On 10 June 2026, at 14:00-15:45 UK time, IEEP UK will be hosting a webinar discussing the regulation of the large group of PFAS chemicals – widely known as “forever chemicals” – in the UK.

Following up on the imminent publication of a new timeline – ‘The Long Road to Regulating PFAS in the EU and UK’ – written by IEEP UK Honorary Fellow Nigel Haigh. The first of the PFAS group (PFOS) was restricted 20 years ago, and the webinar will explore why it has taken so long to restrict the rest. This event will provide an overview of the history and current status of PFAS regulation in the UK and across the EU, and discuss the difficulty in restricting these chemicals effectively. 

The EU and UK regimes for regulating chemicals have been based on dealing with them one by one. Although some small groups (phthalates and bisphenols) have been restricted, PFAS is exceptional in being a group of over 10,000 chemicals which share a common carbon fluorine bond which makes them extremely resistant to breakdown in the environment. Not all have been shown to be harmful to human health and to test each individually would be a huge task.

IEEP UK’s research has already shown that there has been considerable UK-EU divergence in this area since Brexit, as the EU has restricted additional PFAS under REACH and the UK has not yet followed suit. Progress towards a blanket PFAS ban in the EU also continues to be made, with ECHA recently indicating that it will come forward with its proposal later this year. 

This webinar comes at a crucial moment for PFAS regulation in the UK, following the UK Government’s PFAS action plan and the publication of the final report of the Environmental Audit Committee’s PFAS inquiry which called for the adoption of an ‘essential-use approach’ to PFAS regulation and encouraged closer UK-EU collaboration in this area, citing IEEP UK’s evidence on the dangers of such regulatory divergence. 

This webinar will be chaired by Dr. Colin Church, Chief Executive of the Institute of Material, Metals and Mining (IOM3), with speakers including Nigel Haigh OBE, Honorary Fellow at IEEP UK; Andreas Kraemer, Former Senior Fellow at IEEP Bonn, Founder and Director Emeritus of Ecologic Institute, IEEP’s partner in Germany; Matt Womersley, Environment and Business Manager – Chemicals Regulatory Development at Environment Agency; a representative from Umweltbundesamt – the German Environment Agency (tbc); and further speakers to be confirmed. 

You can register to attend the webinar here: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_x75Ti-U4TPGj1eRvt_kzNQ

Photo by Maria Baranova on Unsplash