More than 17,000 sites across Europe and the UK are contaminated by dangerous forever chemicals, a new investigation has revealed.
These toxic artificial substances – also known as per-and polyfluorinated alkyl substances, or PFAs – are extremely persistent and don’t break down in the natural environment.
They have been linked to a variety of healthconditions – and, according to the Forever Pollution Project, they’re everywhere.
The collaborative investigation detected PFAS at high concentrations of more than 1,000 nanograms a litre of water at about 640 sites. At 300 sites, PFAS levels exceeded 10,000ng/l.