How many PFAS do we drink?
A Swedish study shows that prolonged exposure to drinking water contaminated with PFAS increases the risk of stroke, heart attack, and cardiovascular mortality, with significant health implications and confirmed by other European epidemiological cases. The article in Le Monde
Since January 1st, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), often called "permanent pollutants" due to their persistence in the environment, have been banned in France from clothing, footwear, cosmetics, and ski wax. Furthermore, testing for 20 of these molecules in drinking water is now mandatory in the European Union—France has added trifluoroacetic acid (TFA), the most widespread of the PFAS, to this list. A Swedish study published in the December 2025 issue of the journal Environmental Research highlights the importance of monitoring population exposure to these substances, linking them to an increased risk of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality, writes Le Monde .
EPIDEMIOLOGICAL RESULTS
Coordinated by Yiyi Xu and Ying Li, professors of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of Gothenburg (Sweden), these studies conclude that, depending on the pathology, the risk of certain diseases (stroke and myocardial infarction) increases by 10% to 28% in people who drank highly contaminated tap water compared to those who drank less contaminated water.
Mortality from cardiovascular disease has increased by approximately 15%.
WHAT ARE PFAS?
PFAS are a family of several thousand molecules used for decades in a wide range of products: kitchen utensils, clothing, leather, ski waxes, firefighting foams, pesticides, and more, for their non-stick, waterproofing, and water-repellent properties. They have progressively contaminated the environment, living organisms, and the entire food chain in varying concentrations. They are also found in water resources and, ultimately, in tap water, as conventional treatment systems are unable to eliminate this pollution.
THE RONNEBY CASE
This is how Swedish researchers assessed the exposure of a group of over 45,000 people, all of whom lived or resided in Ronneby, Sweden, between 1985 and 2013. Why Ronneby? Two separate plants supply the population of this small coastal town in the south of the country: one drew water from a source contaminated by firefighting foam used at a nearby military base, while the other drew water from a much less contaminated source.
THE NATURAL EXPERIMENT
Because no research has been conducted on "permanent pollutants" in drinking water for decades, the residents of Ronneby have unwittingly become guinea pigs in a large-scale experiment: thanks to their postal address, researchers can determine which of two factories supplied them. The first was distributing water contaminated with approximately 10 micrograms of PFAS per liter (µg/l), the second with levels in the order of 0.05 µg/l.
“REAL EFFECTS UNDERESTIMATED”
The researchers then cross-referenced this information with the Swedish healthcare system's extensive databases: the national patient register has collected complete information on all hospital admissions since 1964 and outpatient care since 2001, while the national death register has indexed the details of every death since 1952. The authors deduced a 10% higher risk of myocardial infarction, a 10% higher risk of ischemic stroke (blockage of a blood vessel by a clot), and a 28% higher risk of hemorrhagic stroke (rupture of a blood vessel) in people who received the most contaminated water. Consistent with these findings, cardiovascular disease mortality increased by 15% in the latter group.
COMPARISON WITH OTHER STUDIES
The analysis of the Ronneby population offers a new piece to the still incomplete puzzle of PFAS-associated disorders and diseases. To date, the most robust epidemiological information comes from the so-called "C8" cohort, formed in the early 2000s following the discovery of severe environmental and population contamination around the DuPont plant in Parkersburg, West Virginia (USA). The study of this cohort did not reveal clear associations with cardiovascular disease, except for a modest link with stroke, but this cohort was primarily exposed to PFOA. Exposure to other "permanent pollutants" from firefighting foams suggests cardiovascular effects on which little data currently exist.
Despite the experimental limitations of their analysis, inherent to any observational study, the researchers emphasize that their result “is consistent with a large study conducted [in 2024] in Veneto, Italy, which reported a 20-30% higher cardiovascular mortality in municipalities heavily exposed to PFAS compared to unexposed municipalities.”
THE SITUATION IN FRANCE
In France, authorities still lack a comprehensive overview of drinking water contamination by PFAS: national drinking water quality data, available for 2024, only covers 11.6% of the population for PFAS, as testing for this family of pollutants is not yet mandatory. The exploratory campaign conducted by the French National Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health Safety (ANSES), made public in early December 2025, indicates that the two regulated PFAS most frequently detected in drinking water are PFHxS (found in 26.6% of the tap water samples analyzed) and PFOS (24%), but still at much lower concentrations than those found in Ronneby.
(Excerpt from the foreign press review by eprcomunicazione )
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/sanita/quanti-pfas-ci-beviamo/ on Sat, 10 Jan 2026 05:55:50 +0000.