Eternal pollutants: a third of our food is contaminated, can we still eat it without getting poisoned?

One wonders if it's still possible to eat without poisoning oneself. The NGO Générations Futures has been looking into the presence of perfluorinated and polyfluorinated alkyls, often called PFAS , in food in Europe. According to its findings, published in a report on June 19, one-third of our food contains them. These "eternal pollutants," so nicknamed because of their persistence in the environment, represent thousands of substances.

The association analyzed data from the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), and the results are alarming. 69% of fish, 55% of offal, 55% of mollusks, 39% of eggs, 27% of crustaceans, 23% of milk, and 14% of meat contain at least one of the four PFAS currently regulated by the European Union . And the contamination doesn't stop there, as seven other PFAS, which the NGO describes as "dangerous," have also been detected.

A worrying, yet fragmentary, observation: "Data on PFAS levels in foodstuffs remain dramatically insufficient," points out Générations Futures. And European regulations are also largely incomplete. As the NGO points out, they only provide for the monitoring of three of these pollutants , and only four have had regulations limit thresholds... for certain foods only: meat, fish, crustaceans and molluscs, and eggs.

"The maximum permitted levels pose a very significant risk for consumers of exceeding the tolerable weekly intake (TWI) established in 2020 by EFSA." With a chilling example: an egg containing one of these substances at the regulatory limit would expose a 4-year-old child to 140% of this tolerable weekly intake.

The reason for this insufficient protection, according to Générations Futures, is to be found in the protection of manufacturers : "These limits have been set at levels high enough so that very few products are withdrawn from the market and thus preserve the economic interests of the sectors."

Especially since France, a poor performer, restricts monitoring to the four substances regulated at the European level and only for fish, offal, and meat. Germany, for its part, has been monitoring PFAS since 2006, based on robust samples. Faced with this scourge, the association recommends banning industrial releases of PFAS, reducing their use, or even reviewing regulations.