Originally published in February 2023, this large-scale cross-border journalism and interdisciplinary investigation brought together more than 100 datasets and dozens of freedom-of-information requests to map PFAS contamination across Europe, identifying 21,500 new sites of presumptive contamination in addition to what had been publicly known.
Collaboration with scientists was a key feature of the project. The methodology was developed with seven experts in environmental chemistry and social sciences, in what the project described as an experiment in “expert-reviewed” journalism. The resulting data have since been used in research projects and taken over by the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) for its PFAS Data Hub.
The collaboration also produced a peer-reviewed scientific article, published in Environmental Science & Technology in 2024. The paper documented the project’s methodology and findings and examined the potential of combining investigative journalism techniques, including open-source intelligence and freedom-of-information requests, with scientific methods. It described the project as an “unprecedented experiment” in expert-reviewed journalism and noted that the extent of PFAS contamination remains significantly underestimated because of gaps in sampling, geolocation and publicly available data.
Further, the Forever Lobbying project, published in 2024 by a team of 46 journalists, revealed that corporate actors often know about the potential harms but fail to disclose them and instead, intentionally mislead the public and regulators through disinformation on the risks of PFAS. One of their specific goals was to water down a proposal to ban "forever chemicals" in the EU. They also sought to shift the burden of environmental pollution onto society.
Both works are now also referenced in the report “Forever chemicals and human rights” (A/HRC/63/27), prepared by former UN Special Rapporteur Marcos Orellana and presented to the Human Rights Council on 14 September 2026. The report examines the implications of PFAS for human rights and the environment.
The Forever Pollution project it is a compelling example of investigative journalism producing an environmental evidence base that subsequently entered the scientific literature and international human-rights policy process.
Both the original investigation and its later edition were financed via Environmental Investigative Journalism grant programme, in the framework of Earth Investigations.
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