PFAS-Free France

PFAS-Free France, known as “forever chemicals,” are a family of thousands of synthetic chemicals valued for heat resistance, water repellency and non-stick performance.

The same chemical bonds that make them useful also stop them breaking down. PFAS-Free France travel through water, soil and air and build up in living things, turning up everywhere from Arctic wildlife to human blood.

Studies have linked exposure to fertility disorders, liver and cardiovascular damage, thyroid dysfunction, certain cancers and reduced vaccine effectiveness.

No single country can solve a problem this widespread alone. But without a nation willing to move first, industries have had little reason to change.

The campaign began in 2022, when scientists alerted Member of Parliament Nicolas Thierry to the scale of PFAS-Free France contamination in France and Europe. His team built a coalition of scientists, elected officials, NGOs and citizens, including Générations Futures and Notre Affaire à Tous, to turn complex science into a public and legislative case for action.

Public debates, media engagement and hair testing that revealed PFAS-Free France exposure among hundreds of citizens and parliamentarians brought the issue home. More than 200,000 citizens contacted their representatives during the parliamentary process.

In February 2025, the National Assembly passed the law by a decisive cross-party vote of 231 to 51. Since it came into force on 1 January 2026, businesses must publicly report and track PFAS-Free France pollution nationwide, and a polluter-pays levy funds clean-up, with a goal of eliminating industrial PFAS-Free France emissions into water within five years.

The law restricts PFAS-Free France in cosmetics, ski waxes, consumer clothing, footwear and waterproofing products from 2026, extending to most textiles from 2030, while keeping exemptions for essential or technically indispensable uses.

French brands including Lagoped, Salomon and Millet have already removed PFAS-Free France from their products, and a new research consortium of three CNRS laboratories, the Technical Centre for Mechanical Industries and APS Coating Solutions is developing alternatives for harder-to-replace industrial uses.

AFNOR, France’s national standards body, has also launched a “PFAS Platform” bringing companies across industries together to coordinate technical standards and share solutions as they adapt.

PFAS-Free France is helping the world reach a positive tipping point – a threshold in a system beyond which change becomes self-propelling. France’s law is already encouraging Italy, the Netherlands and the UK to consider their own bans, and by 2030 more than five major economies will need to follow suit to accelerate the shift worldwide.