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Review
. 2024 Apr 22;11(8):786-797.
doi: 10.1021/acs.estlett.4c00147. eCollection 2024 Aug 13.

Zürich II Statement on Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFASs): Scientific and Regulatory Needs

Jamie C DeWitt  1 , Juliane Glüge  2 , Ian T Cousins  3 , Gretta Goldenman  4 , Dorte Herzke  5 , Rainer Lohmann  6 , Mark Miller  7 , Carla A Ng  8 , Sharyle Patton  9 , Xenia Trier  10 , Lena Vierke  11 , Zhanyun Wang  12 , Sam Adu-Kumi  13 , Simona Balan  14 , Andreas M Buser  15 , Tony Fletcher  16 , Line Småstuen Haug  17 , Audun Heggelund  18 , Jun Huang  19 , Sarit Kaserzon  20 , Juliana Leonel  21 , Ishmail Sheriff  22 , Ya-Li Shi  23 , Sara Valsecchi  24 , Martin Scheringer  2   25
Affiliations
Review

Zürich II Statement on Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFASs): Scientific and Regulatory Needs

Jamie C DeWitt et al. Environ Sci Technol Lett. .

Abstract

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) are a class of synthetic organic chemicals of global concern. A group of 36 scientists and regulators from 18 countries held a hybrid workshop in 2022 in Zürich, Switzerland. The workshop, a sequel to a previous Zürich workshop held in 2017, deliberated on progress in the last five years and discussed further needs for cooperative scientific research and regulatory action on PFASs. This review reflects discussion and insights gained during and after this workshop and summarizes key signs of progress in science and policy, ongoing critical issues to be addressed, and possible ways forward. Some key take home messages include: 1) understanding of human health effects continues to develop dramatically, 2) regulatory guidelines continue to drop, 3) better understanding of emissions and contamination levels is needed in more parts of the world, 4) analytical methods, while improving, still only cover around 50 PFASs, and 5) discussions of how to group PFASs for regulation (including subgroupings) have gathered momentum with several jurisdictions proposing restricting a large proportion of PFAS uses. It was concluded that more multi-group exchanges are needed in the future and that there should be a greater diversity of participants at future workshops.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare the following competing financial interest(s): J. DeWitt serves as a Plaintiff's expert witness in cases involving PFASs.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Number of publicly available publications and associated citations indexed in the Web of Science for search terms “PFAS and PFOS and PFOA” from 2004 to the end of 2023 (figure created from data collected from the Web of Science).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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