“Eternal pollutants” in Salindres: ought to we actually be alarmed? | EUROtoday
Get real time updates directly on you device, subscribe now.
“II am surprised that such a study, carried out against common sense, has such an impact. We are unnecessarily stressing the population, it’s scandalous. Let's stop saying that Salindres is the most polluted city in France! » The LR president of Alès Agglomération, Christophe Rivenq, does not lose his temper after the “revelations” of the Générations futures affiliation, supported by joint investigations by a number of nationwide, French and Belgian media, and brought up on the entrance web page of the regional day by day.
A “record contamination” with “eternal pollutants” would have been famous within the waters of a river close to the Salindres chemical platform, just a few kilometers from Alès, brought on by the Belgian firm Solvay. Is there trigger for alarm? Update on what he statedssociation, what the regulation says, what we find out about these pollution and what the specialists say.
What does the affiliation say?
Générations futures took samples from the water within the rivers across the chemical platform and from the consuming water of three municipalities. She then entrusted these samples to a laboratory, primarily searching for PFAS – these substances generally known as “eternal pollutants”, as a result of they take a really very long time to degrade within the setting – produced by the producer's manufacturing facility. Solvay on the Salindres web site.
Its outcomes, she says, are “clear”, and “show very significant pollution of aquatic environments by substances manufactured by Solvay”. Two of them, trifluoroacetic acid (TFA), and triflic acid, characterize 99.9% of PFAS measured in manufacturing facility discharge and in rivers. Future Generations locations explicit emphasis on the TFA charge, of seven.6 mg/l, recorded on the industrial web site's effluent discharge level into the Arias River. “The levels of TFA that we measured have never been measured before, in any place in the world,” insists François Veillerette, spokesperson for the affiliation. The affiliation signifies that it has additionally famous very excessive ranges of TFA, of the order of 19 and 18 micrograms per liter, within the operating water consumed by the inhabitants of two villages, Boucoiran-et-Nozières, and Moussac, whose Collections are made upstream of the chemical platform. She additionally discovered traces of different molecules categorised as PFAS.
Is TFA a PFAS?
Is TFA, the principle product in query, a part of PFAS, per- and polyfluoroalkyl compounds, this huge household of 10,000 compounds extensively utilized in trade, and certified as “eternal pollutants”? Questioned, the Belgian toxicologist Alfred Bernard, specialist in PFAS, believes that there’s “confusion”: “Chemically, TFA is indeed part of the same family as PFAS. But it is made of two carbon atoms, not four. On a toxicological level, we are in another world: it is 20,000 times less toxic. »
“More mobile” than PFAS, TFA molecules “are quickly eliminated in the urine and in the bile”. They are however “extremely resistant”, and soluble in water, they’re discovered “in groundwater, in seas and oceans”. The tutorial regrets that the figures from the examine “were artificially inflated by a factor of 1,000”, for TFA, “by expressing their concentration in nanograms per liter, which is not correct”.
Did the Solvay manufacturing facility break the regulation?
In response to the accusations from Générations futures, Solvay says it’s “perfectly in line with the regulations in force” and is “subject to the control of the competent local authorities in order to guarantee the safest possible use of its products while respecting health. and the environment”. The affiliation readily acknowledges this: the industrialist is completely so as. But she criticizes guidelines which might be far too lax for her style: “These TFA rejections have existed for a very long time, and the first prefectural decrees to limit them date from 2017.” The restrict was then set at 125 mg/l, earlier than being diminished once more to 75 in 2023, and 25 in 2027.
The discharges are due to this fact removed from exceeding the boundaries decreed by the companies of the Gard prefecture. “But we don’t know how they were determined, based on what data,” protests François Veillerette. For consuming water, once more, no legal guidelines are being damaged… as a result of none regulates, for the second, the detection or presence of PFAS. Other European international locations already apply requirements for the focus of TFA in consuming water. With a big hole between the Netherlands, which lowered the brink to 2.2 mg/l, and Germany to 60 mg/l, primarily based on a examine carried out by Solvay. In France, we should wait till 2026 for 20 PFAS… which doesn’t embody TFA.
The figures we give appear staggering, however we stay beneath the toxicity thresholds.Alfred Bernard, toxicologist, PFAS specialist
Can we drink faucet water?
Christophe Rivenq, the president of the Agglo d'Alès, who additionally chairs the water authority, disputes the outcomes of Générations futures. The elected official signifies that his companies perform “more than 1,000 analyzes per year” on the water consumed by the inhabitants of the city, and that no anomaly has been detected. He even says that he has had the 20 PFAS thought-about to be essentially the most harmful examined in consuming water “for six months, even though we are not obliged to do so”. Result, in line with him: adverse, aside from a single hint, “60 times less important than the future European standard”. He additionally stated he had extra lately had traces of TFA searched, and “waiting for the results”.
But if we belief the affiliation's statements, ought to we be alarmed? “We cannot exclude effects on the immune system, as has been demonstrated for other eternal pollutants,” says its spokesperson François Veillerette. It is within the title of this precautionary precept that the Netherlands has enacted extra restrictive requirements than in France. Germany has requested the European Union to categorise TFA as a reprotoxic substance. “Based on animal data, there is no indication that TFA is reprotoxic at high doses,” however believes toxicologist Alfred Bernard. While regretting that “no epidemiological study has yet looked at TFA”, he assures us: “if people have consumed water, they should not panic. The figures we give seem staggering, but we remain below the toxicity thresholds.”
Are PFAS accountable for tumors across the manufacturing facility?
Coincidence of the calendar: the very day of the publication by Générations futures of its investigation, Public Health France introduced, within the sub-prefecture of Alès, a examine on the quantity, greater than the typical, of circumstances of glioblastomas, tumors of the mind, uncommon, within the communities across the manufacturing facility. “My father-in-law, who worked at the factory, died,” says Salindres notary, Emmanuel Allard, whose father, a dental surgeon, had raised the alarm on this delicate topic. “I asked the question of a link between the presence of PFAS and TFA and glioblastomas. I was told that PFAS were involved in other types of cancers. » The study, which does not decide, formulates several hypotheses, without mentioning PFAS. “We should observe several industries of the same type to see if we find these pathologies,” believes Alfred Bernard.
Générations futures broadcasts the launch of a number of complaints, for “aggravated water pollution” and “harm to fish”, and calls on public authorities and the trade to take all helpful measures to keep away from discharges of PFAS and TFA into the setting. potable water. Which would require using costly know-how to filter them. Solvay indicated to RTBF its intention to make use of it: “Faced with evolving regulatory requirements, we are currently setting up a reverse osmosis pilot, in preparation for an industrial installation planned by 2027.”
https://www.lepoint.fr/societe/polluants-eternels-a-salindres-faut-il-vraiment-s-alarmer-10-02-2024-2552075_23.php