PFAS and Forever Chemicals
Industrial chemicals that do not break down are now in almost every human bloodstream.
Severity score
62.1
Severe · default weighting
Trajectory
Worsening
What this is
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances are used in cookware, firefighting foam, textiles and packaging, and persist indefinitely in water and soil. They are linked to cancers, immune suppression and developmental effects. Cleanup, where attempted at all, is extraordinarily expensive.
Score breakdown
Loss of life
22Direct and attributable mortality, normalised across annual and cumulative tolls.
Lives negatively impacted
80People displaced, injured, food-insecure, exposed or otherwise materially harmed.
Financial cost
84Direct damage, lost output and health-system spend attributable to the event.
Environmental impact
78Emissions, habitat and biodiversity loss, contamination and irreversibility.
Trajectory
70Whether the situation is escalating, and how much worse it is plausibly getting.