EU prepares PFAS ban on consumer products

Exemptions sought by industry as Royal Society of Chemistry calls for national PFAS inventory

THE EUROPEAN UNION (EU) will push ahead with proposals to ban PFAS in consumer products, the EU’s environment commissioner Jessika Roswall told Reuters this week.

Roswall said that any ban is unlikely to be imposed until at least 2026 while the bloc considers exemptions requested by industry.

While PFAS is most well-known as the class of harmful “forever chemicals” used in non-stick pans and firefighting foams, industry figures deem it an “essential” component in industrial processes.

Prior to confirming plans to ban the chemicals from consumer goods, the EU held a six-month review in 2023 which attracted over 3,000 responses from companies that use PFAS, the majority requesting exemptions from any ban. The EU has highlighted asthma inhalers and semiconductors as products that will be subject to some exemptions, although the bloc stressed that disposal of these products will face greater restrictions.

A 2023 report from the European Association of Pump Manufacturers said it would “reject the broad restriction of PFAS, as many vital applications will not work without PFAS materials”. The report pointed to water transport, packaging production, heating, ventilation, and manufacturing as processes dependent on PFAS.

The association added that while it “fully supports the restriction of the release of PFAS into the environment”, the use of PFAS “should remain possible for those applications where no alternatives are available”.

A 2020 study identified over 200 individual uses of PFAS, most of which are industrial applications. According to data reported under the US Toxic Substances Control Act in 2016, at least 2,180 t of PFAS were used as functional fluid in electrical equipment manufacturing. This figure is likely underestimated, as some data remains inaccessible to the public due to commercial sensitivity.

The second largest user of PFAS was the refrigerant manufacturing industry.