Tue, Nov 21st 2023
In the greater Paris area, health authorities are advising against the consumption of eggs from private farms due to excessive contamination of the soil with perfluorinated and polyfluorinated alkyl compounds (PFAS).
The health authority ARS announced in Paris on Monday that eating fruit and vegetables from your own garden and gardening itself could also pose a health risk to people in the region.
The warning particularly affects children as well as pregnant and breastfeeding women. The warning does not apply to professionally reared eggs that are supplied to retailers, as hens there are exposed to less contaminated soils.
In 23 out of 25 private henhouses examined, the eggs showed increased contamination with the so-called perpetuating chemicals. According to the authorities, this indicates that the soil in urban areas is generally contaminated with PFAS without this being attributable to a specific source.
The pollution is often the legacy of decades of deposits of materials that decompose over time and release pollutants. In the vicinity of waste incineration plants, the pollution was not significantly different than away from the plants.
PFAS do not occur naturally in the environment and, depending on the substance, persist in the environment for several decades to centuries. In the process, they can accumulate more and more. The group of substances is estimated to include more than 10,000 different chemicals, many of which are highly toxic, especially for the development of children. PFAS are suspected of causing liver damage as well as kidney and testicular cancer, among other things.
Due to their unique characteristics, the substances are used in a large number of mainly industrial products and everyday objects – from anoraks and pans to cosmetics.
According to a report published by the Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN) in October, the harmful chemicals can also be found in groundwater in many places in Switzerland. They were detected at almost half of the monitoring sites in Switzerland. (TST-Editor: ‘The value of 0.1 µg/l, the EU limit for the sum concentration of 20 PFAS in drinking water, is exceeded at approximately 2% of the NAQUA monitoring sites.‘ Source: FOEN Report)
©Keystone/SDA
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