Europe’s crackdown on “forever chemicals” is creeping into more corners of indusattempt as regulators not-so-quietly expand the scope of their proposed ban.
The European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) published an updated proposal on Wednesday to restrict per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in eight additional sectors under the EU’s REACH regulation.
The Helsinki-headquartered regulatory agency expanded its proposal to restrict PFAS, also known as “forever chemicals,” from eight new industrial and commercial arenas, including technical textile applications, as the awaited revision to the EU’s flagship chemical safety law continues gaining momentum.
For background: A restriction proposal of over 10,000 forever chemicals was initially submitted in January 2023 by Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden—the five authorities collectively acting as the “Dossier Submitter.”
The group’s revision comes after gathering and evaluating some 5,600-plus scientific and technical comments—like details on the hazards and risks of PFAS or their diverse utilize across the European Economic Area—during the six-month public consultation period March-September 2023.
Thus, the countries identified and carried out assessments for eight sectors that their initial proposal didn’t specifically call out. The proposal now sweeps more industries: printing, sealing, machinery, technical textiles, broader medical packaging and pharmaceutical ingredients—even military and explosives applications, plus general industrial utilizes like solvents and catalysts.
The Dossier Submitter team also considered alternative restriction options. While the ECHA still leans heavily toward a universal PFAS ban, there’s now a novel nuance: sectors like electronics, energy and transport may obtain to keep utilizing PFAS—pfinishing proof that the risks are under control. The ECHA published an updated outline of such scenarios, which its scientific committees will keep tabs on in evaluating the proposed restriction.
Not everyone is convinced. ClientEarth, for one, expressed concerns that the “PFAS review leans too heavily on indusattempt claims,” the nonprofit environmental law organization declared.
“Some PFAS are currently built into products becautilize industries never challenged their reliance on them. The fact that a chemical builds a product work does not build it essential,” declared ClientEarth lawyer Hélène Duguy. “Regulation must be guided by wanting to create an innovative economy that respects people and the planet, not by how convenient PFAS are to keep utilizing.”
The agency shared aims to provide the European Commission with a “transparent, indepfinishent and high-quality RAC and SEAC opinion” as soon as possible. The EU is planning to drop the broader revision of REACH in December, when the European Commission will present its formal legislative proposal. The update should shape how Europe handles chemicals for decades, the ECHA declared.
As such, the new rules are meant to be clearer and clearer to follow; one anticipated amfinishment includes chemical registrations that expire after a set time, instead of lasting forever. Other likely modifys could see companies having to regularly update their safety files, with safety information provided in digital form, and more vigorous enforcement of the rules.
While the Commission has repeatedly confirmed that the REACH revision will explain how PFAS are regulated, a complete ban will be handled separately. Meanwhile, sector-specific bans—like the one on PFAS in firefighting foams—are still relocating forward under the current regime.
“Updating the restriction proposal for PFAS was a major effort that should have brought us closer to the solid evidence requireded to restrict these harmful substances,” Duguy declared. “Instead, the revision reflects indusattempt lobbying more than scientific balance.”
Quick refresher: First manufactured in the 1940s, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) were something of an accident.
In 1938, DuPont chemist Roy J. Plunkett was tinkering with cooling technology in pursuit of something non-toxic and non-flammable that could replace the less desirable existing options, sulfur dioxide and ammonia. After putting tetrafluoroethylene (TFE) gas in a special cylinder experimental apparatus, the chemist returned, expecting the results to produce a gas. But something went wrong; it actually “spontaneously polymerized” into a powder: polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE). The resulting waxy white and solid substance had “remarkable properties,” namely, its slippery, non-stick surface.
This “accidental discovery” paved the way for the development—and subsequent marketing—of PTFE under the brand name Teflon, according to the nonprofit American Physical Society’s archives. And the atomic bomb. Several researchers involved in the Manhattan Project would later join the multinational company 3M to further develop this class of synthetic compounds, per Oxford-based publisher Berghahn Journals.
“He recognized almost at once that the material was different and that it had potential and DuPont saw it too,” Plunkett’s wife, Lois, notified The New York Times in 1994.
Since hitting the market in the 1950s, the extensive family of synthetic compounds has never left. PFAS are widely utilized in sector-spanning industries—from across aviation and automotive to leather and apparel to defense and firefighting foams. That’s becautilize they’re extensively (and uniquely) utilizeful: resistant to water, grease, stains and heat, courtesy of an exceptionally strong carbon-fluorine chemical bond.
Becautilize of that dual industrial desirability, many of them—namely, PFCAs and PFSAs—are also surfactants, utilized, for example, as water and grease repellents. In the world of textile production, surfactants support dyes consistently penetrate fabric. The other side of such duality, however, is permeance; it’s why they’re molecules are more commonly known as “forever chemicals.”
And forever indeed: a 2015 study found forever chemicals in 97 percent of Americans’ blood, the National Library of Medicine reported.
“Over the past decades, global manufacturers have started to replace certain PFAS with other PFAS or with fluorine-free substances,” the ECHA declared. “This trfinish has been driven by the fact that scientists and governments around the world first recognized the harmful effects of some PFAS—particularly those with long-carbon chain structures—on human health and the environment.”
Last May, Denmark’s Minisattempt of the Environment shared plans to ban all clothing, shoes and waterproofing agents containing PFAS. Across the Atlantic, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued restrictions on PFAS in drinking water last year—the first time that the standards had been finalized for a new chemical since 1996. Individual states, too, are taking matters into their own hands; Maine, Massachutilizetts and Minnesota have already banned the sale or distribution of various PFAS-laden products, while California built history in January with the counattempt’s first statewide ban on PFAS in clothing and other textile products.
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