PFAS and the pollution trap: contested knowledge in environmental justice struggles

Emerging evidence on per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) contamination hotspots has put these persistent chemicals under growing scrutiny. However, chemical corporations’ deliberate efforts at veiling risks associated with PFAS have led regulatory bodies to give a slow response to this ominous environmental and public health threat. This article analyses 25 environmental conflicts over PFAS contamination using the Global Atlas of Environmental Justice, paying particular attention to the contestation of knowledge and the roles of PFAS’ chemical properties in shaping these conflicts. In doing so, it situates environmental justice struggles in the arena of post-normal science and adds to the empirical demonstration of manufactured uncertainty by PFAS-emitting industries. It highlights how the invisible nature of PFAS allows those responsible for contamination to keep the environmental threat under the radar, which supports the case for treating embodied experiences of people in affected communities as valuable sources of data informing timely policy interventions. The analysis contributes to environmental justice literature by pointing at the emergence of new environmental justice communities and sacrifice zones through what we liken to a “pollution trap” created by invisible yet persistent toxics. Our findings call for urgent preventive action, research, dissemination, and regulation, particularly out of concern over the expansion of toxic frontiers to the Global South. • PFAS’ chemical properties help industries obscure harm and delay regulatory action. • PFAS pollution creates new environmental justice communities and sacrifice zones. • PFAS is a post-normal science issue, with knowledge embodied in experience. • Affected communities face a pollution trap of job reliance and property devaluation. • Urgent action is needed to address PFAS contamination in the Global South.