True cost of PFAS emerges as UK aligns with Europe

UK moves closer to Europe as it looks to tackle PFAS

Announcing the country’s first-ever PFAS Plan, the UK’s environment minister, Emma Hardy MP, said: “It’s crucial that we protect both public health and the environment for future generations. Through our PFAS Plan, we will act decisively to reduce their harmful effects while transitioning to safer alternatives.”

She added: “We will work in partnership with regulators, industry and local communities to deliver co-ordinated action to ensure ‘forever chemicals’ are not a forever problem.”

Under the plan, key stakeholders, including the government’s environment department, will work together to create a detailed picture of where PFAS are entering the environment. It sets out a framework of coordinated action that the government will take, alongside regulators and businesses, to understand how PFAS spread and how best to reduce exposure both to the public and the environment.

Through our PFAS Plan, we will act decisively to reduce their harmful effects while transitioning to safer alternatives – Emma Hardy MP

While there is no evidence that UK drinking waters have PFAS levels in excess of what is permitted, the current recommended maximum level of 0.1µg/l is non-statutory. Under the PFAS Plan, the government will launch a consultation to determine whether these limits should be made statutory, making it easier to hold water companies to account should they exceed the levels permitted.

Under the plan, the government has committed to align its REACH programme with its ‘closest trading partners’, including the EU, by 2028, and will consider restrictions on PFAS sub-groups in line with the EU. The UK is a signatory to the Stockholm Convention, and states in the plan that it will implement its obligations to continue regulatory and enforcement action on already prohibited PFAS, including PFOA, PFOS, PFHxS, and LC-PFCAs.

It has also committed to assessing the ‘full extent’ of PFAS in estuaries and coastal waters for the first time. It will do this through ‘improved testing and monitoring’, which will include sediments and invertebrates.

Is the UK moving too slowly on PFAS regulation?

Some might argue the government has been slow to act; the Royal Society of Chemistry called for stronger regulation in 2023, including:

“Ensure the many hundreds of sources of PFAS are reported and captured in a national inventory. Identify, test, and regulate the pathways of PFAS from factory emissions and product-related waste to surface and ground waters through tighter environmental standards.”

Talking to the BBC, Dr Shubhi Sharma, scientific researcher at environmental charity Chem Trust, said that the measures in the plan should not be prioritised over regulating PFAS at ‘source’.

Where the plan falls short of measures being taken elsewhere, for example in France, is that it does not call for a total ban on the use of PFAS in consumer products. Instead, the plan sets out measures to investigate how production methods of items such as pizza box packaging and popcorn bags might be modified, and to explore the development of alternatives to items, such as water-repellent clothing and footwear. It will issue guidance to help industrial sites reduce emissions through better handling, monitoring and disposal of PFAS, and is considering a ban on the use of these chemicals in fire-fighting foam by 2027.

Identifying the true cost of PFAS to society

With the UK identifying the need for better monitoring to inform future regulatory changes, a recent report from the European Commission sheds some light on the best course of action to remediate PFAS pollution by estimating the total societal costs across four future scenarios.

Costs include:

• Estimated health costs from human exposure to PFOA, PFOS, PFHxS and PFNA
• Remediation/treatment costs
• Ecosystem treatment costs of PFAS pollution 

These were calculated across four scenarios:

• Scenario 1: Business as usual – a do-nothing approach where remediation costs are low but health costs are high
• Scenario 2: Drinking Water Directive – where remediation costs tackle drinking water pollution and treatment
• Scenario 3: Environmental Quality Standards – where broader environmental standards determine higher costs of remediation treatment, but where health costs are expected to be lower
• Scenario 4: Immediately stopping the production and use of PFAS.

Calculations in the report reveal that the cheapest way to tackle PFAS pollution remediation is under Scenario 4, which puts the total cost at €330 billion between 2024 and 2050.

Scenario 3 is expected to cost the most at a staggering €1.7 trillion, largely due to soil remediation and wastewater treatment costs.

Scenarios 1 and 2 have similar costs, €340 billion and 350 billion, because drinking water accounts for a small fraction of human exposure.

Limitations of the current study

Jessika Roswall, the EU Commissioner for Environment, Water Resilience and Competitive Circular Economy, writing on LinkedIn, summed up the report, explaining that it “sends a clear message: we must act on PFAS”, adding, “PFAS pollution has serious consequences for human health, the environment, and society as a whole.”

Roswall also spelt out the major limitation in the report, that it only covered four of the many thousands of chemicals in the PFAS family, which means the costs represent a conservative estimate. “Even so,” she writes, “the figures are striking”. Drinking water treatment alone may not be the long-term answer to PFAS pollution.

Oliver Loebel, secretary general at EurEau, went further in a statement, stating: “These figures are mind-blowing. And most of the financial burden will fall upon water service providers. Banning only PFAS in consumer products will not be enough to avoid dramatic consequences. Industrial uses are responsible for massive PFAS emissions. This includes TFA, which is particularly difficult to remove from water.”