EU wild boar found to contain high levels of toxic PFAS

Wild boar in a European national park have been found to contain levels of toxic PFAS “forever chemicals” nearly five times higher than is allowed to be sold in meat for human consumption under EU law, according to a new study. The work, by experts in PFAS at The James Hutton Institute in Aberdeen and the University of Graz in Austria, was carried to assess background levels of the chemicals in the environment, using wild boar from the Bohemian Forest National Park in the Czech Republic as “bio-indicators”. It found that, compared to an earlier study of wild boar in a rural area of north-east Germany, the boar in the park contained twice as much PFAS. There are more than 12,000 PFAS, dubbed “forever chemicals” due to how long they take to degrade, which are widely used in household products but linked with serious health concerns including cancer, fertility issues and liver damage. Viktoria Müller, a researcher at the Hutton, who supported the study as part of her PhD research at ...