Forever Pollution Project: Further Impact

The project has attracted the attention of key regulatory and scientific bodies. The data and dataset have been and/or currently are re/used by many journalists, researchers and regulators across Europe, including ETH Zürich (Switzerland), the University of Ljubljana (Slovenia), and the EU-funded project ARAGORN (Achieving Remediation And GOverning Restoration of contaminated soils Now).

Legal action

• In autumn 2023, the Royal Society of Chemistry (UK) started a campaign calling on the UK Government to overhaul its PFAS drinking water standards based on our investigation and data.
• The peer-reviewed approach to investigation also served as a basis for several criminal prosecutions and legal proceedings in France.
• Bills mentioning the project were filed for discussion at the Assemblée nationale in France and at the Senate in Italy.

Academic circles

The database put together by the journalists as the result of this investigation is now being cited in scientific papers and has by now (Jan. 2024) been employed in ten different research projects.

• It was presented at the conference ‘Health, environment, work: from data to evidence’ (Santé, environnement, travail : des données à la preuve) at SciencesPo Lyon (France), on June 12, 2023.

• Researchers at the University of Gothenburg (Sweden) published a scientific article based on data from this investigation.

Reference: Moghadasi, R., Mumberg, T., & Wanner, P. (2023). Spatial Prediction of Concentrations of Per-and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) in European Soils. Environmental Science & Technology Letters, 10(11), 1125-1129. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.estlett.3c00633 

• In July 2023, a group of students at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva (Switzerland) used the project's data to produce a research report on “PFAS in Europe: A Violation of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights”

Expert circles

• 14th International HCH (Lindane) & pesticides forum, Zaragoza (Spain), online, 23 February 2023.
• Soil reuse on reconstruction sites in the new Circular Economy era – Available regulatory frameworks and case studies of PFAS-contaminated sites management, National Technical University of Athens (Greece), ENYDRON / Online, 1st September 2023.
• Health and Environmental Alliance (Heal) 20th anniversary, Brussels (Belgium), 3 October 2023.
• CAR-PFAS Japan, Fourth international seminar on the consortium for analysis and remediation of per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances in Japan, online, 10 October 2023.

Presenting data for international and national bodies

The team was invited to present its findings and methodology to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the European Commission, among others.

• Side event of the United Nations’ Conference of the parties of the Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm Conventions, Geneva (Switzerland), 02 May 2023.
• Annual meeting of the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) Global Soil Partnership International Network on Soil Pollution (INSOP), online, 14 June 2023.
• European Commission Annual Forum on Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals, Brussels (Belgium), 20 October 2023.
• Tackling PFAS pollution & Launch Knowledge Center Innovative Remediation Solutions, Belgian presidency of the European Union, Government of Flanders, Antwerp (Belgium), 1-2 February 2024.
• Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Global Forum on the Environment dedicated to Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances, Paris (France) 12 February 2024.

Scientific paper

The team, together with a number of collaborators, submitted a scientific paper version of the project to the major scientific journal Environmental Science & Technology which was subsequently published in April 2024: PFAS Contamination in Europe: Generating Knowledge and Mapping Known and Likely Contamination with “Expert-Reviewed” Journalism.

Awards

The Forever Pollution Project was awarded Second Place for the Kevin Carmody Award for Outstanding Investigative Reporting, large category, at the Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ) 22nd Annual Awards for Reporting on the Environment (24 October 2023). It was also listed as the third finalist for the 2023 Daphne Caruana Galizia Prize for Journalism of the European Parliament (13 October 2023).

Stéphane Horel received the 2024 AJSPI Journalist Prize from The French Association of Science Journalists for this project.

Journalistic Fora

The Forever Pollution Project has raised considerable interest in journalism circles. 

The project's dataset, available as open source, has been used by many journalists to investigate local sources of pollution and generate new knowledge. 

In November 2023, the Belgian public-service broadcaster RTBF used the Forever Pollution data and methodology to investigate the absence of publicly available PFAS contamination data in Wallonia and Brussels, the French speaking part of Belgium. Through freedom of information requests and environmental sampling they performed themselves, the journalists revealed 335 new unbeknownst pollution hotspots that were added to our map. 

The Forever Pollution team was also invited to share their methodology and findings in major journalism conferences, such as:

• Arena Climate Network Conference, Prague (Czechia), 28 April 2023.
• Dataharvest, Mechelen (Belgium), 3 June 2023 – Session on the project and session on collaborating with scientists.
• Global Investigative Journalism Conference (GIJC), Gothenburg (Sweden), 19 September 2023.
• Arena Climate Network Conference, Vienna (Austria), 11 November 2023.
• iMEdD International Journalism Forum, Athens (Greece), 29 September 2023.
• SciCar, When science meets computer-assisted reporting, Netzwerk Recherche, Dortmund (Germany), 30 September 2023

The project's British partners Leana Hosea and Rachel Salvidge from Watershed Investigations, who published their PFAS investigation series in The Guardian, were “Highly Commended” at the British Journalism Awards in the Energy & Environment Journalism category (December 2023).