Turkey

Inside the unprecedented lobbying effort to sway the EU on PFAS “forever chemicals”

As the European Union considers a historic ban on PFAS, it confronts an industry lobbying hard to keep them on the market. Some Turkish companies have also joined the fight.

By Zeynep Şentek, Sarah Pilz, Craig Shaw, Cemre Demircioğlu
14 January 2025

For more than half a century, a group of synthetic chemicals have been ubiquitous in our homes. They non-stick our pans, waterproof clothes and fabrics, and generally make materials more durable. They are present in firefighting foams, food packages, makeup, computers, and much more. But these miracle chemicals, known as PFAS, are also highly toxic – and stubborn.

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances are called “forever chemicals” because they are almost indestructible; they can never break down naturally and, once emitted, are extremely difficult to scrub from the environment. They are persistent in all living things and habitats, found in the seas, rain, and groundwater, the soil, fish, vegetables, and meats we consume, and present in the blood of every living thing on the planet. PFAS have been linked to cancers, immune and hormone disruption, deformities, infertility, and other illnesses. Scientists, regulators, and civil society call it the “poison of the century,” characterising it as the worst pollution crisis humanity has ever faced.

Right now, the European Union is considering a universal ban on 10,000 PFAS chemicals. Despite decades of scientific evidence on the serious health risks and growing contamination levels in Europe, manufacturers and users of PFAS are working hard to curtail any restriction that might harm their business.

The Forever Lobbying Project, coordinated by the French newspaper Le Monde, brought together 46 journalists from 16 countries with scientists and experts to investigate the ongoing lobbying campaign by the PFAS industry. The project revealed unprecedented efforts by the PFAS manufacturers and users to influence European lawmakers with a view to weaken, or possibly kill, the EU’s proposed ban.

The pioneering collaboration builds on the Forever Pollution Project, launched two years ago, which examined the extent of PFAS contamination throughout Europe.

Journalists and scientists ‘stress tested’ thousands of arguments routinely employed by the PFAS lobby and found them to be misleading, fearmongering, exaggerated, or potentially dishonest. The Forever Lobbying Project also calculated the substantial cost of cleaning up PFAS contamination in Europe if these substances remain unregulated – costs that range from tens to hundreds of billions of dollars.

The Black Sea looked into the PFAS situation in Turkey, including potentially contaminated sites and the claims by prominent Turkish companies who lobbied against the EU’s proposed restriction despite the significant risks to public health. For Turkey, the ban would affect any PFAS-containing materials and goods it exports to the EU, its largest trading partner, with exports valued at €95.5 billion.

EXTRAORDINARY BACKLASH

PFAS are a family of chemicals that came into existence in the late 1940s, when 3M figured out that adding one fluoride atom to eight carbon atoms made a new, highly resistant chemical. In the early 1950s, it began providing PFAS to DuPont, which used it to manufacture Teflon. Soon, 3M found other uses for PFAS, and the resulting products became widespread in households and industry. For decades, the two companies hid the dangers of PFAS on human health.

Today, the exact number of PFAS is uncertain. Current estimates say there are over 10,000, meaning they are probably the most prevalent chemicals in the world today, with most believed to be moderately to highly toxic.

Unlike most other chemicals released into the environment, PFAS do not degrade over time. In fact, they often degrade into new PFAS, like trifluoroacetic acid (TFA), which scientists have yet to fully study. These dangerous traits are why the US Environmental Protection Agency’s director, Michael Regan, called PFAS pollution “one of the most pressing environmental and public health concerns of our modern world.”

Six years ago, five EU countries - Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Netherlands, and Germany - took the ambitious step of working on a proposal for a “universal restriction" on PFAS under the European Union’s REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals) regulation. Last year, the five countries submitted their dossier to the European Chemicals Agency, ECHA.

ECHA determined that “the irreversibility of the process of a growing environmental stock of PFAS, with associated exposure of humans and the environment,” made it “necessary” to regulate them en masse. In other words, the ban would include the entire “PFAS universe” – all ten thousand or so chemicals – but with delays and exemptions possible for key applications, such as medical devices and some food packaging, until alternatives are developed.

ECHA opened a public consultation, and the response was unprecedented. The agency received 5,642 submissions, over 100,000 pages, mainly from industry stakeholders and its lobbyists. “The scale of corporate lobbying around the proposed PFAS restriction is extraordinary,” said Gary Fooks, a corporate harm scholar at the University of Bristol in the UK. “It makes the work of other politically active industries, like Big Tobacco, look small-time in comparison.”

One reason for the industry’s reaction is that PFAS are present in a wide range of products intended for all sorts of applications and products, meaning many industries use them. At the same time, there are only a handful of PFAS manufacturers worldwide, and they are extremely powerful, multi-billion dollar corporate players like 3M, DuPont, Arkema, and Daikin, with virtually limitless resources to sway public and governmental opinion in favour of their industry.

We found 12 responses from Turkish companies to ECHA’s public consultation. While some names are redacted, four of them and their arguments are publicly available. They are Arçelik, Samson, PPG, and Fiberflon.

Companies and associations have lobbied the EU by putting forward a variety of arguments. The Forever Lobbying Project conducted a “stress test” of many of the claims made during the ECHA consultation process, with a focus on the plastic industry. The project looked at 1,000 documents out of 6,500 and, together with experts, studied the veracity of industry claims. Many of the arguments we found to be misleading, fearmongering, exaggerated, or potentially dishonest.

TURKEY ARGUMENTS AND THE MERCHANTS OF DOUBT

PPG and Samson both relied on what the project has termed the “There is no alternative” argument; that the PFAS-containing materials they use are irreplaceable. PPG, a US-based company that runs two factories in Bursa, manufactures bakeware coatings. Samson is headquartered in Germany and produces valves in Hadımköy, on the outskirts of Istanbul. “There is no alternative” to certain PFAS is a routinely employed argument by the industry and lobbyists that has reached the highest levels of European politics.

We found the claim to be rarely accurate. According to a database compiled by ZeroPM, an EU-funded research project, it’s possible to find potential alternatives for two-thirds of the applications identified by the industry. Neither PPG nor Samson state which specific compounds they use to manufacture their products, but the ZeroPM database provides viable alternatives both for bakeware coatings and valves.

Germany-based Fiberflon manufactures coated fabrics, films, and conveyor belts in Ergene. The company argued in its submission that the PFAS it uses, known as fluoropolymers (a subset of PFAS, known by brand names like Teflon and Gore-tex), are “low risk polymers for human health and their environment.” This is a recurring argument made by other industry actors. Experts consulted for the project said this claim is “misleading.”

Lobbyists in Europe usually cite two articles that refer to fluoropolymers as "polymers of low concern according to established criteria by the OECD. However, no such criteria exist. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development told the Forever Lobbying Project that it “has not conducted an assessment of fluoropolymers." The articles were written by employees and consultants of fluoropolymer manufacturers.

In a more glaring case, the white goods giant Arçelik, owner of the Beko brand popular in Turkey and Europe, cited a study that said, “all PFAS should not be grouped together, persistence alone is not sufficient for grouping PFAS for the purposes of assessing human health risk” and that “it is inappropriate to assume equal toxicity/potency across the diverse class of PFAS”.

At first glance, the study cited appears scientific. In reality, it was funded directly by the American Chemistry Council (ACC), a powerful interest group for the chemicals industry in the United States. It was carried out by 13 experts from around the world but in what is termed a “blind” manner, meaning that the authors of the report knew nothing of the other contributors. Ian Cousins, professor of environmental chemistry and a leading PFAS expert at Stockholm University, was one of these authors.

“I was shocked to read that the funding source was ACC,” he said. “I was annoyed that I had been tricked.” Cousins also said the critical views he expressed for the joint conclusion were excluded from the final report.

Arçelik makes a second claim in its ECHA submission. The HFO-HFC gases it uses to manufacture its refrigerators and air conditioning units are “low hazard substances,” it said, and are not persistent and “ultimately degrade in the atmosphere.”

This is misleading. When these gases degrade, they often turn into another type of PFAS called trifluoroacetic acid or TFA. Recent studies show that TFA is highly persistent in water bodies and can accumulate over time, just like other PFAS.

“Our grandfathers had no TFA in their blood when they were born,” said Hans Peter Arp, professor of environmental chemistry at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. “We have quantifiable TFA in our blood, and our grandchildren will have much higher TFA in their blood, even if we stopped emissions soon. This could have severe consequences on the health and the environment for future generations.”

We wrote to Arçelik, PPG, Samson, and Fiberflon requesting interviews about their submissions to ECHA. PPG declined. The rest did not answer.

PFAS IN TURKEY: IN RIVERS, LAKES, FISH, DRINKING WATER

There is limited knowledge of the PFAS situation in Turkey, despite the country being a manufacturing hub for Europe for all sorts of potentially PFAS-containing materials, from textiles to carpets to baking pans and paint.

In 2021, Turkey added PFOS, the original, long-chain version of PFAS, first developed by 3M, into its Persistent Organic Pollutants Regulation. PFOS and PFOA are known as “legacy PFAS” because of their high persistence and toxicity and are no longer manufactured in the US. The EU banned PFOA and restricted PFOS manufacturing. However, China still manufactures both substances. Used to make materials non stick, water repellent, and flame resistant, PFOS is now a restricted substance in Turkey. The regulation allows for an exception of a maximum concentration of 10000 ng/g of PFOS in materials or mixtures and for PFOS-containing products already in use. This one chemical Turkey now loosely regulates is only one of the ten thousand known PFAS.

We found a total of five studies conducted by scientists on PFAS in Turkey. A 2020 PhD thesis discovered that PFAS levels in the Ergene River are many times higher than the legal limit, with textile wastewater contributing significantly to the pollution. According to the Surface Water Quality Regulation, PFOS in rivers and lakes should not exceed 0.65 ng/L annually. In the Ergene River, all tested sites far exceeded this threshold, sometimes by 630%.

A nationwide study of tap and bottled water from 2019 showed widespread PFAS contamination, particularly in the Marmara region, where around 30 million people live. Istanbul had the highest tap water contamination, with PFAS levels as high as 11.27 ng/L. Tap water across 33 cities in Turkey contained significant amounts of these toxic compounds. It was also detected in bottled water, albeit at lower levels. Experts now recommend a threshold of 1 ng/L for drinking water, though this limit will likely be lowered as scientific knowledge on the consequences of exposure grows.

In a recent study, PFAS contamination was also found in various lakes and rivers. The Ergene and Sakarya rivers and the lakes of Küçükçekmece, Büyükçekmece, Terkos, Eğridir and Beyşehir all contain PFOS that exceed the legally allowed limit of 0.65 ng/L. Beyşehir and Eğridir lakes are Turkey’s largest drinking water reserves. The fish sampled from Küçükçekmece and Eğridir lakes revealed measurable PFAS levels.

A 2017 study analysing fish and meat sold in markets in Hatay found alarmingly high PFAS concentrations, particularly in horse mackerel, sea bass, and sardines – the most commonly caught fish in the region. Some of these levels were comparable to the worst contamination recorded worldwide. Fish consumption is a significant exposure route for PFAS for humans. While Turkey has no PFAS limits on food, some of the fish sampled in the study would justify a warning to “only consume one meal per year” for children and pregnant women and only “one meal per six months” for adults, under some U.S. guidelines.

Alongside the facilities that produce PFAS, other major sources of contamination are areas that routinely use a firefighting foam known as Aqueous Film Forming Foam, such as airports, firefighting training sites, oil refineries, and especially military bases. Military bases have been hotspots for PFAS contamination globally due to routine firefighting drills with the AFFF since the 1960s.

A recent drinking-water quality report from the US’s İncirlik Air Base in Adana, Turkey, reveals dangerous levels of PFAS contamination at the base, with some samples as high as 75.6 ng/L. Studies show suppressed immune function and other adverse health effects have been linked with exposure to these chemicals at concentrations as low as 1 ng/L. The İncirlik base has been operational since 1952 and is home to around 2000 personnel at any one time. İncirlik mirrors a broader trend at American military bases, where decades of AFFF use has left hundreds of communities with toxic water supplies.

One study conducted in Europe found that more than 12,000 deaths could be attributed to elevated PFAS exposure each year in EU communities that are in close proximity to chemical plants and sites contaminated by AFFF. There are currently nearly 8,000 lawsuits in the US over AFFF water contamination and its links to liver, kidney, testicular, and thyroid cancers and other health problems like ulcerative colitis and hypothyroidism.

€2 TRILLION OVER 20 YEARS TO CLEAN EUROPE OF PFAS

Europe faces a monumental challenge to ban “forever chemicals,” but the polluting industries and their allies are now attacking this ambitious effort. The lobbying seems to be working. The highest echelons of European politics are repeating the industry soundbites, and countries like Germany, one of the initial proposers of the ban, are quietly backing away. In the meantime, thousands of PFAS continue to contaminate the continent’s land and water, where they find their way into animals and humans.

A study by the Nordic Council of Ministers from 2019 on the ‘Costs of inaction’ put the annual costs to public health in Europe due to global PFAS contamination at between €52 billion and €84 billion.

The Forever Lobbying Project worked with experts to calculate the costs of cleaning up Europe’s PFAS problem. The most conservative estimate shows that decontaminating only priority areas in Europe, like landfills and highly contaminated soil, of legacy PFAS – the original long-chain PFOA and PFOS – would cost €95 billion over 20 years. But this scenario is based on all PFAS emissions ceasing immediately.

If emissions continue unabated, the costs of removing all PFAS, both legacy long-chain and the newer short-chain PFAS, will rise to €100 billion annually: €2 trillion over 20 years. Hans Peter Arp, one of the experts who assisted with the calculations, told the Forever Lobbying Project, “What is essential to keep in mind is that it will always be cheaper for us to stop emitting PFAS than to decontaminate.”

The battle to restrict PFAS in Europe is far from over. While the European Union institutions weigh arguments for and against putting the brakes on PFAS production, the lobbyists are proving as persistent as the chemicals they are lobbying for, looking for any advantage to undermine the efforts. Until a decision is made, however, only one thing is certain. These “miracle chemicals” continue to leach into the ground, into the water, and into every living thing they come in contact with.


Opening image: Stéphane Horel (“Now, you’re safe for years,” 2024)

Edited by Himanshu Ojha

The project received financial support from the Pulitzer Center, the Broad Reach Foundation, Journalismfund Europe, and IJ4EU.

Website: foreverpollution.eu.

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