One of the banners deployed on Saturday March 2, 2024 by activists who entered the site of the chemical industry group Arkema in Pierre-Bénite (Rhône) to denounce perfluorinated pollution (AFP/Sylvain THIZY)
“PFAS tell the truth!”: several hundred people entered the site of the Arkema chemistry group in Pierre-Bénite (Rhône) on Saturday to denounce perfluorinated pollution (PFAS).
The Rhône prefecture reported eight arrests.
Wearing white overalls, activists from Extinction Rebellion and Youth for Climate cut the entrance fences to the site to enter, according to an AFP journalist on site.
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!”, “Arkemagouilles” and “Arkema is poisoning us” were tagged on the walls.
More than 300 people participated in this action, according to Julien, the spokesperson for the organizers who did not wish to give his name. The prefecture counted 150 people.
Some arrived by train, others by bus. “The idea is to make a half-open door, half-open because on the one hand, we want to close. We want to close the floodgates of the eternal pollutants that Arkema releases into the Rhône and on the other hand, we want to open the door because all this is done in secret,” Julien told AFP.
“We condemn such an act, which not only seriously disrupts the work of more than 500 employees, but can also put employees and demonstrators in danger, due to the industrial activity of the site, which is classified Seveso “, reacted the site director, Pierre Clousier, in a press release.
Arkema specifies in this press release that the site will be able to manufacture its products without any use of fluorinated additives by the end of the year.
Around ten activists who had not left the platform when the police arrived were arrested, noted the AFP journalist.
– “Eternal” pollutants –
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.
View of the Arkema chemist site in Pierre-Bénite, in the Rhône, June 3, 2023 (AFP/Archives/OLIVIER CHASSIGNOLE)
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.
According to this analysis, the water intended for the consumption of 166,000 inhabitants of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region contains PFAS, “eternal pollutants”, at levels higher than the European reference threshold.
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.
This action comes as the chemist Daikin, also in Pierre-Bénite, submitted a file for the construction of a new production unit, arousing the anger of residents.
“The new Daikin workshop does not lead to discharges of PFAS into water, unlike Arkema which is the subject of an order dated September 2022 which prescribes the cessation of the use of surfactants of the family of PFAS before the end of 2024″, specified the Rhône prefecture, stressing that it had however “taken strong measures to supervise the operation of this workshop as much as possible”.
© 2024 AFP
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