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)
Several hundred people entered the site of the Arkema chemistry group in Pierre-Bénite (Rhône) on Saturday to denounce perfluorinated pollution (PFAS), noted an AFP journalist on site.
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!”, “Arkemagouilles” and “Arkema is poisoning us” were tagged on the walls.
More than 300 people participated in this action, according to the spokesperson for the organizers. Some arrived by train, others by bus.
“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 “, declared Pierre Clousier, director of the site, 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 2024.
Around ten activists who had not left the platform when the police arrived were arrested, noted the AFP journalist.
The Rhône prefecture, which counted 150 demonstrators, reported eight arrests.
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.
This action comes as the chemist Daikin, also in Pierre-Bénite, received authorization to build a new production unit, arousing the anger of residents.
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.
© 2024 AFP
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