Revealed: The fish packed with cancer-causing ‘forever chemicals’

Sign up for our free Health Check email to receive exclusive analysis on the week in health Get our free Health Check email Get our free Health Check email SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy Testing of “forever chemicals” in England’s wild fish has found high levels of an industrial pollutant that if eaten more than twice a year would exceed recommended EU safety guidelines. “We continue to work with regulators to further understand the risks of PFAS and implement measures to address them.” The EFSA assessment is based on four chemicals – PFOS, PFOA, PFNA and PFHxS – although the samples taken in wild fish by the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science recorded around 30 different types. He added: “But you should be concerned about consuming the fish and you wouldn’t want to catch the fish and eat it if you lived along the Thames on a regular basis based on what we know about human exposure.” Not all PFAS are known to be toxic or bioaccumulative but all are persistent, which has led Prof Cousins to believe that achieving environmental quality standards in urban rivers such as the Thames is “not really possible”. He said: “The problem is they’re still floating around in the environment and they will do for a long time because they’re so persistent, they don’t break down at all, which is why they are called a forever chemical.” A study last year from Cardiff University on otters found PFAS in each one they sampled, with more than 80% of them containing 12 types of PFAS.