On 15 January, members of the House of Commons environmental audit committee (EAC) visited Bentham, the North Yorkshire town that has the highest levels of Pfas contamination in the UK.
Colloquially known as “forever chemicals”, Pfas (perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances) do not naturally degrade or decompose. This persistence gives them special properties with useful applications in both industrial and consumer products.
But it also means that once discarded, they accumulate in nature – and in the bodies of living things. The effects of this bioaccumulation are still not fully understood, but a growing body of evidence links it to cancers, immune suppression, infertility and developmental problems.
MPs heard from residents with cancer who wondered if the high levels of Pfas in their blood was linked to their ill health. Others wondered if foraging local food and fishing in the nearby river had left them exposed. The worst part, they heard, was not knowing the impact the chemicals were having on the community.
The visit was the penultimate evidence-gathering session of the committee’s inquiry into the risks of Pfas and, on Thursday, the committee published its recommendations.
Foremost among them was a call for urgent restrictions on the use of Pfas in consumer goods, including school uniforms, cookware and food packaging, with the bans needed to begin from next year.
“The longer action is delayed in addressing the risks of Pfas, the greater the health, economic and environmental burdens will become,” the MPs warned.
Bentham’s Pfas contamination is on an industrial scale, a legacy of decades of production of firefighting foam at a local factory.
But it is an extreme case of a problem that is widespread. Despite only having been in existence for less than a century, Pfas have become ubiquitous. By now, they are “in the blood of most populations around the globe”, MPs heard during their inquiry.
The EAC’s report comes after the government earlier this year outlined its plan for tackling Pfas – a document derided by environmental campaigners as “crushingly disappointing”. That criticism was echoed by the committee, which described the plan as “short on decisive actions”.
Its publication was “an important step”, said Toby Perkins, chair of the EAC. “But it does not go far enough. It appears to be a plan to eventually have a plan, rather than a concrete set of commitments to reduce and remediate Pfas.”
Instead, the committee called for group-based restrictions to whole classes of Pfas, to avoid a “whack-a-mole” approach as industry brings out new, potentially more harmful, substances to replace ones that have been banned.
“We do not need to panic, but we do need to take sensible precautions,” said Perkins, a Labour MP.
“Our report calls for the government to phase out Pfas uses that are clearly non-essential, such as in kitchen equipment and school uniforms, and to take a precautionary approach to approving new Pfas.
“Rather than waiting for proof that a chemical is harmful before banning it, companies should need approval before they introduce a new Pfas substance.”
Dr Shubhi Sharma from Chem Trust was one of a number of environmental campaigners who welcomed the report.
“Swift, decisive action, in line with the EU’s universal Pfas restriction, is urgently needed in the UK to protect both public health and the environment,” she said.
Others were less convinced. Jonatan Kleimark, head of programmes at chemicals watchdog ChemSec, said the report’s proposals were too limited.
“It says the UK must avoid a whack-a-mole approach to Pfas while itself proposing to whack only a few small moles, which hardly need any whacking to finish them off,” he said.
ChemSec had calculated that barely 20% of Pfas exposure in the population is down to consumer goods, Kleimark said: “Yet the committee says nothing at all about the industrial uses and pesticides that contribute the vast bulk of Pfas pollution.”
