A research has found that the cost of cleaning up toxic forever chemical pollution could reach more than £1.6tn across the UK and Europe over a 20-year period, an annual bill of £84bn.
The number of British pollution hotspots is also on the rise. If emissions remain unrestricted and uncontrolled, the costs of cleanup will reach £9.9bn a year in the UK, according to the findings of a year-long investigation by the Forever Lobbying Project, a cross-border investigation involving 46 journalists and 18 experts across 16 countries.
PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), commonly referred to as “forever chemicals” are a family of more than 10,000 human-made substances. Manufactured by a handful of companies, they are widely used in consumer products and industrial processes.
They can be found in nonstick pans, pizza boxes, cosmetics, waterproof clothing, firefighting foam and pharmaceuticals, among other places. The properties that make them so useful – heatproof, greaseproof and waterproof – also have fateful downsides. Almost indestructible without human intervention and persistent in living organisms, PFAS have been linked to infertility, cancers, immune and hormone disruption, and other illnesses.
Read also: $20bn remains vulnerable as Biden Trump-proofs $74bn in climate funding
PFAS are ubiquitous and have been detected in drinking water and surface waters across the UK, which makes the task of remediation huge and complex. Hotspots of contamination include landfills, airports, military sites, sewage outfalls, sewage sludge, manufacturers and industrial users of PFAS, and places where large amounts of firefighting foams have been used.
The Drinking Water Inspectorate’s latest sampling found 278 examples where untreated drinking water exceeded maximum guidance levels, and a further 255,610 samples at levels where measures should be taken to reduce PFAS.
Just to clean up existing legacy pollution in the UK, analysis has found it will cost an estimated £428m every year for the next 20 years, based on existing cost data. This would cover remediating contaminated soils, landfill leachate and to treat 5% of the drinking water in large water supply zones for just the two regulated PFAS compounds, PFOS and PFOA. These costs are conservative, as they only include decontamination costs, not socioeconomic costs or potential costs to the health system. It also assumes that PFAS emissions stop immediately.
“The ‘legacy’ cost scenario we developed represents the minimum costs needed to manage environmental health risks from past actions related to PFAS that are currently regulated,” said Ali Ling of the St Thomas School of Engineering.
The UK Environment Agency has identified up to 10,000 high-risk sites in the UK that are contaminated with PFAS. It is reeling at the potential costs involved in simply investigating four problem sites, before even considering cleanup costs, and has told Defra that the associated bill is “frightening” and way beyond its budget.
Story was adapted from the Guardian.
