Significant Legal Precedents and Upcoming Discussions on PFAS

Welcome back to the Talking PFAS podcast.  If you are joining me for the first time a very big welcome to you.   I am a journalist and your host Kayleen Bell.

Last week I brought you a discussion with Peter Murphy, the Managing Director of EPOC Enviro.  This Australian company recently managed to secure patents in Australia and the US for their SAFF technology.  I encourage you to have a listen to that episode to learn more about the SAFF suite of products using foam fractionation to remove PFAS.  And I would like to also take this opportunity to thank EPOC Enviro for sponsoring today’s episode of Talking PFAS podcast.  You will hear a short announcement from Pete about midway through today’s episode.  And at the end of today’s episode there will be a short announcement about how you can get involved with sponsorship for Talking PFAS podcast and you can read about it of course in the show notes.  

Today’s guest is a very welcome return guest to the Talking PFAS podcast.  It is Environmental Lawyer, John Gardella, Boston Attorney, from CMBG3 Law in the United States.  John had the honour of being the only person in the country that was recognised as the thought leader on PFAS in 2020 and 2021 by the esteemed National Law Review.  He writes regularly for the National Law Review and his website on PFAS.

We had a really interesting and informative discussion about litigation, and regulation updates in the US, including the current rollbacks that are currently happening under the Trump EPA. 

There is also some other really important information in today’s episode about PFAS and health effects including some new ones that are being acknowledged by the legal system in the US.   John also talks about how companies need to remain vigilant at looking at their processes to see if PFAS is involved in them to protect themselves from PFAS litigation.  In today’s episode we talk about one particular case which John is currently involved in at the moment where a company is being sued for using water that contained PFAS in their manufacturing and they didn’t know.  

I hope you enjoyed today’s episode and don’t forget to check out the show notes and also if you enjoy the Talking PFAS podcast please consider subscribing so that you don’t miss an episode and also sharing it with your colleagues and friends.  And next episode of Talking PFAS I will be bringing you a discussion I had with Alison Ling she is from the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of St. Thomas in St Paul, Minnesota in the US. 

We are going to be discussing a couple of research papers that Alison Ling has been the main author on and this was from her paper about the estimated scale of costs to remove PFAS from the environment at current emission rates and that paper states that "the current costs to remove and destroy the total PFAS mass released annually into the environment would likely exceed the global GDP of $106 trillion US dollars."  And she goes on to point out that "while this level of treatment is not technically or economically achievable it highlights the unaffordability of using environmental remediation alone to manage environmental PFAS stocks.  Without significant reductions in productions and emissions the mass of PFAS present in the global environment will continue to rise."  So I look forward to bringing you that discussion with Alison Ling.

Lastly if you are a remediation company or a company that specialises in selling PFAS free products please contact me at TalkingPFAS@gmail.com to find out more about how you can get involved with limited sponsorship opportunities.  Please note terms and conditions do apply and I maintain full editorial control.  Also any featured remediation companies is not my endorsement.

Thank you again for listening see you next time.

Thank you again to EPOC Enviro who were today’s sponsor of Talking PFAS podcast.   

EPOC Enviro home page: https://epocenviro.com/

SAFF Family: https://epocenviro.com/saff-family/

Technical Publications: https://epocenviro.com/technical-publications/

Case Studies: https://epocenviro.com/projects/

Socials: https://www.linkedin.com/company/epoc-enviro/?viewAsMember=true 

Contact Details: info@epocenviro.com

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