Water boards and Vewin: no limited but total ban on PFAS

The Dutch Vewin water companies and the Union of Water Boards believe that there should be a complete EU ban on the use of all PFAS substances in the environment. In doing so, they go further than the cabinet that wants to continue to allow PFAS to a limited extent and only wants to use it in non-essential applications. What those are is not yet clear.

Vewin and the Union of Water Boards have called on EU environmental commissioner Frans Timmermans to ban all PFAS substances. They did this last week in a conversation with the top official of the cabinet of the Vice-President of the European Commission.

The only way to tackle and phase out PFAS, they say, is to approach the source. Once in the water or in the soil, the substances are difficult to remove. They therefore believe that it should be prevented as much as possible that PFAS can end up in the environment.

An opinion from the European Food Safety Agency (EFSA) said last year that the PFAS substances are even more harmful than previously thought. The Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) advises to further reduce the total amount that people ingest during their lives through food and drinking water.

The Netherlands recently proposed a ban for non-essential applications with a number of EU countries. Since 2020, the Netherlands has been working together with Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Norway. All non-essentially harmful PFAS substances, about 6,000 in total, will be banned at once.

That makes this proposal the most comprehensive and complex ban to date. However, the proposal still leaves room for exceptions for applications that are seen as indispensable. Vewin and the Union do not think it goes far enough. They are emphatically calling for a total ban.

At the beginning of this year, the European Commission published the zero pollution action plan. In it, the EU will tackle environmental pollution at source and Brussels will ensure that the polluter pays for it. Vewin and the Union also want these principles of the EU environmental policy to be strictly applied to the regulation of PFAS substances.