UN human rights rapporteur calls for global PFAS phase-out treaty 

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A UN special rapporteur has called on countries to negotiate a legally binding international agreement to support a global phase-out of PFAS, arguing that existing controls are too fragmented to address the risks posed by the persistent chemicals. 

Marcos Orellana, former UN special rapporteur for toxics and human rights, will present his recommendation to the Human Rights Council later this year, giving the treaty call greater political weight and putting PFAS before governments as an issue for international policymaking. 

His report, published on 27 July, says a future global regulatory framework has the potential to reshape how governments control the chemicals and how companies manage PFAS-containing products, manufacturing processes and supply chains across international markets (see box). 

The treaty should include time-bound exemptions for uses deemed essential to society where alternatives are not yet available, while preventing such exemptions from being abused in ways that undermine restrictions, it says. 

The report, Forever Chemicals and Human Rights, comes shortly after consultation responses submitted to Orellana's review of PFAS and human rights exposed sharp disagreements between governments, industry groups and NGOs over future controls.

Class-based 

Orellana's report supports a class-based approach. It argues that the defining characteristics of PFAS, including extreme persistence, mobility, bioaccumulation and the repeated cycle of replacing restricted PFAS with alternative fluorinated substances, justify regulating the group as a whole.

The report says continued reliance on chemical-by-chemical regulation has repeatedly resulted in "regrettable substitution", with replacement PFAS later found to present their own environmental and health concerns.

As international agreements can take years to negotiate and adopt, the call for a global treaty is accompanied by a recommendation that governments immediately ban all non-essential uses of PFAS.

According to the report, countries should adopt comprehensive laws and policies to phase out PFAS production, use and emissions, while controlling the chemicals' presence in products, industrial processes, air, water, soil and food.

‘Exceptionally persistent’

Orellana argues such action is justified because PFAS are exceptionally persistent and cause irreversible contamination once released into the environment.

"PFAS pose a global environmental threat that concerns not only industrialised countries that produce PFAS and are experiencing the proliferation of contaminated sites and communities but also developing countries that lack the capacities to prevent PFAS pollution in their territories," the report says. 

The report states that while some remediation technologies can remove PFAS from drinking water, eliminating them from ecosystems is effectively impossible.

It also says that no PFAS have been conclusively shown to be safe and that evidence continues to emerge regarding the hazards of replacement substances. 

Earlier in July, the UN appointed Bethanie Carney Almroth as the next special rapporteur on toxics and human rights. The professor of ecotoxicology at Sweden's University of Gothenburg took over from Orellana on 1 August.