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INSIGHT: PFAS Liability Is Coming to California about:reader?url=https://www.bna.com/insight-pfas-liability-n57982093402/

bna.com

INSIGHT: PFAS Liability Is Coming to

California

October 31, 2018

13-16 minutes

Across the country, regulators and litigants are turning their

attention to the emerging contaminants known as “perfluoroalkyl” or

“polyfluoroalkyl” substances (PFAS). PFAS are ubiquitous in

modern life. These emerging contaminants come from an incredible

variety of sources and have been used in myriad ways for decades,

ranging from firefighting at airports and military bases to carpet

manufacturing to wastewater treatment. PFAS are also

exceptionally common in food packaging, especially fast food.

Yet despite their breadth of consumer uses, PFAS are remarkably

persistent; even those PFAS that actually do break down upon

remediation only transform into more persistent PFAS chains. Due

to the persistence of PFAS, combined with their ubiquity, some form

of PFAS is present in almost all biological tissue in the U.S.,

including humans. Complicating matters, our scientific knowledge

of most PFAS chains is relatively limited. PFAS are an extremely

diverse family of hundreds of thousands of synthetic organic

compounds. Any plan to remediate PFAS contamination will

invariably pose an enormous (and costly) challenge.

Regulators at all levels are turning their attention to this challenge.

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