According to a survey coordinated by Le Monde, the French and Europeans are facing a serious public health problem, which could cost several billion euros for years…
“The cost of inaction”. The World headlined in these terms the findings of an alarming investigation, carried out by several media and coordinated by the newspaper. The report, published at the beginning of the year, shows a dizzying sum that Europe will have to pay in the years to come, due to its lack of vigilance over pollution rarely mentioned in recent decades, including since environmental issues have established themselves on the media agenda, and to which the planet is only just beginning to open its eyes.
If Europe decides to tackle this emerging pollution to tackle the problem head on, it will be necessary to put on the table 100 billion euros per year over 20 years. This figure alone represents more than half of the European Union’s annual budget. A sum to be paid “in perpetuity”, as long as these pollutants “are not subject to generalized restriction, from which their concentrations would begin to drop if we actively treat them”, specifies Hans Peter Arp, coordinator of the research project European ZeroPM.
This pollution is the contamination of water and soil by toxic substances that are more relevant than ever: PFAS. These “eternal pollutants” are chemical substances, prized for their non-stick, water-repellent or stain-resistant properties, and endowed with a resistance which makes them almost indestructible in the environment. Over time, they accumulate in the air, soil, rivers, and… in the human body.
PFAS have only been the subject of significant media attention in recent years. And for good reason: we now know that they are present in many everyday products. In your batteries, your phones, your cosmetics and even your hand sanitizers. A hot topic because of their potential health effects. According to the Coveslong-term exposure can have numerous “deleterious” consequences on humans: “increased cholesterol levels, cancers, effects on fertility and fetal development, on the liver, on the kidneys, etc.”
In Europe, PFAS contamination has been detected “in nearly 23,000 sites”. These figures, already published in a vast investigation by Le Monde dating from 2023, demonstrate a major public health problem. It is therefore because of this monumental environmental crisis and its major risks that Europe must undertake a project described as “pharaonic”. According to estimates from the Forever Lobbying Project, published this Tuesday, January 14, the price of pollution control is seriously estimated at 2,000 billion euros over twenty years.
In 2023, a global restriction of the entire PFAS family was carried out by five Member States (Sweden, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands and Germany). To this day, it is still in progress review by the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA).