Now we know the staggering costs of cleaning PFAS pollution for Europe

Media all over Europe have now published articles revealing what it will cost to clean-up legacy and pollution caused by a family of over 10 000 man-made chemicals, PFAS (per- and polyfluoralkyl substances), and ongoing emissions in Europe.

A common European challenge

NGI – The Norwegian Geotechnical Institute have been leading several large-scale projects that focus on PFAS remediation, such as ZeroPM and ARAGORN EU.  Arp is not surprised by the high-cost range:

“Having worked on diverse remediation projects and with developing remediation technology, the high range of costs of the remediation were not surprising. It was interesting to see how they scaled up per country and per Europe, and to develop the methodology for these cost calculations with Prof. Ali Ling and the great network of journalists organized by Le Monde. I do see this as an important number to put the Costs of Remediation in a European context, particularly because this is an issue all EU countries share, though some countries are more prepared to tack this than others. One thing we can conclude, though, is the sooner we tackle PFAS remediation and a decrease of PFAS emissions, the cheaper and more impactful remediation actions will be on health costs,” Arp says.

Long-chain and short-chain PFAS scenarios

Arp and Ling (University of St. Thomas School of Engineering, US) conducted two scenarios. First the legacy scenario, which assumes only long-chain PFAS were a problem, and that emissions of these stopped today. Cleaning up the most concentrated sources of long-chain PFAS in Europe would cost €4.8 billion per year. Then the researchers set up an emerging scenario, which considers the cost of remediating short-chain and ultrashort chain PFAS. These short-chain and ultrashort-chain PFAS are extremely mobile and can very easily enter the cells of living creatures. Those molecules are so small they bypass most water filters.

“It would cost around €100 billion every year to remove short-chain and ultrashort-chain PFAS, even partially, from the environment and to destroy them. That’s more than two trillion Euro over 20 years,” Arp says.

The Forever Lobbying Project worked by using the network of journalists in multiple European countries to get information on actual and potential PFAS contaminated sites. Crucial to this was also collecting data on the amount of potential contaminated water and soil, and the costs paid during previous European remediation projects.

A pollution crisis 

PFAS are widely used in consumer products and industrial processes and equipment. PFAS have been linked to illnesses, such as cancers, immune and hormone disruption, and infertility.

In February 2023, five European countries proposed universal restrictions on PFAS. The response of the suggested ban has been an intensive lobbying campaign from industry players across Europe to undermine, and perhaps kill, the proposal.

The Forever Lobbying Project developed the methodology to stress test the lobbying arguments with Gary Fooks (University of Bristol, UK).

Arp’s three main take aways

Arp sums up the main take aways from The Forever Lobbying Project as:

1)     The most cost-effective way of managing PFAS is to prevent production, use and emissions in the first place, as supported by the broad PFAS restriction in the EU

2)     If released, the quicker they are remediated at the point of release, such as from a factory, contaminated soil or contaminated landfill, the cheaper and more effective.

3) Threshold values for in soil and water in EU regulations can facilitate management.

“In our projects we work on diverse aspects to lower exposure from PFAS, ranging from the broad EU PFAS restriction to PFAS remediation. For the broad EU PFAS restriction, in our project ZeroPM, we are looking for alternatives to PFAS in diverse sectors as a way forward for innovation,” Arp says.

 A key example to this is the ZeroPM Alternative Assessment Database, which can be found here: https://zeropm.eu/alternative-assessment-database/.

“Further, we are also developing remediation options that are cheaper and more sustainable, such as combining phytoremediation using biochar to remediate PFAS contaminated topsoil, such as in our project ARAGORN. These actions done collectively and soon will accelerate the pathway towards zero pollution from PFAS.”

For those wanting more details on cost:

The bill for EU 27, Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and the UK: The Bill - The Forever Pollution Project
The methodology: The Cost Methodology - The Forever Pollution Project
Link on TFA impacts: The Global Threat from the Irreversible Accumulation of Trifluoroacetic Acid (TFA) | Environmental Science & Technology