In Pierre-Bénite, it’s very simple, they are everywhere. In the water, in the air, in the earth. Perfluorinated, or PFAS, are found in breast milk. Worse: these chemical pollutants have the particularity of being “eternal”, that is to say that they do not degrade. So the more we produce, the more we add. The human body also accumulates them.
Martin Boudot, investigative journalist, investigated the perfluorides in Pierre-Bénite for Correspondent (France 2). Two days before the broadcast of his report, he presented his results on Tuesday evening at the Maison de l’Environnement in Lyon. “I did not expect such high rates, especially at the stadium, where the kids play,” he admits.
Substances present in daily life
Martin Boudot has been studying perfluorides for a long time, and the scandals they have already caused in Belgium, Holland and Italy. ” And in France ? he wondered. “I looked for companies that used perfluorides, thanks to scientific publications, and two hotspots appeared: one in Oise, the other in Pierre-Bénite,” he explains. In this town south of Lyon are located the industrial sites of Daikin and Arkama, which produce and reject these substances that are found in many everyday consumer products: food packaging, insulation, raincoats, etc.
The journalist went to take air, water and soil samples near these sites and gave them to Professor Jacob de Boer for analysis. The expert’s results are even more alarming than expected. Perfluorinated levels are extremely high, and carry significant health risks. “It weakens the immune system as a whole, and it reduces the vaccine response, especially in children,” says Martin Boudot. “Not to mention the multiple carcinogenic effects, on the liver, the kidneys… And the hormonal disruptive component. »
In the absence of standards, a ban recommended
Can manufacturers do without these substances used since the 1960s? Scientists, in any case, advocate their prohibition. The European Commission too, which “announced a law last week which will allow Member States, no longer to ban substance after substance – there are 4,500 perfluorinated substances – but family by family”, specifies Martin Boudot. “The States still have to take it over, including France, which has been lagging behind for a long time. »
Indeed, France is seriously behind on the question of standards: “We have almost none, or even none on perfluorinated substances”, adds the journalist. “We have to go through European standards. It’s both a health and environmental scandal, but also a political one, because nothing has been done in the past ten years, while our neighbors have been warning people at home for a long time to reduce exposure to perfluorides”, recalls -he.
Message received by the metropolis of Lyon and the prefecture of the Rhône
Like any health scandal, the perfluoride scandal extends well beyond Pierre-Bénite: Santé Publique France carried out a recent study showing that almost every French person has traces of perfluoride in their body. “The question is really political,” insists Martin Boudot. And it was heard.
Shortly after the presentation of the results of its investigation, the metropolis of Lyon declared in a press release that “the fight against the health scourge of industrial pollution must above all go through the extension of national and European standards and regulations”, and by ” a strengthening of controls (…) urgently”.
The Rhône prefecture, for its part, declared that the State services were going to set up “very soon an in-depth monitoring of perfluorinated discharges. On the basis of this surveillance, (…) the inspectorate of classified installations will visit each operator and will endeavor to supervise the discharges of the substances concerned”.