You can read everywhere that PFAs, or polyfluoroalkyl substances, can be found in every corner of the world and enter our bodies through our food, but how bad can it really be?
“It is very difficult to pinpoint the risk,” says Martin van den Berg, De Volkskrant Professor Emeritus of Toxicology at Utrecht University. “There are a lot of reasons to say we should stop using some PFAs.” But he considers it “exaggerated” to believe that we will become ill en masse due to a dose slightly above the threshold value, as is the case in the Netherlands. No real evidence has been found that this is a bad thing.
Only at really, really high doses, as was the case in West Virginia when DuPont released a huge mountain of PFOA into the environment, do kidney cancer, testicular cancer, low birth weight, and high cholesterol seem to occur more often. But then you're talking about doses that are a hundred to a thousand times higher than the threshold value.
At the moment, it seems there is not much to worry about in the Netherlands, but research is difficult because large groups of people must be followed for a long time. A study will be published next year that will provide more clarity on this matter.
