A panel of experts will have to describe by December 31, 2025 the eternal pollutants used or emitted on the Pierre-Benite platform since its creation, and give its opinion on the dates from which the companies became aware of their potentially harmful effects on the environment, according to a copy of the decision rendered Friday by a summary judge in Lyon.
A legal battle for recognition of the polluter pays principle
“ For the first time, companies are being named and their share of responsibility for this pollution will be sought.“, declared to AFP the president of the Metropole, the ecologist Bruno Bernard, welcoming this “ historic decision“.
For him, the expertise should ultimately confirm the role of the two chemical groups and " The next step will be to go and get them on the polluter pays principle"The metropolis will then ask them to compensate for the additional cost linked to the treatment of running water polluted by PFAS.
Almost indestructible, PFAS, a family bringing together between 4000 and 5000 molecules, and even more if we count the degradation productsThey accumulate over time in nature and organisms, hence their nickname "eternal pollutants". In case of exposure over a long period, they can have effects on fertility, fetal development, interfere with the functioning of our endocrine system and our immune system and promote certain cancers, according to initial studies.
Read alsoPerfluorinated, we are all exposed to them. With what consequences on health?
The French company Arkema and the Japanese company Daikin have been using PFAS in their Pierre-Benite factories for years, but the nature and volume of their releases over time remain poorly understood.
“ No civil fault " according to the lawyers of the chemical industry
At the hearing in May, their lawyers had requested that the expert appraisal request be rejected, arguing that they had not committed any "no civil fault". "These are products freely placed on the market", had notably pleaded Me Elodie Simon for Arkema.
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