ACTION taken in response to long-standing concerns about the raised levels of the “forever chemical” PFAS among Islanders living in an area adjacent to Jersey Airport has been hailed as “swift, proportionate and evidence‑based” by the Health Minister.
Speaking as the government published its official response to the latest report by the independent PFAS panel, the minister – Deputy Tom Binet – said the intention was to focus on a small group, numbering around 100 people, affected.
A type of PFAS was an ingredient in firefighting foam sprayed at the Airport for many years until the early 1990s, going on to contaminate streams, groundwater and boreholes.
“Our response offers swift, proportionate and evidence‑based action that focuses on the group of Islanders that have been affected by the historic contamination event at the Airport,” Deputy Binet said. “It is important to note that there is no evidence suggesting that that PFAS levels elsewhere in the Island are any higher than similar areas around the world.”
Deputy Binet said that the panel’s next report would examine the wider impact of PFAS on water and the wider environment, and that he wished “to reassure Islanders that our mains water supply meets current EU and UK standards for PFAS levels in drinking water”.
The government has accepted the majority of the recommendations but has yet to commit to an Islandwide testing programme.
Specialist clinical interventions will be available from later this year, giving Islanders who had their blood tested by Public Health in 2022 access to Colesevelam, a cholesterol‑lowering medication proven to reduce PFAS levels in blood.
A group of 88 Islanders were shown to have elevated PFAS levels following testing in 2022, and this number may be extended slightly through a decision to widen eligibility criteria to include those who have potentially been exposed to the chemical though their employment, as well as residents who have lived within the extended plume area for one year or longer and used private borehole water.
The panel recommended that anonymous testing take place across the Island in order to establish background levels of PFAS, but director of public health Professor Peter Bradley said this was considered “problematic”.
Speaking at a government briefing, Professor Bradley said that it considered anonymous testing was not acceptable, given that many Islanders would want to know the result of their tests.
There were “significant concerns” about the ethics of testing blood anonymously without explicit and informed consent from the individual, he added, and there was insufficient capacity at the Hospital to conduct a full research study, including blood testing.
Although this recommendation was not accepted, alternative analysis has taken place to determine a so-called “stop level” where treatment with Colesevelam could cease because the amount of PFAS in the blood had dropped to an acceptable level.
While the mean figure for the result of Islanders within the plume area was 23.9 nanograms per millilitre of blood serum, the “qualifying” level for treatment will be 20 ng/ml, or 10 ng/ml for women of child-bearing potential.
After estimating how much PFAS an Islander would take in from food and water today – a predicted blood levels of 7ng/ml – the figure of 7ng/ml has been fixed as the stop level.
In its response, the government noted that the panel had linked elevated PFAS levels with certain health concerns—such as raised cholesterol, kidney cancer, testicular cancer—while finding a lack of evidence of harm at lower PFAS levels.
The independent panel’s third report will be the subject of a public meeting that will take place at Les Quennevais School at 6.30pm on Wednesday 10 September.
