The more you learn about PFAS — per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances — the worse it gets. Though improvements in monitoring and remediation techniques are welcome, what the world needs first and foremost is a universal ban on the chemicals. In fact, we needed it yesterday.

There are more than 10,000 PFAS, also known as “forever chemicals,” and they’re used almost everywhere, including in nonstick cookware, waterproof clothing, smartphones, packets of microwave popcorn, hair conditioners, fire-fighting foam, pacemakers, pesticides and dental floss.

They don’t readily degrade; they also don’t stay where we put them. As a result, we can now find PFAS in places such as our blood, human breast milk, Antarctica, wild animals and tap water. In the Netherlands, people have been warned not to eat the eggs from their backyard chickens by the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment due to high levels of the chemicals. Though it’s not yet clear why home-produced eggs have higher amounts of PFAS than commercial ones, one theory is that earthworms now contain such chemicals, and hens like to eat the worms.

An analysis by environmental groups Wildlife and Countryside Link and the Rivers Trust found that nearly all rivers, lakes and ponds in England exceed proposed safety limits, with 85% containing levels at least five times higher. France has banned tap water in 16 communes due to PFAS contamination, while a piece of investigative journalism called the Forever Pollution Project located 23,000 contaminated sites across Europe and a further 21,500 sites of presumptive contamination. I expect we haven’t seen the last of the tap water bans.

If the scale and extent of the pollution are hard to get your head around, the health implications are worse. PFAS have been linked to increased risk of various types of cancer, fertility problems, birth complications, delays to puberty and weakened immune systems. They’ve also been associated with increased cholesterol levels and kidney problems.

We’re looking at an issue analogous to climate change — right down to lobbying and cover-ups by PFAS manufacturers. Internal documents from 3M Co., one of the original and largest producers, and chemical firm DuPont de Nemours Inc. revealed that the companies knew the substances were accumulating in people and showing signs of toxicity for decades without telling anyone.

While 3M still maintains that their PFAS-containing products are “safe” for their intended uses in everyday life, in December 2022 the company announced it will discontinue the use of PFAS by the end of 2025. Together, the firms have had to pay billions in lawsuit settlements related to their pollution, with more possibly to come as injury cases hit the courts.

As with carbon dioxide, the longer we keep emitting PFAS into the environment, the worse the problem gets and the harder it is to clean up with remediation technologies. While the PFAS market globally is worth just over $28 billion, the cost of cleaning up all the related pollution in the UK and Europe could be €100 billion ($116 billion) a year if nothing is done to stem the chemicals’ steady flow into the environment. And that doesn’t factor in the health-care costs, which the Nordic Council of Ministers estimates is at least €52 billion annually.

Though some consumer brands such as outdoor gear retailer Patagonia Inc. and fast-food chain McDonald’s Corp. have committed to phasing out PFAS from their products and packaging, others have been dragging their feet. A team of researchers, lawyers and journalists has also exposed a huge lobbying campaign against proposed restrictions in Europe, showing entrenched resistance to change.

So we need a ban, but so far, we’ve only seen piecemeal prohibitions targeting either a specific chemical or, in a couple of leading countries, sectors.

The import and sale of PFAS-treated clothing, shoes and waterproofing agents will be barred from July 2026 in Denmark, while the chemicals have been banned in paper and board food packaging since 2020. The country has also recently announced a ban on 23 pesticides that can form a very mobile form of PFAS called trifluoroacetic acid.

France, meanwhile, has banned PFAS in several consumer product groups, including textiles, cosmetics and ski wax. Cookware, however, has been excluded from the ban after a campaign led by the French maker of Tefal pans, Groupe SEB. Exempting a sector for which safe alternatives are readily available is, frankly, scandalous.

A universal ban may be on its way. In 2023, five European Union member states — Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark and Norway — submitted a proposal to the European Chemicals Agency, which two scientific committees are now examining. The ban covers both consumer and industrial applications, with time-limited exemptions expected for some uses where there are no alternatives, such as medical devices.

What’s most significant about the restriction is that it takes a precautionary approach, regulating all 10,000-plus PFAS as a group rather than individually. According to CHEM Trust, a charity focused on harmful synthetic chemicals, under the current rate of regulation that analyzes each chemical individually, it would take more than 40,000 years to get through them all.

So the EU ban will be a huge step forward with positive impacts beyond its borders. But we’ll be waiting a while for it to come into effect — if everything goes smoothly, we’re likely looking at 2028 before sectors transition to new rules.

Meanwhile, progress elsewhere is pitiful. The UK government published an interim position on PFAS management in June, but this has been criticized by scientists for opting not to target all chemicals at once and instead creating their own groupings. Not only is this risky, failing to regulate compounds that lack toxicity data, but it lacks urgency. In the U.S., the Trump administration has pulled nearly $15 million in research into PFAS contamination of farmland, while the Environmental Protection Agency has announced plans to rescind drinking water limits for four forever chemicals.

Of course, even banning the use of all PFAS tomorrow won’t do anything for the substances already in our bodies and drinking water. But we know that restrictions help. Two chemicals — PFOS and PFOA — are already banned in Europe. A 2023 study showed that blood concentrations of the chemicals have declined substantially over time in Denmark.

It’s time to stop playing Whac-a-Mole with chemicals that we know are bad for us and our environment. If we take action now, we might stand a chance at cleaning up the mess we’ve made.

Lara Williams is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering climate change.

 

Today is Wednesday, July 23, the 204th day of 2025. There are 161 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On July 23, 1967, the first of five days of deadly rioting erupted in Detroit as an early morning police raid on an unlicensed bar resulted in a confrontation with local residents, escalating into violence that spread into other parts of the city and resulting in 43 deaths.

Also on this date:

In 1903, the Ford Motor Company sold its first car, a Model A, for $850.

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In 1958, Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II named the first four women to peerage in the House of Lords.

In 1982, actor Vic Morrow and two child actors, 7-year-old Myca Dinh Le and 6-year-old Renee Shin-Yi Chen, were killed when a helicopter crashed on top of them during filming of a Vietnam War scene for “Twilight Zone: The Movie.” (Director John Landis and four associates were later acquitted of manslaughter charges.)

In 1983, an Air Canada Boeing 767 ran out of fuel while flying from Montreal to Edmonton; the pilots were able to glide the jetliner to a safe emergency landing in Gimli, Manitoba. (The near-disaster occurred because the fuel had been erroneously measured in pounds instead of kilograms at a time when Canada was converting to the metric system.)

In 1990, President George H.W. Bush announced his choice of Judge David Souter of New Hampshire to succeed the retiring Justice William J. Brennan on the U.S. Supreme Court.

In 1996, at the Atlanta Olympics, Kerri Strug made a heroic final vault despite torn ligaments in her left ankle as the U.S. women gymnasts clinched their first-ever Olympic team gold medal.

In 1997, the search for Andrew Cunanan, the suspected killer of designer Gianni Versace and others, ended as police found his body on a houseboat in Miami Beach, an apparent suicide.

In 1999, the space shuttle Columbia blasted off with the world’s most powerful X-ray telescope and Eileen Collins became the first woman to command a U.S. space flight.

In 2003, Massachusetts’ attorney general issued a report saying clergy members and others in the Boston Archdiocese had probably sexually abused more than 1,000 people over a period of six decades.

In 2006, Tiger Woods became the first player since Tom Watson in 1982-83 to win consecutive British Open titles.

In 2011, singer Amy Winehouse, 27, was found dead in her London home from accidental alcohol poisoning.

In 2012, Penn State’s football program was all but leveled by penalties for its handling of the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal as the NCAA imposed an unprecedented $60 million fine, a four-year ban from postseason play and a cut in the number of football scholarships it could award.

In 2019, Boris Johnson won the contest to lead Britain’s governing Conservative Party, putting him in line to become the country’s prime minister the following day.

In 2021, Cleveland’s Major League Baseball team, known as the Indians since 1915, announced that it would get a new name, the Guardians, at the end of the 2021 season; the change came amid a push for institutions and teams to drop logos and names that were considered racist.

Today’s Birthdays:

Retired Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy is 89.
Actor Ronny Cox is 87.
Rock singer David Essex is 78.
Actor Woody Harrelson is 64.
Rock musician Martin Gore (Depeche Mode) is 64.
Actor & director Eriq Lasalle is 63.
Rock musician Slash is 60.
Basketball Hall of Famer Gary Payton is 57.
Model-actor Stephanie Seymour is 57.
Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia is 56.
Actor Charisma Carpenter is 55.
Country singer Alison Krauss is 54.
R&B singer Dalvin DeGrate (Jodeci) is 54.
Actor-comedian Marlon Wayans is 53.
Actor Kathryn Hahn is 52.
Former White House intern Monica Lewinsky is 52.
Actor Stephanie March is 51.
R&B singer Michelle Williams is 46.
Actor Paul Wesley is 43.
Actor Daniel Radcliffe is 36.

LOS ANGELES — In the early days of his career, Royce Lewis earned himself a reputation as “Mr. Grand Slam,” after hitting three of them in an eight-game span.

Turns out, a little check swing will do the trick almost as well. Or at least it did on Tuesday.

The third baseman’s grounder was picked up by reliever Edgardo Hernandez, who threw the ball into right field. As it rolled all the way to the outfield wall, all three runners came around to score in the seventh inning of the Twins’ 10-7 win over the Dodgers on Thursday night at Dodger Stadium.

Those runners had reached base by walk, three of seven for the Twins (49-52) on the night. And while the Dodgers (59-43) didn’t help themselves defensively, the Twins sure made them pay. Six of those seven baserunners who came around to score in the win, including Carlos Correa on a Lewis bases-loaded walk in the sixth inning which broke open a tied game.

“We stayed very disciplined today,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “It’s one thing to be disciplined. It’s another when you get to 2-0 and you don’t try to beat the world with one swing (and) you actually continue with the disciplined approach. There was a lot of nodding and approval in the dugout today from what we saw from our position players.”

There sure was plenty to like for the Twins, from all the walks to Christian Vázquez driving in three runs — his first RBIs since June 8 — to Correa getting on base four times, including three times to lead off an inning.

“Obviously home runs are king in the game, but you have to understand that when you’re leading off, you cannot get too big,” Correa said. “You have to play your role. That’s get on base and start a rally.”

The Twins had a few of those, scoring three runs in the second, sixth and seventh innings while adding one for good measure in the ninth.

And they would need almost all of those runs as the Dodgers chipped away throughout the game.
Twins starter Simeon Woods Richardson issued plenty of free passes of his own — five — and flirted with trouble in both the second and third innings.

It finally caught up to him in the fourth, when, after he walked the first two batters, Andy Pages made him pay, hitting a curveball out to left-center to tie the game up and end the starter’s night.

From there, the Twins turned to their stable of relievers, using seven different pitchers to seal the win. After Danny Coulombe, Brock Stewart, Louie Varland and Griffin Jax each pitched an inning, the Twins turned to Anthony Misiewicz in the eighth inning. The southpaw’s outing was cut short when he suffered what Baldelli described as “a pec strain of some kind,” leading the Twins to turn to Jhoan Duran earlier than expected.

The closer ended up throwing two innings to finish off the game, despite the Twins carrying a five-run lead into the ninth inning, perhaps a sign of how important Tuesday’s game was with the trade deadline nearing.

“Pitching staff, bullpen did a great job of keeping us in the game. We took great at-bats,” Woods Richardson said. “That’s the type of quality winning baseball we need. Sometimes it takes everybody to grab and oar and get in the boat together and paddle.”

GRANITE FALLS, Minn. — A small jet en route to a popular air show in Wisconsin crashed near Granite Falls on Monday evening, killing one man and injuring another.

David Colin Dacus, 46, of San Francisco, was pronounced dead at the scene of the crash shortly before 5:30 p.m. Monday. Mark Ryan Ruff, 43, of Dallas, was the surviving occupant.

The jet crashed about 5 miles south of Granite Falls near the Granite Falls Airport.

The men were aboard a 50-year-old military trainer jet known as an Aero Vodochody L-39 Albatros. The Czech-built aircraft is registered as N339L to an individual in Alpine, Wyo.

The jet’s two occupants were flying from Watertown, S.D., to Fond du Lac, Wis., to attend the Experimental Aircraft Association show in Oshkosh, Wis. They had flown from Gillette, Wyo., to Watertown on Monday afternoon. Federal Aviation Administration records show they were in the air for 23 minutes, from 5:06 p.m. to 5:29 p.m., after departing Watertown.

The jet made a steady climb while on a route “straight as an arrow” from Watertown, toward Fond du Lac, reaching an altitude of 20,000 feet, according to flight data reviewed by Robert Katz, a commercial pilot in Dallas with 43 years of experience as a pilot and analyzing records of flights.

Katz said that, in his opinion, a rapid climb to 20,000 feet may have stressed the 50-year-old aircraft, but that it would not be unusual to climb to that height for a flight covering the distance between Watertown and Fond du Lac.

The flight data show the jet began a steady descent after it reached its peak altitude. Yellow Medicine County Sheriff Bill Flaten reported that his office had been informed the plane was experiencing engine problems.

The flight path shows the jet made a relatively large, circular loop in the vicinity of the Granite Falls Airport, apparently as part of the attempt to descend for a landing. It made a much smaller loop and descended in seconds at its crash location, according to the FAA data.

At approximately 5:32 p.m. Monday, the Yellow Medicine County Sheriff’s Office received a 911 call that an aircraft had crashed. Emergency responders arrived on the scene and assisted the lone survivor.

While at the crash scene, personnel determined that there was an unspent cartridge used for the ejection seats in the jet. The Bloomington Bomb Squad and the 148th Air Wing were called for assistance, according to the sheriff’s office.

“The cartridge was safely removed from the site and a controlled explosion was performed to render it safe,” the news release said.

Investigators with the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board arrived on the scene Tuesday. They are conducting a full investigation into the incident. They will remove the wreckage and examine it at a different location.

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