seek to exclude them from the discussion. But the central question is elsewhere. How do we eliminate them? There are many announcements, almost every day, of researchers finding new ways to remove these elements from water and soil. However, these technologies only seem to exist on a small scale.
You mention the consequences of this pollution on the environment. But what about those present in our body?
We mostly don’t know how to remove them from our body. They accumulate in our bodies, a bit like a time bomb. The scientific community is particularly worried about this. In the United States, we also see the threshold of PFOA considered acceptable in drinking water falling lower day by day. In June, the US Environmental Agency said acceptable levels were even below the threshold where these compounds become detectable. Our government has therefore just said that as soon as we detect the presence of these products in the water, however small, we should fear for our health. However, not all countries are there, although this question should be resolved at a global level, not a national one.
We are talking about chemical compounds which, unlike other products such as arsenic, for example, or other known poisons, are more difficult to apprehend. Today, few people are aware of the existence of PFOA. For decades, the companies that employ them have been smart enough to change their names several times. In the US we first called them C8, then PSC, then Eternal Chemicals… And now PFOA. Most people don’t even realize that we’re still talking about the same chemical compounds. Then, it is extremely difficult to alert on something that we do not feel, that we do not see, that we cannot taste. It is therefore very difficult to alert the general public and make them understand the danger.
You mentioned earlier your book, or its adaptation to the cinema. In France, journalistic investigations like those of the program Green with rage, alerting on the presence of PFOA in the water of Pierre-Bénite, near Lyon, also alerted on the problem. The general public still seems a little more aware than before…
Effectively ! Fortunately, in recent years, films like Dark Watersor documentaries, like The Devil You Know, made it possible to place this question in the debate, with strong images. It’s a way of saying, “You see what happened with the cows in West Virginia? Well the cause is a chemical compound that is also found in France. The same pollutant as found in drinking water outside military bases in Japan. The same thing found in Veneto, Italy, and all over the world.”
We are talking about the same pollutant. We are talking about the same story. Part of the problem is that every time a PFAS incident happens somewhere, locals think it’s an isolated incident, tied to a particular place. This is not the case. It is essential that people understand what is happening, and above all, that all of these incidents are more broadly connected. The general public must understand that each time we go back up the chain of events, we come across the same companies. Each country does not have to start from scratch: data and studies already exist. Conclusions have been formulated. Let’s go from there.