The European population presents a “alarming level of polluting substances” in the body. This is the conclusion of analyzes carried out among citizens from 28 countries of the Old Continent by a bio-monitoring project. The University of Antwerp and the Flemish research center Vito are participating in the study .
The project compares urine and blood samples from 13,000 people to determine the level of chemicals they contain. Result: “the measurements observed for several substances are too high and constitute a non-negligible risk to health“, warn the scientists.
Prohibited substances are still circulating
In many citizens, including children, a particularly high exposure to plasticizers, additives added to plastic materials, has thus been observed. And this, despite the strict regulations governing these substances harmful to reproduction.
Besides, “up to one in four young people have been exposed to toxic industrial concentrations of PFAS, for which adverse health effects can no longer be excluded with certainty“, notes the research team. “These are mainly substances now banned, but extremely persistent, which therefore continue to circulate“.
For scientists, these data show the need to ban all PFAS, since substitutes for already regulated substances have equally worrying properties. PFAS are per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances. “The acronym PFAS refers to perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, a class of chemical substances widely used in household products that make it possible to fireproof or waterproof objects.“, noted this article from National geographic. “Contamination of groundwater, surface water and soil with PFAS has been frequently observed. Cleaning up polluted sites is technically difficult and costly. If they continue to be released, they will continue to accumulate in the environment, in drinking water and in food“, says the European Chemicals Agency.
Finally, a large number of industrial chemicals have been detected in the blood and urine of European citizens. Simultaneous exposure to several substances and the health effects of this cocktail is the subject of another part of the study.
These findings support, according to the research team, “the urgency of an accelerated and more comprehensive policy, while demonstrating the effectiveness of targeted policy measures to reduce human exposure to harmful substances“, she concludes.