The second targets the marketing and export of Pfas pesticides. “Today, there are Pfas everywhere, even in the snow on the tops of the Alps, in all human bodies… They are eternal pollutants – they are there “forever” – which therefore cause a cumulative effect. As long as we put Pfas on the market, we will be confronted with them every day through everyday objects, and we will have them inside our body and in our drinking water. They are everywhere and we continue to produce them day after day and disperse them throughout our environment. We must therefore be consistent: if we find that it is problematic to have them everywhere, we must ban them from the market, there are no other solutions”argues MP Séverine de Laveleye, who is carrying this proposal with Barbara Cremers.
And the elected environmentalist insisted: “Some Pfas deemed more dangerous were eventually withdrawn from the European market, but it took more than ten years to obtain bans. There are more than 10,000 Pfas: banning them one by one based on the dangerousness expressed at that moment is therefore in fact a totally insufficient response. If each time it takes more than ten years to judge the dangerousness of a product, that makes no sense. We now know that Pfas are dangerous. Certainly, with a slightly different degree of dangerousness between one or the other, but there is a general initial problem. Furthermore, these molecular chains, if banned, can be easily modified in the laboratory. “
Four sectors concerned
The sectors affected by the marketing ban in the proposed law are “those with which we are most often in contact in our everyday lives, from morning to evening and even during the night: cosmetics, textiles, food product containers. Moss, for its part, enters the soil and directly impacts drinking water. These are also sectors for which alternatives already exist. So we are not asking companies to do totally impossible things, like completely changing their mode of production in ten minutes.”
With these proposals, environmentalists want to place Belgium among “Europe’s best students in public health. “We see that other European countries are moving. Denmark had announced a ban on Pfas for certain food packaging and now France, which has managed to target certain sectors, is showing us the example. At the European level, there is also a project for a universal ban on Pfas. This is something that really needs to be decided at European level. We do not have this level of ambition for Belgium. But we know that this European proposal will take a lot of time to come to fruition, if it ends up being successful. The weight of lobbies is very significant and liberal political families have a tendency, in general, to listen too much to the industrial sector. We cannot wait for Europe to legislate because every year, hundreds of thousands of tons of Pfas are spread everywhere. Every year counts. And when a country advances, it is also a signal that is given to other European states and this facilitates the process of European acceptance.” Note that seen “very different uses” (agriculture) Pfas present in certain pesticides, these are the subject of a separate bill but tabled at the same time.
Which fruits and vegetables are particularly contaminated with PFAS pesticides?
Do not leave the Regions alone
Séverine de Laveleye also emphasizes that the federal government is not competent to set standards for drinking water, a prerogative of the Regions.. “I cannot legislate on this at the federal level. But the idea of moving forward at the federal level is not to leave the Regions on the front line and that they must clean up the filth put on the market, indicates MP Ecolo. The Regions have to manage the protection of the population from exposure to the most dangerous pollutants and the Federal government washes its hands of it. We can say “we need to improve sanitation and water”. Of course, it has to be done, but it’s almost wishful thinking: first of all, it costs the community a lot of money and above all, we are still going to let (the toxic products) pass at one point or another. another as the pollution load is significant. To have a healthy environment and recognize our right to health, we must ban it at the Source. One issue is of course to have health standards to protect consumers, but it makes no sense to continue to pollute and then have to limit contact with the ingestion of pollution.”
That said, the MP recognizes that, given the approach of the elections, this bill has no chance of succeeding during this legislature, or even of being brought to debate in committee. By acting in this way, however, she hopes to highlight this issue in the electoral debate. “Our Vivaldi majority agreement did not provide for this proposal and it was a safe bet that the liberal colleagues would not have agreed to enter into the debate if I had tabled this text earlier (it has been ready for a long time ). Now, we are reaching the end of the legislature and we are currently preparing for the start of the parliamentary term in October. We must give future majority partners and other political groups several months in advance a clear message that we are ready. With this bill, we begin the public debate on the advisability of banning the marketing of Pfas in Belgium. Environmentalists want to have this debate from the start of the next legislature, there is no longer any question of waiting.”
PFAS pollution: “This report confirms to us that the entire European population is contaminated with perfluorinated chemicals”
Note that this Tuesday, the PS will also present, in the Health and Environment Committees of the Federal Parliament, a resolution “aimed at combating exposure and pollution to PFAS in the context of food”. The signatories ask the federal government to “put in place a coordinated plan aimed at combating the presence of PFAS in food products”, “to prohibit the presence of PFAS in all products intended to come into contact with with foodstuffs”; or to urgently launch “the legislative and regulatory actions necessary to prohibit the use of PFAS in products placed on the market in Belgium” but also to support the ban on PFAS on a European scale.
