Last week the Marine Conservation Society launched their new campaign #StopOceanPoison which urges the UK government to take decisive action to help stop the rising tide of chemical pollution.

The Marine Conservation Society calls for members of the public to sign a petition and email their MP to ask the UK government to commit to, and deliver on, protections from chemical pollution – before the health of our blue planet is irreparably damaged by ever increasing levels of chemical pollution.

The petition demands specific actions including:

• A UK Chemicals Strategy which protects the environment
• Ban on all PFAS ‘forever chemicals’ from all non- essential uses

Over the past few decades our environment has been subjected to a constant, unrelenting, stream of toxic chemicals. PFAS – the ‘forever chemicals’ – are one such group of chemicals that are poisoning our rivers and oceans.

PFAS, a family of thousands of different chemicals, persist in nature for decades. This has led to the creation of a global toxic legacy of chemicals, with PFAS now even found in rainwater in the most remote parts of the globe. These chemicals may be found in consumer items such as food packaging, non-stick cookware, textiles, and cosmetics.

Certain harmful chemicals have been found to have negative effect on the health of animals including harming their nervous and immune system as well as affecting their ability to reproduce.

There is evidence that the presence of certain persistent chemicals in our waters, such as PCBs, has led to UK’s killer whale populations not producing new calves for over 20 years, as well as increasing the risk of disease in harbour porpoises by 41%.

Although manufacturing of PCBs was banned decades ago, their persistent nature means that they are still harming the health of our environment to this day. It is critical that we act quickly and decisively on persistent chemicals to prevent the mistakes of the past from becoming the mistakes of the present. 

Failure to enact a ban of PFAS will only allow us to hurtle further downstream into the chemical pollution crisis.

CHEM Trust recently published our ‘Ban PFAS manifesto’, now supported by over 60 European civil society organisations, urging EU Member States and the Commission to ban PFAS in consumer products by 2025 and across all uses by 2030.

You can help take action on the chemical pollution crisis by signing onto The Marine Conservation Societies petition here.

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