By — Saanvi Nanda
Abstract
The evolution of environmental law as seen is built for disasters that announce themselves. It is built for situations where a polluter or a hazardous moment is easily identifiable. PFAS or also called ‘forever chemicals’ are not helpful that way. They have been used in every product since the 1940s, silently accumulating in soil, water, and human blood with very harmful health effects such as cancer and infertility. This article traces how invisible these harmful chemicals are through case studies of West Virginia and Italy’s Miteni contamination. The article also seeks to compare existing EU, Indian environmental laws from EU’s total REACH ban to India’s lack and ignorance of any PFA specific regulations. The article argues that India certainly needs to act and legislate now before it gets too late.
Introduction
Many environmental disasters do not announce their arrival. A small spill over or a gas leak makes people run, a factory fire turns the entire sky black. Our current environmental law is built exactly around this. A lot of pollutants do not work that way. They are often invisible, they do not leave a smell, they do not detonate. They quietly accumulate in our soils, in our water and blood for years and decades before anyone even notices them or figures out if something is uneasy or wrong.
This is how PFAS- per and polyfluroalkyl chemicals work and this is also the story of our nation which still has not caught up to this invisible threat that was never even meant to explode.
The chemical substance that never goes away
PFAS are a group of approximately more than 4,700 synthetic compounds which are built around a very strong, impermeable bond of carbon- fluorine. This is the same property that makes them great at repelling any amount of water, oil or heat making them indestructible in nature and the presence of human contact. It is not surprising that they are also known as ‘forever chemicals’. Forever chemicals were initially commercialised during the introduction of ‘DuPont Teflon’ in the 1940s. These chemicals have been woven into “food packages, fighting foams, non-stick cookware, cosmetics”, and manufacturing of semiconductors.
The primary issue that concerns the use of PFAS is that they do not stay in the product itself. They stick and leech into the groundwater found near factories and manufacturing plants, drift and travel through sand and smog”, and settle in food particles. Currently, they are traced in the blood stream of an estimate of 99% of Americans. Recent studies have also traced these chemicals in the umbilical cord blood which reveals how they spread even before life even begins.
The unseen cost borne by the victims
This is the most defining factor of this invisible pollution. The harm is delayed enough that no one can really connect the dots. These harmful chemicals accumulate in human blood and liver for years and years with their health effects ranging from kidney and testicular cancer, thyroid inflammation, infertility and weakened immune system in children. A review conducted in 2022 found that PFAS attributable diseases cost the US an approximately $62 billion dollars on an annual basis.
The most clear evidence of this delayed cost is the ‘C8 studies’ that approximately tracked 69,000 residents from West Virginia who were exposed to these PFAS (the C8 compound) from a nearby DuPont plant. The examined data showing kidney failures, thyroid diseases was only exposed publicly after a long time because the research from the 1960s that revealed the fact that PFAS could jeopardise public health was kept hidden from the public and the regulators. It was also put forth by one of the Yale researchers that no one has really ever traced a level of exposure to PFAS that is actually considered safe. Companies such 3M and DuPont introduced their own internalised safety limits long back while keeping that information from the world. These are actually the things that separate invisible pollution from breaking about a chemical spillover.
When looking at the United States, low-income non-white communities located near contaminated industrial sites often carry a heavier burden of exposure to PFAs. This exposure is also linked to mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, and cognitive health hazards.
Law’s inefficiency dealing with slow violence
Environmental law across the world has been built for visible, identifiable disasters. The Bhopal Gas Tragedy, Chernobyl, and Deepwater Horizon are clear examples of the same. Regulations generally require tracing down a polluter and a detectable harm within a specified time window. PFAS do not fit into any of these categories. The ‘polluter’ can probably be one of hundreds of manufacturers that use PFAS in any unrelated product. The ‘pathway’ travels quietly under the water over years. And the ‘harm’ may not be visible for the next generation.
The European Chemical Agency revealed that without any external intervention, roughly 4.4 million tonnes of PFAS will be traced in the environment by 2053. Such an estimate seems less like an ongoing problem and more like a slow death coming underway.
Comparison with other nations
The EU currently has taken the most rigorous action so far. EU’s ‘Drinking Water Directive’ enforces a two-tier limit. The combined ‘total of PFAS’ for the most concerning twenty variants must not exceed 0.10 micrograms per litre, whereas a broader ‘PFA Total cap’ stops any PFA chemicals from exceeding 0.50 micrograms per litre. This structure is specially designed to prohibit companies from swapping one banned substance for a nearly similar one.
The five member states (Denmark, Germany, Norway, Sweden and Netherlands) have introduced a universal REACH restriction that covers more than 10,000 PFA substances as a single team instead of focusing on one chemical which is exactly how most laws including India still function. ECHA’s risk assessment committee has also brought in a near-total ban with only a few exceptions such as protective tools for workers.
Italy’s Miteni plant discharged these PFA chemicals into the nearby water for decades, resulting in the contamination of a 180-square kilometre basin before it collapsed under delayed rounds of litigation in 2018. In 2015, an Italian court convicted eleven executives, sentencing them to 141 years inside the prison, which is a landmark case, as it was the first time, corporate employees were held accountable for the contamination.
In 2024, the United States set up EPA, the first legally binding drinking water standards for six PFA chemicals, aiming for zero levels of PFOA and PFOS, that it now categorised as human carcinogens. Although, these regulations were taken back in 2025, showing how sensitive and fragile even hard- constructed laws can come out to be once the political winds shift.
India’s position
India’s current regulatory position is not very efficient. Currently, there is no national regulatory framework or environmental standard that governs PFAS. There is no limit on pollutants in drinking water, no cap on industrial leakages, and no mandatory verification on who manufactures or makes use of these chemicals.
The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India brought in a draft plan in 2025 that proposed prohibiting PFAS in food- contacting substances. On the contrary, under section 92 of the Food Safety and Standards Act 2006, these draft rules are just recommendatory in nature. Even though, if they are notified, they still only apply to food related materials and leaves behind a large chunk and source of PFA exposure which is industrial manufacturing.
As India is pushing to increase its semiconductor manufacturing, the same industry that heavily relies on the use of PFAS in fabrication of chips, there is no formal rulebook for these substances that should be taken care of or made use of. An IIT Madras report that was submitted to the Ministry in 2022 already warned about the requirement for a national PFA inventory that is dedicated to the same. Years later, recommendations came in and yet nothing changed. The Laxmi Organics factory which is based in Ratnagiri, Maharashtra has imported machinery from Miteni’s Shuttered Italian Plant, the same substance that is responsible for Italy’s PFA disaster.
Conclusion
All the lessons from Italy’s Miteni power plant, C8 studies, and constant years of EPA dragging reveals that the cost is going to increase in the coming future. The cost is simply not going away because there is no formal law or rulebook regulating the same. It will quietly arrive later and on lands of people who never really agreed to bear the costs of something they never contributed towards- the poor, the unborn, the unprivileged. India already has an unusual advantage that neither of the nations had in the 60s. It has the opportunity to frame its own regulations and rules. Whether or not India uses that advantage is simply a question that time will reveal.
About the Author
Saanvi Nanda is a second-year law student at Jindal Global Law School with a strong interest in arbitration. Her research interests are drawn to environmental governance, public policy, and questions of social justice.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/nov/13/children-parenthood-climate-crisis