Imagine this: You’ve just moved into a new house and you’re planning on throwing a housewarming party to celebrate the occasion. You’re feeling great, with freshly painted walls, a clean, stain-resistant carpet, and you’ve just finished doing your makeup. What’s more, you’ve just ordered food from your favorite local pizza place through an app on your phone. On the surface, it seems like you’ll have the perfect evening, but looking a bit closer tells a very different story.
What you may not know is that many of the products you just used—the wall paint, stain-resistant carpet, eye makeup, pizza box, and even your cell phone—all possibly contain “forever chemicals,” a colloquial term for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances. These chemicals can last for hundreds, if not thousands, of years, and are used in everything from mascara to cell phone screens. Besides being highly airborne and persisting for extended periods of time in the environment, PFAS exposure can also lead to a variety of health effects, including decreased fertility, developmental issues in children, increased risk of developing certain cancers, interference with the immune system, and increased cholesterol levels.
For this reason, it is crucial that the use of PFAS in everyday products be limited and regulated. A key way to achieve this is through legislation, an example of which is found in the European Union’s recent Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR). An updated version of the Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive, this piece of legislation aims to implement an EU-wide restriction on PFAS in food packaging starting August 12. Specifically, the PPWR limits all PFAS in food packaging to just 50 parts per million. As PFAS can leech into food through packaging (like the aforementioned pizza box), limiting the number of PFAS allowed in packaging is key to preventing the health effects described above.
Unfortunately, this is not the case in other parts of the world. In the United States, for instance, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed a plan to weaken limitations on PFAS in water. While the plan would keep limitations on PFOA and PFOS, the two most dangerous varieties of PFAS, it would also roll back restrictions on four closely related chemicals. Considering that almost half of the United States’ drinking water has been found to contain PFAS, this legislation could only amplify the problem if passed. This is worsened by the fact that, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health, PFAS in drinking water can cause liver damage, increased risk of thyroid disease, decreased vaccine response in children, and a slew of other health problems.
It seems that now more than ever, new regulations on PFAS must be introduced, while existing limitations must be kept in place. It is only by doing this that the adverse health effects of PFAS can be stopped before they wreak even more havoc.
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