The so-called “perpetual” pollutants have accumulated in the air, soil, water in lakes and rivers and food. They are very harmful to health and can especially cause several types of cancer.
vsConsuming a freshwater fish caught in U.S. lakes and rivers is like drinking water contaminated with so-called “perpetual” pollutants, PFAS, for a month, according to a new study published Tuesday.
These chemicals were developed in the 1940s to resist water and heat. They are found in non-stick coatings, textiles or food packaging. But the imperishable nature of these PFAS, the per- and polyfluoroalkyls, means that over time they have accumulated in the air, soil, water in lakes and rivers, food and even the human body.
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There have been growing calls for stricter regulation of the use of health-damaging PFAS with liver consequences, high cholesterol levels, reduced immunity and several forms of cancer. The researchers wanted to measure the pollution of freshwater fish by analyzing 500 samples taken from US lakes and rivers between 2013 and 2015.
The average contamination rate was 9.5 micrograms per kilogram, according to their study published in Environmental Research. Of all the contaminated samples, three-quarters were PFOS, one of the most common and harmful contaminants of the thousands that make up PFAS.
A “particularly worrying” observation
Eating a freshwater fish is like drinking water contaminated with 48 parts per billion PFOS in one month. Water is considered safe to drink if it contains no more than 0.2 parts PFOS per trillion, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), in its new recommendation. Levels of PFAS found in wild-caught freshwater fish were found to be 278 times higher than those found in commercially farmed fish.
“I can no longer look at a fish without thinking about its PFAS contamination,” David Andrews, a scientist with the NGO Environmental Working Group who led the study, told AFP and grew up fishing and eating fish. The finding is “particularly worrying because of the impact on disadvantaged communities who consume fish as a source of protein or for socio-cultural reasons”, he continued. “This research makes me very angry because the companies that manufactured and used PFAS have polluted the planet without taking responsibility.”
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For Patrick Byrne, an environmental pollution researcher at the UK’s John Moores University in Liverpool, PFAS is “probably the biggest chemical threat to humanity in the 21st century”. “This study is important because it provides the first evidence of widespread transfer of PFAS directly from fish to humans,” he said.
