Le Figaro Lyon
All French people have perfluorinated blood types, but the inhabitants of Pierre-Bénite have seven times more than the average. One year after the revelation of the spill of these eternal pollutants by Arkema's plant in southern Lyon, France 3 had a series of blood tests carried out on residents of the commune by the toxicology laboratory of the University Hospital of Liège, Belgium, specialized in the search for pollutants. And the results highlight a significantly higher exposure of residents living near the platform. The sample of 10 volunteers has an average rate of 5.78 micrograms of PFNA per liter of blood against 0.8 in all French, according to a 2016 Public Health France report.
The maximum concentration of PFNA is 12 times higher on the Pierre-Benin sample (24.27 μg/L) than in the French population (1.91 μg/L). Usually, these are the most common PFOAs and PFAS, but PFNAs as well as PFundA, are particularly present in the blood of the residents of the platform. Regarding the latter, the average of the sample tested by France 3 is 12 times higher than that of the French population (2.1 μg/L against 0.17 μg/L) and the maximum value 32 times higher (13.75 μg/L against 0.42 μg/L). "One of the residents even has up to 17 μg/L of PFundA in his blood, that is to say a hundred times the French average," says the public channel.
After breast milk, chicken eggs, vegetable salads and perfluorinated products produced by the Arkema plant are definitely everywhere in Pierre-Bénite. So much so that a class action was filed before the Administrative Court of Lyon on Monday, May 25 against Arkema, to ask to limit discharges and to take samples from the blood and breast milk of local residents but also air, water, soil, food. PFOA has been classified as a possible carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer since 2016.
