New consumer laws needed to protect us from forever chemicals

Australians generally expect that when companies sell a product not only will it work but also it won’t harm them.

And that when there’s a problem, there will be laws and regulations that will hold wrongdoers to account.

3M Global Headquarters in Maplewood, Minnesota.Credit: Bloomberg

While there is a law protecting consumer rights when a product doesn’t work, it will surprise many that it is not illegal to sell unsafe goods in Australia.

This is particularly alarming in the wake of a Herald investigation and a newly released Stan documentary, How to Poison a Planet, which exposes a story of contamination, cancer, cover-ups and corporate malfeasance in the emerging health and environmental scandal of forever chemicals, or PFAS.

It shows how ubiquitous products containing PFAS have become – in everything from contact lenses to coffee cups, mobile phones and frying pans – with their industrial applications centering on the chemical’s ability to repel water.

The documentary and our investigation revealed that hundreds of products in Australian homes are contaminated with chemicals that never break down in the environment and are now in the bloodstream of 98 per cent of the world’s population. An emerging body of evidence shows that the chemicals cause alarming health impacts.

It also exposes how the creator of the PFAS family of chemicals, the billion-dollar Wall Street giant 3M, has known the health risks for decades.

As the impact of exposure to the products became clear, it was the revelation of the lack of consumer protection that startled our investigative reporter, Carrie Fellner.

When Fellner asked the competition regulator about laws governing the sale of unsafe goods, she was pointed to a 2018 speech by the then ACCC boss Rod Sims. Sims acknowledged “many people are surprised to learn that it is not illegal to sell unsafe goods in Australia”.

Former ACCC boss Rod Sims.Credit: Oscar Colman

“Many think there’s already a law that says goods have to be safe. Well, there isn’t, but there should be.”

The Herald strongly agrees.

“While mandatory safety standards and bans regulate some of the most dangerous consumer goods, our current product safety laws are primarily reactive,” Sims explained. “They generally come into place after consumers have been harmed.

“Our product safety framework is lagging behind our international counterparts. Many OECD countries have already made it illegal to supply unsafe consumer goods.”

As knowledge about the dangers of PFAS grows, there is simply no way for Australians to be able to avoid exposure. The law doesn’t protect us.

In 2019, a Labor majority Senate inquiry into forever chemicals contamination recommended Australian health authorities be more “up front” about the links between PFAS and potential health effects to avoid the impression they were “downplaying the risks in order to avoid taking responsibility for the contamination”.

Yet five years later, Australia’s Health Department is still pushing the message that the health effects of PFAS are minimal. This is directly at odds with the rest of the world’s most esteemed health agencies, including the World Health Organisation, the European Chemicals Agency and the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.

It doesn’t seem much to ask the Albanese government to follow through on the recommendations of its own MPs who extensively examined this issue.

In addition, the government has defended court action for years about the impact of PFAS on Australian communities.

It settled class actions on environmental contamination over recent years but stopped short of acknowledging health impacts.

It’s time to end the charade and for the federal government to act in the interests of all Australians.

The Albanese government must address the hole in the consumer law and make it illegal to sell unsafe products.

The Herald doesn’t believe in unnecessary corporate regulation.

But in the case of forever chemicals, the horse appears to be following the cart: we study the health effects only after it’s too late to reverse the damage.

A dangerous chemical is now in almost everyone’s blood but we were never asked if we were OK with that.

Consumer laws must be strengthened and PFAS products should be banned.

Revealed: How To Poison A Planet now streaming, only on Stan.

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