Environmental protesters have criticized the UK government’s “crushingly disappointing” plan to address “forever chemicals,” warning that it risks locking in decades of needless harm to people and the environment.

The government’s Pfas action plan outlines a “clear framework” for concerted efforts to decrease human and environmental exposure to chemicals, including understanding their origins and distribution.

However, campaigners slammed the plan as “incredibly weak” and criticized its failure to match robust measures taken in Europe, where national governments are already banning chemicals on the basis of public safety prior to EU-wide action.

Man-made per- and poly-fluoroalkyl compounds (Pfas), a family of thousands of chemicals, are already assumed to be present in everyone’s blood. They are employed in a wide range of consumer products, from waterproof clothes to electronics.

They are renowned for their indestructibility and non-stick qualities, with chemical bonds so strong that they will not degrade in the environment for tens of thousands of years, earning them the nickname “forever chemicals”.

Pfas are causing several hazards to human and environmental health, with two of the formerly most extensively used forever chemicals being mostly prohibited after research connected them to multiple types of cancer.

Last year, research revealed that Pfas levels in almost all English waters exceeded established safety limits. The compounds have been detected in the tissue and organs of dolphins, otters, porpoises, fish, and birds throughout the United Kingdom.

Emma Hardy, the environment minister in charge of chemical pollution, introduced the plan, stating that Pfas posed a “long-term challenge for not only our health, but that of the nation’s vital ecosystems,” and that the government would “act decisively to reduce their harmful effects.”

Measures include launching a consultation on setting a statutory limit for Pfas in England’s public supply regulations, more testing and monitoring of England’s estuaries and coastal waters, testing food packaging to determine whether it contains Pfas, and the publication of a website “to raise public awareness and understanding.”

According to Chloe Alexander, chemicals policy lead at Wildlife and Countryside Link, the document is a “crushingly disappointing framework that ducks the hard decisions”.

She claimed that the measures fell well short of those in Denmark and France, who have already prohibited Pfas in several consumer products, such as clothing and cosmetics, and taken steps to clean up contaminated places. Moves are already underway at the EU level to implement a bloc-wide ban on their use.

Shubhi Sharma, a scientific researcher at Chem Trust, said the government’s requests for more information were unnecessary and a delaying ploy.

“This is not the action plan we were expecting – action has been deferred to an indefinite date in the future,” she informed us.

Dr. Mohamed Abdallah, chair of environmental chemistry at the University of Birmingham, stated, “Given the significant risks posed by Pfas to human health and the environment, it is encouraging to see the UK taking an active, holistic approach to regulating them and minimizing the harmful effects before it is too late.”

However, Prof Patrick Byrne, reader in hydrology and environmental pollution at Liverpool John Moores University, stated: “A significant flaw in the strategy is that we don’t know how much of these chemicals are entering the environment or where they are coming from.

“Measuring Pfas concentrations or boosting monitoring, as proposed in the proposal, will not solve the problem. Instead, we need to measure Pfas loads, which are the overall amounts released from various companies and contaminated areas. This enables us to identify the most significant polluters and focus cleanup operations where they will have the greatest impact.”