The Threats of PFAS on Human Rights, the so-called “Forever Chemicals” | Geneva Toxic Free Talks

About this Event

PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) are thousands of synthetic chemicals. Called “forever chemicals,” they are virtually indestructible (persistence), spread throughout the environment (water, air, soil), and accumulate in the human body (bioaccumulation).

Their water-repellent, stain-resistant, and slip-resistant properties, make them ubiquitous in our daily lives: in our kitchens, our clothes, our packaging, and the products we apply to our skin.

PFAS contamination can compromise the rights to physical integrity, the highest attainable standard of health, to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation, and to a healthy environment, including a safe and healthy working environment, among others, by contaminating drinking water supplies, food chains and household environments.

For communities with limited access to environmental monitoring, healthcare, or remediation resources ability to identify or address exposures is largely reduced, perpetuating unequal health risks and environmental burdens. Such inequities reinforce longstanding power imbalances in the global chemicals economy and raise pressing questions about shared responsibilities, capacity-building and the obligations of States to prevent transboundary harms.

In this discussion, including the UN Special Rapporteur on toxic substances and human rights — whose report will be presented at the 63^rd session in September — we will examine the significance of the threats and adverse impacts of PFAS for the effective enjoyment of human rights, as well as the legal and institutional responses already developed and the persistent challenges to ensuring fundamental rights, including the right to health, to life, to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, to equality, to information, and to justice.

Speakers

By order of intervention.

Highlights

Video

Summary

Yves LADOR | Representative to the United Nations in Geneva, Earthjustice

• PFAS have become one of the prominent issues in pollution debates.
• For quite a while, however, they did not make headlines at all. There are unfortunately quite a lot of reasons to be very concerned about what we are discovering about this long-standing pollution and the way it is accumulating almost everywhere, in our bodies and in our environment.
• Today, we discuss this issue from a very specific angle, which is the question of human rights.
• Significantly, the last report of the UN Special Rapporteur on toxics and human rights is on PFAS. It will be presented in September by your successor at the Human Rights Council.

Keynote Presentation

Marcos ORELLANA | UN Special Rapporteur on toxics and human rights

• PFAS represent a global threat to the effective enjoyment of human rights, and there should be an immediate ban on all non-essential uses of PFAS.
• How did the toxics and human rights mandate become involved with this class of chemicals?
• In the very first visit that I conducted in 2021 to Italy, there was a significant amount of information received on widespread contamination with PFAS in the Veneto region. More than 100,000 people were affected through their drinking water. Mothers provided testimonies about how concerned they were that they had passed PFAS in their blood to their children through their milk, through breastfeeding.
• Every country visit has raised this issue of PFAS. As is well known, in preparation for country visits, there is a call for inputs, and that is where there is engagement with a broad range of stakeholders in the country. Invariably, those contributions have raised PFAS as an issue of concern.
• This mandate has sent several communications. These are letters of allegation sent to States, for example, to Sweden involving PFAS contamination; to France; to the United States involving PFAS contamination in North Carolina; to the Netherlands involving the export of PFAS hazardous waste to the United States; to companies that manufacture PFAS and others; and to the United States once again concerning its air bases in Okinawa, Japan, as well as to Japan. There is therefore a body of analysis that has emerged.
• Now, why PFAS? Why now, in a thematic report?
• We are seeing around the world the mobilization of communities that are contesting the impacts they are suffering in their bodies, in their territories, and in their environment. They are seeking and demanding justice.
• Several governments around the world are beginning to regulate PFAS, and there are different levels of standards and of environmental justice.
• PFAS, however, are not only a local problem proliferating in various places, especially in the Global North, where the bulk of PFAS manufacturing takes place. They are a problem of global concern, and that is because PFAS are highly persistent. That is why they are called “forever chemicals.” They will remain for decades, centuries, if not millennia.
• They are virtually impossible to destroy. Even with attempts at incineration at 1,400 degrees Celsius, not all PFAS will be destroyed.
• PFAS are also included in products that enter international trade and are then spread throughout the world. They then become waste and begin to leach out the PFAS. They contaminate the leachate, the contaminated water that comes out of landfills or dumps, and that contaminates water and the environment around the world.
• Then there is plastic. PFAS are introduced into plastics; plastic waste leaks into the oceans; plastic waste is moved across boundaries.
• One more issue concerning the global dimension is the export of PFAS technology. The case of the Miteni facility in Italy is instructive. I had the opportunity to visit this site during the country visit.
• This facility was closed. Its executives faced criminal prosecution in Italy. They were sentenced to a number of years for their responsibility in serious environmental crimes. I would have expected the means by which the crimes were committed to have been confiscated and destroyed. Instead, they were auctioned, sold, and then taken to India, where they were set up. Now there is a facility in India that is producing PFAS. The export of hazardous technologies is therefore something that we are seeing play out here as well.
• There is a range of human rights impacts associated with PFAS exposure. The right to life, the right to health, and the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment are all engaged in the proliferation of sacrifice zones resulting from PFAS pollution.
• PFAS are a class of chemicals. They are synthetic chemicals that do not have analogues in the natural world. There are more than 10,000 chemicals in this class, and every day there is new production of PFAS.
• None have been found to be safe. Some have been found to be slightly toxic; others have been found to be very toxic. Even slight toxicity, coupled with long time frames of persistence, is being raised in the scientific literature as a concern for the right to a healthy environment.
• PFAS find their way into a number of products, such as textiles, cookware, plastics, PFAS pesticides, and firefighting foams, which have been a major use as well.
• All of this is having an impact on the workers in facilities that produce PFAS, or that use PFAS and incorporate them into their products. It affects fence-line communities, but also the broader population.
• More than 100 contributions were received in response to the call for inputs for this thematic report.
• According to the contributions received, the findings and results of blood testing reveal that no one in the Netherlands has blood without PFAS.
• This is a stark statistic that puts into question what kind of world we are delivering to our children. It demonstrates the toxification of the planet as an element of the triple planetary crisis.
• There are other human rights implicated, including the right to information. At least since the 1970s, corporations involved in the business of producing PFAS knew about the toxic dimensions, toxic risks, and toxic properties of these chemicals, and yet they failed to disclose this information. There is litigation on this point as well.
• This failure to disclose has implications for the right to information. Disinformation campaigns concerning these risks have implications for the right to science.
• Certainly, communities are mobilizing. Governments are also mobilizing and suing to recover the costs of cleanup and other costs. There is therefore a question of access to justice and remedies.
• The Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (SAICM) has identified PFAS as an issue of international concern. That has led to a range of initiatives at the multilateral level.
• There are PFAS molecules or specific chemicals that have been included in the annexes of the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, either for elimination or restriction.
• The Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer is also an important instrument that has potential in relation to PFAS because of its conceptualization of how essential uses can be articulated to provide flexibility for countries where certain uses may be deemed essential for society.
• There is therefore the technology-forcing dimension of eliminating deleterious impacts and risks, coupled with flexibility.
• The Basel Convention could also address more strongly the issue of PFAS-contaminated waste.
• There is a lot of activity at the national and regional levels, both through regulation and litigation. But since time is always tight, let me reiterate a key point that emerges from this analysis: the call for an immediate ban on all non-essential uses of PFAS. This is a key recommendation.
• There are several more. For example, the instruments mentioned can be strengthened. Other UN entities and organizations could engage with the issue of PFAS, including the International Labour Organization, the World Health Organization, and the Global Framework on Chemicals, which is holding its first international conference later this year.
• It is on the agenda that this conference will decide how to engage with issues of international concern, and PFAS could certainly be included in that.
• Comprehensive remedies are certainly an issue of utmost importance for communities, but also for governments, based on the polluter-pays principle.
• There are also opportunities in the negotiations for the international treaty on plastic pollution, the INC process that is ongoing, to address PFAS and other chemicals of concern in plastics.
• There are likewise opportunities in the negotiations for the legally binding instrument on transnational corporations and other business enterprises with respect to human rights, particularly regarding the responsibilities of businesses in connection with the impacts of PFAS.

Panel Discussion

Sara BROSCHÉ | Science Advisor, IPEN

• IPEN is a global network of public-interest civil society organizations. There is a wide network of civil society organizations in over 130 countries. Many of my colleagues around the world live in countries where there is much less data than in the EU, the US, and other countries.
• IPEN is an organization that works on a scientific basis. One of the key strategies is to show data on impacts and exposures in countries, especially countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America, Eastern Europe, and other regions. In many cases, this is the only data that exists for these countries on certain exposures.
• Using that data, connecting these issues across different regions of the globe, and bringing them to these international policy spaces is a crucial tool. It is also crucial for parties and government participants in meetings such as the Open-ended Working Group of the Basel Convention.
• PFAS have been a core issue of IPEN’s work for several decades to showcase the health impacts of PFAS.
• Together with their persistence and their ability to travel long distances to the Arctic and other remote locations, this is a huge issue of concern.
• Coming back to the issue of the lack of data, it is really important to understand that, in countries where there is less data on PFAS, this does not mean that there is no harm. It is really important instead to look at the vast wealth of scientific studies and data that exist in the EU, the US, and elsewhere on the harm that is caused.
• You must think about the countries where there is no data, or little data, and realize that the problem is probably just as bad, or worse, there. A lack of data does not mean a lack of harm. Instead, it is a major cause for concern.
• We have seen in studies that we have conducted that PFAS are in water. They are in food. They are in the clothes we wear. They are in the popcorn that you eat while watching the World Cup. They are everywhere.
• These are some of the studies that we have conducted to really highlight the need for action.
• If you have less data in a country, you probably still have violations of human rights, including the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, but also the right to a safe and healthy working environment.
• Someone is producing the clothes. Someone is producing the other products that use PFAS.
• There must be global policies to protect people everywhere. It should not only be a few progressive countries that take action on this issue.
• Even in those countries, you cannot fully protect people because PFAS move across boundaries without any controls. You need national action, as well as regional and international action.
• Also, without global measures, there will be countries where chemicals are shipped and dumped, and where people become even more exposed.
• There are very many PFAS chemicals. There is a need to have a class-based or group-based approach in order to act more quickly on these chemicals.
• We encourage parties to the different conventions, and countries that engage in various UN processes, to take action and utilize the instruments that we have under the BRS Conventions, the Global Framework on Chemicals, and all the other UN and agency spaces.
• Many tools could be used but are not being used today. There is also the question of whether there is a need for new instruments, which should, in that case, also be considered.

Hélène DUGUY | Environmental Law Specialist/Jurist, Clean Air, Water and Soil, ClientEarth

• I am a lawyer, and I have been working on chemicals issues at ClientEarth for six years now, both from an advocacy perspective, looking at regulation and whether it is enough or not, and also from a litigation perspective.
• They are actually very much related to the many human rights infringements that we are seeing in this area.
• First of all, being in Brussels, we deal mostly with PFAS from a European perspective, or more specifically from a European Union perspective. There is quite a gap between the scientific evidence on PFAS and the state of regulation.
• We have very fragmented legislation in the EU dealing with PFAS from different angles, including from an environmental angle. We have, for example, some guidance values and limit values in water. Also, we have emission-control measures through different instruments and substance-by-substance regulation, which is obviously not enough to deal with the PFAS problem as a whole, because PFAS are a broad group of chemicals.
• It has also been extremely slow because we know that we have had information about the impacts of these chemicals since the 1960s, or at least the companies that produced these chemicals in the first place had this information.
• There is therefore a lot of knowledge that we have, and that we had, and we are still not acting on it. This is creating a lot of frustration and a lack of protection for people.
• We see at the national level a reactive approach to public action because, obviously, national States are the ones that have to deal with the ongoing pollution.
• For example, Belgium is one of the most polluted countries in Europe. There are many hotspots in the country and almost no action, or no regulatory action. There are only reactive approaches, such as creating “no-regret zones” where people cannot eat certain foods or cannot drink water.
• In France, some people have also been prevented from drinking tap water. It goes quite far. On the other hand, there is not much being done to cut the pollution at its source.
• That is the state of regulation.
• What we have noticed at ClientEarth is that citizens are trying to take the matter into their own hands.
• As in the US, we have seen a surge in legal actions, and we have a diversity of claimants. They can be residents, including affected residents, but they can also be municipalities. Drinking-water companies and certain operators are also now going to court.
• Different legal routes have been used. People are trying to be very creative, not only to obtain compensation and seek reparation, but also really to push for a PFAS phase-out.
• We have administrative cases seeking to remove permits, for example. We also have criminal cases that go beyond simply seeking compensation for damages and really try to hold criminally accountable and liable the people who made those decisions in the first place.
• That is the state of play that we have observed at ClientEarth. We also agree that only a ban can really mitigate this situation for the future.
• At present, obviously, much more needs to be done regarding pollution, decontamination, and investment in research and innovation so that we actually have the means to get rid of the current pollution.

Mickaël REPELLIN | Co-founder and Executive Director, Interdisciplinary Institute for Environmental Health Research and Information (IEHRI-PIRSE) and University of Lausanne

• I will focus my presentation on why PFAS, as endocrine disruptors, expose the structural limits of existing regulation and what human rights law can offer.
• PFAS are presented as “forever chemicals,” which is true. But we often forget that we are talking about endocrine disruptors: molecules that actively interfere with the hormonal system.
• The persistence is real. The carbon-fluorine bond resists degradation. But this persistence is not the only problem. The endocrine-disrupting interference is the health issue.
• To go back quickly to what a typical endocrine-disrupting chemical does, the first point is that it has a non-monotonic dose-response. This means that there can be effects at low doses and that there is no demonstrable threshold.
• We should mention bodily persistence, especially for PFAS. For example, PFOS can have a half-life in the human body of up to five years. We also have transgenerational effects and critical vulnerability windows, especially during fetal life, infancy, and puberty, when exposure to PFAS is most harmful.
• We have health costs that are deferred, invisible, and multiplied across generations.
• The current regulatory responses are not adequate. Threshold-based instruments presuppose a linear dose-response, which is not the case for endocrine-disrupting chemicals, to which PFAS belong.
• Substance-by-substance prohibitions face the same limitation because we replace one substance with another. That is why the immediate solution is an immediate ban.
• But what about the existing pollution? Both thresholds and prohibitions look forward, but what can address the pollution that has already occurred, with tonnes of PFAS produced and spread into the environment since the 1950s?
• We have existing instruments. We have litigation, including criminal and administrative litigation, with this case-by-case approach.
• We also have international environmental law, and some representatives are here. For example, the Basel Convention. Taking the specific example of technical guideline BC-5/6, which provides specific guidance on the environmentally sound management of PFAS waste. It requires the restriction of contaminated materials, not recycling, which can itself result in contamination. It is tricky.
• We also have other forums, such as the Global Framework on Chemicals. It integrates health and human rights dimensions, but it remains voluntary.
• We therefore have a gap, and international human rights law offers an opportunity to fill this gap.
• International human rights law is positive law. It is binding on States, with concrete obligations. It is also a mature framework, with many rights.
• PFAS contamination implicates many rights, such as the right to health, safe food, a clean environment, and a safe working environment.
• I would like to focus on three specific points to illustrate the role that international human rights law can play.
• First, I would like to draw a link with due diligence in light of the recent 2025 advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice.
• It was delivered in the context of climate change, but it reaffirmed general principles of customary international law applicable to all significant environmental harm.
• PFAS contamination, as a persistent, diffuse, and transboundary harm with documented health consequences, falls within that scope.
• The Court establishes that a clean and healthy environment is a precondition for human rights. Under general customary international law, it also reaffirmed the due diligence obligation to prevent significant environmental harm, including by regulating private actors.
• In the PFAS case, this standard is met. States must not delay action because of scientific uncertainty, because the science on PFAS is not that uncertain. Due diligence intensifies as scientific knowledge grows. The evidence on endocrine-disrupting chemicals raises the legal standard applicable to States.
• This advisory opinion is reinforced by human rights treaties. If we look at the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, General Comment No. 14 states that States must protect individuals from third-party interference with the right to health, including by regulating private actors affecting environmental determinants of health.
• States should therefore demonstrate whether or not they have acted in relation to what they should have done regarding PFAS.
• Another point concerns procedural obligations that are applicable right now to existing PFAS pollution.
• For example, the right to information implies active biomonitoring that makes invisible contamination more visible.
• There is also the right to participation, with the participation of different communities in remediation decisions. It raises the right to an effective remedy, with mechanisms that are accessible in practice and not only in principle. These obligations apply to existing contamination.
• The third point concerns persons in situations of vulnerability.
• States must give particular attention to persons in situations of vulnerability, such as women, children, low-income communities, and workers, who bear a disproportionate burden.
• For PFAS as endocrine-disrupting chemicals, this has a striking scientific alignment. The critical vulnerability windows mentioned previously- fetal development, infancy, and puberty- correspond precisely to the situations in which human rights law already mandates heightened protections.
• Biology and the law converge on the same populations at the same moments.
• The human rights-based approach offers a real opportunity. The endocrine effects of PFAS are documented across many sources, and perhaps we should have a more general approach, for example through the One Health approach or the planetary health approach.
• That would allow this human rights-based approach not to be considered in isolation, but also to consider damage to ecosystems and other species.
• This is the core of our message at IEHRI-PIRSE.

Marcos ORELLANA | UN Special Rapporteur on toxics and human rights

• As the report documents, there is a significant volume of scientific evidence demonstrating the risks and harms associated with several PFAS already.
• Much of the evidence has focused on well-known PFAS, such as PFOA and PFOS, among others.
• At one point, it was thought that only long-chain PFAS were problematic. More recently, however, a category of short-chain or ultra-short-chain PFAS, such as TFA, has been presented by the Government of Germany to the European Chemicals Agency as problematic.
• The fact that we do not have data does not mean that these chemicals are safe. It simply means that we do not know, and there are many inferences that we can draw from the data that we do have.
• In relation to the precautionary principle, this leads to the treatment of PFAS as a class.
• Secondly, regarding persistence, as an international community, we have been here before.
• For example, polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, were widely used in electricity distribution systems. Even if electricity is important for our economy, PCBs were found to be problematic for human health, and we, as the international community, took the decision to eliminate them.
• It has been very difficult, but action has been taken and the process is ongoing.
• Similarly, with chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer is widely regarded as perhaps the most successful international treaty of all time.
• What did it do? It eliminated CFCs because of their impact on the ozone layer.
• The Montreal Protocol has also begun to regulate substitutes. This is where the Montreal Protocol could begin to regulate certain PFAS that result from the degradation of substitutes for ozone-depleting substances.
• The third point is to echo Mickaël Repellin’s analysis of the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice in connection with climate change.
• In that opinion, the Court was very clear in identifying customary international legal duties concerning the prevention of environmental harm and cooperation in respect of environmental issues.
• These duties were articulated in the context of climate change, but the Court addressed a global threat. PFAS represent such a global threat to environmental health and human health. The underlying premises that support the Court’s reasoning are therefore also applicable to the issue of PFAS.
• There is an important opportunity here. It is late, in the sense that we have known about this problem for several decades. Companies knew even before the public knew.
• But now we have sufficient evidence. We have duties. We have an opportunity to act.
• It is better late than never.

Open Discussion

The PFAS legislative landscape is quite fragmented, with different PFAS definitions, different timelines, thresholds, and requirements adopted by different agencies, including the US Environmental Protection Agency, and so on. Several countries and US states have banned PFAS in consumer goods, such as cosmetics or textiles.

Marcos ORELLANA | UN Special Rapporteur on toxics and human rights

• First of all, there are differing regulatory standards in various jurisdictions around the world. The standards adopted by the United States in respect of certain PFAS in drinking water are not the same as those adopted, for example, in the European Union or in Japan.
• This divergence in standards is something that is built into the comparative environmental legal landscape. It comes out of the design established since the 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment, which recognized that each country, by virtue of its sovereignty, would develop its own environmental policy.
• But what that means is that while the human body is the same, depending on where you live, you may have more or less protection.
• This is therefore an area in which efforts toward upward harmonization and the strengthening of standards are important. That is where international cooperation becomes so critical, because many countries lack the resources to develop risk assessments, hazard assessments, or the scientific basis needed to establish standards.
• They therefore need to rely on the work of international agencies that channel and convene international scientific knowledge.
• The second point concerns the potential pitfalls of exemptions.
• In my opening remarks, I mentioned the call for an immediate ban on all non-essential uses. This invites a conversation about what constitutes an essential use. This can be informed by the practice and experience of the Montreal Protocol.
• The Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants also has experience in dealing with exemptions.
• The risk is that the exemptions swallow the rule and undermine the regulatory approach.
• That is where the technology-forcing dimensions of the Montreal Protocol are so important. Exemptions are only available after the control period has expired. Within that period, the parties to the Protocol need to take action to comply with the requirements of the instrument and the relevant schedules.

Yves LADOR | Representative to the United Nations in Geneva, Earthjustice | Moderator

• What you showed about this lack of data is quite dramatic. How do you see possible improvements? Do you have specific calls, for example, concerning developing countries? Do you think the different mechanisms within the existing conventions on toxics are sufficient?
• Do you think, for example, that human rights mechanisms could be more useful? How do you see these different elements as we try to link the two areas?

Sara BROSCHÉ | Science Advisor, IPEN

• PFAS are the same everywhere in the world. You do not have to wait to have data from all countries. You know the toxicity, you know the hazards, you know the uses. There are PFAS pesticides, PFAS plastics, PFAS firefighting foams, and so on, and these are everywhere.
• When I underscore the lack of data, it is not to say that more data are needed. Even if there are no data, there has to be action. There has to be preventive and precautionary action in these countries as well. That includes national action, but also international action.
• International action is so important because it also supports these countries by ensuring that everyone is operating within the same framework.
• Connecting this back to the Basel Convention meeting, for example, we do not only need to ban all the different uses and different types. We also need to deal with the waste that already exists, as well as the waste that will result from those bans. How do you deal with that waste in a safe and environmentally sound way, and so on?

Yves LADOR | Representative to the United Nations in Geneva, Earthjustice | Moderator

• Can we say that this needs a universal approach rather than just a geographically limited one?

Sara BROSCHÉ | Science Advisor, IPEN

• Yes, absolutely. And not only universally in the geographical sense. You also have to look at the different uses.
• If you look at pesticides, you have labour issues, you have issues that would fall under the FAO, and so on. That is also why I think it is so important to understand that this is not only an environmental issue. It is not only a human rights issue.
• It is complex. There are many different aspects, but they all need to be addressed, and they all offer opportunities for action as well.
• The complexity is also an opportunity.

Q: When you hear about this element of complexity, and also think about what is happening in the EU region, one comment that we hear very often is: “You have REACH. REACH covers all of this.”

Hélène DUGUY | Environmental Law Specialist/Jurist, Clean Air, Water and Soil, ClientEarth

• We currently have a restriction in the EU that is being discussed. Basically, the EU took the initiative to propose an actual ban on all PFAS, except for critical uses without alternatives.
• That was the initial proposal, three years ago. We then had two scientific committees concluding that this approach was the right one.
• That was very encouraging, especially the committee dealing with risks, which considered that we really need a ban. That is the only way to tackle this issue.
• The EU is on the right track in the sense that it understands that cutting pollution at source through a ban is really the only way.
• We are soon going to enter the political stage. We are probably going to see more exemptions coming in and more lobbying trying to derail the EU from its objective. We are already seeing many exemptions being discussed, some of which are not necessarily essential.
• In the EU, but also in many countries, we have the problem that criticality is mostly measured in terms of costs for industry, rather than in terms of a lack of alternatives or criticality about the technical feasibility of substitution.
• This is an ongoing discussion.
• In the meantime, the most realistic goal is to push Member States to do something immediately. They have the obligation, and in many cases the practical obligation, to do something about their situation.
• At ClientEarth, we have really been looking at States and trying to push them to do something, even though that does not prevent the EU or other international jurisdictions from taking action.
• The regional, local, and national levels are the most realistic scales for taking action.

Q: How do you see the question of human rights becoming involved in this discussion? 

Mickaël REPELLIN | Co-founder and Executive Director, Interdisciplinary Institute for Environmental Health Research and Information (IEHRI-PIRSE) and University of Lausanne

• Human rights, especially international human rights law, come as a body of rules that are already applicable and enforceable.
• It is an argument that brings more judicialization to the issue of PFAS, because we already have existing law, and it covers the other side of PFAS, which is PFAS pollution.
• It directly brings concrete solutions, or at least ideas for concrete solutions. It should also carry weight in local and national debates.
• This human rights-based approach is an argument to push local, national, and international authorities to better frame the issue of PFAS.

Closing

Marcos ORELLANA | UN Special Rapporteur on toxics and human rights

• I would like to comment on a recent case in which the Australian Government sued 3M for failing to disclose important information about the risks of PFAS.
• When I visited Australia, in my country visit report I spoke about the efforts of the Australian Government at the Commonwealth level, and particularly the Department of Defence, as a good practice. These efforts involved characterizing PFAS pollution around air bases and engaging in dialogue with affected communities, including through settlements for the harms suffered by these communities.
• There can be discussions about whether the settlements are adequate. In my report, I point out one of the limitations of those settlements: they do not address health impacts.
• We have not seen the documents relating to this recent complaint by the Commonwealth of Australia against this manufacturer, but reportedly it does not involve claims for compensation for health impacts.
• This relates to an important point: what is needed here are comprehensive remedies.
• It is not only a matter of compensation for the loss of property or for cleanup. It is also about putting an end to the emissions and releases of pollution. It is also about dealing with the health impacts suffered by the population, including the mental health anguish of knowing that, at any moment, people may acquire or contract terminal diseases.
• It concerns the pain suffered by lactating mothers who know that they are giving their children PFAS through their milk.
• This point about comprehensive remedies brings to light the importance of a human rights-based approach to the sound management of chemicals and waste and, in this specific instance, to PFAS.
• There is a lot that needs to be done. There is a lot of fragmentation at the multilateral, regional, and national levels. But there is also a great deal of opportunity.

Photos

Documents

• Presentations made during the event

Links

• Forever Chemicals (PFAS) & Human Rights (Call for Submissions page) | UN Special Rapporteur on toxics and human rights
• Environment @ 62nd Session of the UN Human Rights Council
• Geneva Toxic Free Talks
• Human Rights, Hazardous Substances, and the Role of Geneva

Photo Credits

European Environmental Bureau (EEB)