Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
Unlock the editor’s digestion free
FT editor Roula Khalaf, chooses his favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Has all the work of a toxic dispute. Molecules known as growing evidence, eternal chemicals – cosmetics, cosmetics are used in daily items – in the environment and in the body, can be installed in the damage.
Last year, the previous chemistry organization in the world, the panel’s chemical substances can be properly known or known as polypluoroalkilatural substances or a PFAS known as polypluoroalklar or as Pfas. This was unhappy among some researchers who prevented the reconstruction, narrowing of the definition of definition and regulatory fork prepared by the International Association of Chemistry. The current definition is protesting, based on science and works well; The new initiative argues, motivated by political or economic considerations, More than science.
Their objections deserve to hear. Determining the reasons to redefine a class of chemicals in decades, 9,000 PFAs related to a chemical statement since 2026 says PFASA is “in a difficult way” for about 9,000 PFA. Besides chemistry.
Eternal chemicals, the backbone of carbon atoms with the atoms of Florine, were developed for the first time in the 1940s. The resistance to their fat, fat and water has hit them commercial. However, the same qualities allowed the molecules to be shattered – water, land and air, in the food chain, blood and human organs. Items were different in cancer, obesity and falling productivity. Including 3M and Dupont, manufacturers paid a huge amount to resolve the claims of the health and the environment related to the environment.
The exact number of legacy and novel pipes is uncertain because some are corrected, but documented; The figures between 5,000 and 12,000 are often quoted. Their dissemination, along with health and environmental concerns, caused an OECD concert Peer-Reviewed Definition Designed to seize a full range of fluorized molecules. In 2021, it was concluded in the entrance to the world’s chemical agencies.
In the environment Science & Technology Letters, 20 Protest Academy This month can be any fresh IPAC maneuver “can be able to rule out certain prescribed chemistry subgroups in the amount of existing definitions.” Given that the union is accepted as the final judges of everything chemicalIncluding, including the names of the elements of the new periodic table, will hold a controversy. The letter continues: “There may be an IPAC-LIQUE and potentially narrow pfas definition … affects regulatory authorities and less protective policy to others.”
The letter of protest was developed by MicroPolutants researcher Gabriel Sigmund at the University of Wageningen in the Netherlands. Among others, the United States, Canada, England, Sweden, Sweden and the scientists in Switzerland, employed in OECD. He learned FT as they added the signatures of more than 200 scientists.
A sea ecotoxicologist Alex Ford in the UK University Alex Ford, said the concepts, “doubt and confusion” and the reserve principle should dominate the higher the principle. “We still see the harmful effects in the wildlife of the chemicals we have banned in many years ago … they are chemically stable, many mobile and how much we are to them are poisonous.”
As is common enough with academic researchers, at least two members of the new IPAC panel, or the present ties with industry. Co-chair Pierangelo Metrangolo, a member of a Milan-centered chemist, has announced advice for Solvay Solexis, the company of the CV. In 2023, his mother company Solvay is paid for about $ 400 million to solve a PFAS claim in New Jersey.
There is no indicator of Metrangolo. Earlier, the new panel “said he had nothing to complete any results and the subgroup of chemicals would be excluded.” IUPAC did not respond to a request for comment.
It is tempting to glow again as technically, arcane or inappropriate. But for all of us, the definition of the eternal chemicals: the effects of chemicals can continue – the effects of research, industrial practice, regulation and legal responsibility – will come for decades.
