Chemours objects to the penalty that the Province of South Holland has imposed on the Teflon factory for discharges of a type of PFAS for which the company does not have a permit. Chemours and the objections committee of the Province of South Holland confirmed this after questions from NRC.
Inspectors from the Rijnmond Central Environmental Management Service determined in May that the wastewater from the Chemours factory in Dordrecht contains the substance trifluoroacetic acid (TFA). It was the first time that Chemours wastewater was tested for this substance. The factory does not have a permit to discharge TFA. The environmental agency therefore decided to impose a penalty in August. If after four months it turns out that Chemours is still discharging TFA into the sewer, the environmental department will collect penalty payments of 125,000 euros per violation, up to a maximum of 1,125,000 euros. Chemours’ turnover amounted to 6.3 billion euros in 2022.
2,400 local residents
The environmental service has also reported the TFA discharge to the Public Prosecution Service. On Thursday morning, the Public Prosecution Service announced that the criminal investigation into Chemours will begin in a different case, following a report by lawyer Bénédicte Ficq on behalf of 2,400 local residents. The Ministry of Justice is conducting an investigation into the intentional release of harmful PFAS substances into the air, soil or surface water.
Chemours filed its objection to the penalty last week. If this is declared unfounded, Chemours can still go to court. The company did this in 2018 when it was imposed penalty payments for the unauthorized discharge of the toxic PFAS compound PFOA. The judge did not agree with Chemours, but did adjust the penalty payments imposed at the time downwards: from 250,000 euros to 125,000 euros.
“Chemours’ objection fits into a pattern in which companies resist enforcement and opt for legalization, instead of taking responsibility and working on improvement,” says a spokesperson for the environmental agency. A spokesperson for Chemours says that the company does not agree with the penalty, but does not indicate why. “We will submit the grounds for the objection to the environmental department.”
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Substances of Very High Concern
TFA is an ‘ultra-short’ PFAS compound. The substance is on the list of potentially substances of very high concern that the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) maintains. It is the policy of the Province of South Holland to treat substances on this list as a precaution as if they were substances of Very High Concern.
Little is known about the health effects of TFA in humans. The RIVM has made an estimate based on animal experiments: TFA would be a factor of five hundred less harmful than the highly toxic PFAS compound PFOA. On the other hand, TFA spreads more quickly through the environment and is found in surface water in concentrations that are a hundred to a thousand times higher than longer PFAS compounds such as PFOA. TFA therefore potentially makes a major contribution to the total PFAS exposure of residents of the Netherlands.
Chemours and other producers of fluorinated substances state that TFA is a substance that also occurs naturally in the environment. Independent researchers dispute this: they see TFA as an artificial substance. TFA ends up in the environment as a breakdown product of pesticides, fluorine-containing cooling gases and burned PFAS compounds.
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