Rhône: hundreds of environmental activists enter an Arkema site to denounce perfluorinated pollution

Several hundred people entered the site of the chemist Arkema in Pierre-Bénite (Rhône) on Saturday to denounce perfluorinated (PFAS) pollution. Dressed in white overalls, activists from Extinction Rebellion and Youth for Climate cut the entrance fences to the site to enter. They then displayed two banners inside the platform. On one of them, we could read the word “poison” topped with a skull. The inscriptions “PFAS tell the truth!” were spray painted on the walls. “Arkemagouilles” or even “Arkema is poisoning us”.

More than 300 people participated in this action, according to the spokesperson for the organizers. Some arrived by train, others by bus. Around ten activists who had not left the site when the police arrived were arrested. The Rhône prefecture reported eight arrests, but “the CRS intervention was still in progress” in the middle of the afternoon, she said. This action comes as the chemist Daikin, also in Pierre-Bénite, received authorization to build a new production unit, arousing the anger of residents.

After the broadcast of several journalistic investigations in 2022, the regional authorities launched controls, in particular at the level of the Regional Health Agency (ARS), which had posted online in mid-January the result of an analysis of water from consumption. In recent months, several communities and individuals have launched collective complaints for “endangering the lives of others” by worrying about “alarming concentrations” of PFAS linked to industrial sites in the chemical valley, in south of Lyon, where the Arkema site is located.

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PFAS, poly- and perfluoroalkyl compounds (a family of more than 4,700 molecules), have non-stick and waterproof properties and are massively present in everyday life: Teflon pans, food packaging, waterproof textiles, automobiles, etc. Almost indestructible , they accumulate over time in the air, soil, river water, food and even in the human body, hence their nickname “eternal” pollutants. If exposed over a long period, they can have effects on fertility or promote certain cancers, according to initial studies.