Risk-based regulation for per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)
Summary of contents
PFAS play an important role in some vital products that improve quality and longevity of life. With that recognition, concerns are increasing across the world about the adverse health impacts of PFAS, to humans and wildlife. All PFAS are persistent. All uses of PFAS should be assessed, using specific risk-based regulation based on sound science, with better environmental (bio)monitoring and grouping approaches to characterise exposure and hazard, respectively.
Investment now in new scientific approaches, and in the skills base for the provision of scientific advice, will enable the health and environmental risks of groups of PFAS to be better understood. Release of toxic PFAS into the environment must be controlled in the near future. We need to know as soon as possible which of the many hundreds of PFAS are toxic and which are not. It is possible to achieve effective PFAS-specific regulation, to retain the safe and sustainable uses of PFAS in products and processes that are considered vital to future innovations of benefit to society. A ban on all PFAS as a group is neither practical, necessary, nor achievable. However, defined PFAS groups that are shown to present an unacceptable risk to humans or wildlife must be restricted or removed.
This policy position provides a thought-starter for discussing a risk-based framework for PFAS regulation, to maintain high standards of health, safety, and environmental protection, and promote effective global action to reduce pollution.