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He has all the things with a toxic controversy. Increasing evidence suggests that the molecules known as chemicals forever – used in everyday items such as cosmetics, non -stick pans and water -repellent clothes – can accumulate in the environment and in the body, to the detriment of the two.
Last year, the World Organization for Pre -eminent chemistry announced that a panel would again examine how chemicals – more well known as substances by- and polyfluoroalkyle or PFA – are defined. This has fueled misfortune among some researchers, who suspect that repensation, to be carried out by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, could end up shrinking the definition and leaving certain chemicals forever of the regulatory hook. The current definition, they protest, is based on science and works well; The new initiative, according to them, is motivated by political or economic considerations, Rather than science.
Their objections deserve an audience. By defining its reasons to redefine a class of chemicals that have existed for decades, the Union of Chemistry revealing European regulations in a way and declares that it is “barely possible” for around 9000 APFA to deal with a possible prohibition of 2026. Other than chemistry.
The chemicals forever, with a backbone of carbon atoms with attached fluorine atoms, were first developed in the 1940s. Their resistance to oil, fat and water made a commercial blow. But these same qualities allowed molecules to linger indestructible – in water, soil and air, in the food chain, in the blood and human organs. The substances were variously involved in cancers, obesity and the decline in fertility. Manufacturers, including 3M and Dupont, paid huge sums to settle legal proceedings of the PFAS linked to health and the environment.
The exact number of inheritance and new PFAS is uncertain because some have been manufactured but never documented; Figures between 5,000 and 12,000 are often mentioned. Their proliferation, as well as the increase in health and environmental concerns, led to the OECD consultation on a Definition evaluated by peers Designed to capture the full range of fluorinated molecules. It ended in 2021, with the contribution of chemical agencies around the world.
In the environmental newspaper Science & Technology Letters, the 20 Protestant academics expressed themselves this month that any new IUPAC maneuver could “exclude certain fluorid chemical subgroups from the scope of the existing definition”. Since the union is considered to be the ultimate referee of all things chemicalIncluding the names of new periodic table elements, its verdict will wear a til. The letter continues: “A definition of PFAS approved by the IUPAC and potentially closer could.
The letter of protest was coordinated by Gabriel Sigmund, researcher of micropollutants at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. It is signed by, among other things, scientists from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Sweden and Switzerland, some of which have worked on the definition of the OECD. More than 200 scientists have since added their signatures, the FT learned.
Alex Ford, a marine ecotoxicologist at the University of Plymouth in the United Kingdom, said that he had signed because the modification of definitions could “sow doubt and create confusion” and that the precautionary principle should reign in supreme. “We always see the harmful effects on the fauna of the chemicals that we prohibited decades ago … They are chemically stable, very mobile and, the more we examine them, toxic.”
As is quite common with university researchers, at least two members of the new IUPAC panels, past or current links with industry. The co -president Pierangelo Metrangolo, a chemist based in Milan, reveals the work of advice for the company Solvay Solexis on his CV accessible to the public. In 2023, his parent company Solvay paid nearly $ 400 million to settle a PFAS trial in New Jersey.
Nothing indicates that Metrangolo was involved. He previously declared that the new panel “had not yet finalized any conclusion, and nothing indicates that certain subgroups of chemicals would be excluded”. The IUPAC did not respond to a request for comments.
It is tempting to pass silence on the row as a technique, arcanic or non -relevant. But the definition of an eternity for all of us: like the chemicals themselves, its influence could persist – on research, industrial practice, regulations and cases of legal responsibility – for decades to come.