A new United Nations report sends a strong message on PFAS: protecting human rights requires preventing further PFAS pollution and ending non-essential uses of these extremely persistent chemicals.
The report, Forever chemicals and human rights (A/HRC/63/27), was prepared by former UN Special Rapporteur on toxics and human rights Marcos Orellana and is being presented to the 63rd session of the UN Human Rights Council. It examines the impacts of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) through a human-rights lens and concludes that they pose a “profound threat to human rights and the environment.”
PFAS are a large group of human-made chemicals used in numerous industrial processes and consumer products. Their extreme persistence means that once released, they can remain in the environment for generations, contaminating water, soil, food and ecosystems. Many PFAS are also highly mobile or bioaccumulative, making exposure difficult to control once pollution has occurred.
The report makes clear that PFAS pollution is not simply a chemicals-management problem. It affects the enjoyment of fundamental human rights, including the rights to life, health, safe drinking water, food, a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, safe working conditions, information and access to justice.
Prevention must come first
One of the report’s most important conclusions is that managing PFAS contamination after it occurs is not sufficient. No effective, scalable technologies currently exist to remove PFAS from contaminated ecosystems. Preventing emissions and releases must therefore be at the heart of PFAS policy.
The Special Rapporteur calls for an immediate ban on all non-essential uses of PFAS, alongside urgent measures at national, regional and international levels to control PFAS and prevent further pollution.
This represents an important shift away from regulating individual PFAS one substance at a time. Addressing PFAS as a class is essential to avoid replacing one restricted PFAS with another persistent fluorinated substance with similar concerns.
PFAS pollution is also an environmental justice issue
The report highlights the unequal distribution of PFAS exposure and its consequences. Workers, communities living close to production and contamination sites, Indigenous Peoples, lower-income communities and countries with fewer resources for monitoring, remediation and health protection can face disproportionate burdens.
Such inequalities raise fundamental questions of environmental justice. People should not enjoy different levels of protection from hazardous chemicals simply because of where they live, work or were born.
The report therefore reinforces the need for strong global standards that prevent hazardous chemicals from being shifted towards communities and countries with weaker regulatory systems or fewer resources to respond to contamination.
The right to know matters
Another crucial dimension is access to information.
For decades, communities, consumers, workers, regulators and even companies further down supply chains have often lacked adequate information about which PFAS are being produced, where they are used, where they are released and where they are present in products and materials.
This information gap undermines the ability to prevent exposure and pollution and limits people’s ability to exercise their rights.
Greater chemical transparency and traceability throughout product and material value chains are therefore important components of preventing toxic exposure. Information about hazardous chemicals must not disappear as materials and products move through production, use, reuse, recycling and waste management.
This is particularly important for a safe circular economy. Recycling materials without knowing their chemical composition risks circulating PFAS and other hazardous chemicals into new products and exposing new populations.
Companies must take responsibility
The report also places significant emphasis on corporate responsibility and the polluter-pays principle.
Companies should identify and address the human-rights impacts associated with PFAS throughout their activities and value chains, disclose relevant information and prevent further releases. Those responsible for pollution should bear the costs of remediation and the measures needed to protect affected communities.
This is an important message: the enormous costs of decades of PFAS contamination should not be transferred to governments, taxpayers, and affected communities.
From national action to a global response
PFAS contamination does not respect national borders. Chemicals and products are traded globally, pollutants travel through air and water, and PFAS-containing products eventually enter international recycling and waste streams.
The scale and persistence of the problem therefore demand coordinated international action.
The report calls on States to consider initiating negotiations towards a legally binding international instrument to phase out PFAS, complementing existing action under international chemicals and waste agreements.
For HEJSupport, this reinforces a broader principle that is central to our work: hazardous chemicals must be addressed upstream.
Preventing the production and use of hazardous chemicals, ensuring full transparency about chemicals in products and materials, and holding polluters accountable are far more effective than attempting to manage widespread contamination after it has occurred.
The PFAS crisis demonstrates the consequences of allowing extremely persistent chemicals onto the global market without adequate information, precaution and accountability. It also shows why the right to know which chemicals are present in products and materials must become a fundamental element of chemicals management worldwide.
The UN report provides a powerful human-rights argument for action: future generations should not inherit permanent chemical pollution created by uses for which safer alternatives already exist or which are simply not essential.
Read the full UN report:
Forever chemicals and human rights – Report of the Special Rapporteur on the implications for human rights of the environmentally sound management and disposal of hazardous substances and wastes (A/HRC/63/27)
https://docs.un.org/en/A/HRC/63/27
