14 maj 2025 - Riksdagsseminarium om hur vi får stopp på evighetskemikalierna PFAS 

Användningen av PFAS-kemikalier är en av de största miljöskandalerna i modern tid. Dessa ämnen bryts mycket långsamt ner i naturen och kommer därför att finnas kvar i både människor och miljö under överskådlig framtid – med allvarliga konsekvenser för kommande generationer.

Mot denna bakgrund arrangerades den 14 maj 2025 ett riksdagsseminarium under ledning av Jytte Guteland (S). Seminariet var ett samarbete mellan politiker från Socialdemokraterna och Moderaterna samt det vetenskapliga nätverket SWACCS (Swedish Academic Consortium on Chemical Safety).

Från SWACCS deltog professor Carl-Gustaf Bornehag, som gav en inledande presentation om PFAS-problematikens omfattning, med särskilt fokus på hälsorisker. Därefter presenterade journalisterna Daniel Värjö (Sveriges Radio) och Stéphane Horel (Le Monde) sina slutsatser från The Forever Pollution Project – ett banbrytande gränsöverskridande och tvärvetenskapligt samarbete där journalister och experter tillsammans kartlagt omfattningen av PFAS-föroreningar i Europa.

Projektet hade även som mål att kritiskt granska de argument som kemi- och plastindustrins lobbyorganisationer använder för att förhindra ett EU-förbud mot dessa så kallade "evighetskemikalier".

Seminariet avslutades med en engagerad diskussion mellan deltagarna och föredragshållarna.

The SWACCS working group for scientific interactions is happy to announce the first scientific interaction seminar.

When May 3 2021, 15:00-17:00 (GMT+2)

What: The topic of this zoom-based seminar is PFAS: current levels in Swedish waters, how to determine a safe level and what can be done to lower the exposure. We have invited three speakers who will give us important information regarding these topics:

1. PFASs levels in Swedish lakes and water reservoirs. Oksana Golovko, a researcher at the Department of Aquatic Sciences and Assessment, SLU Uppsala.

2. What is a safe PFAS limit in drinking water and when does the exposure become toxic? Mattias Öberg, Associate professor at Institute of Environmental Medicine (IMM), Karolinska Institutet.

3. Can we do anything about the water contamination? Are there any remediation techniques for water and soil? Lutz Ahrens, Associate Professor in Organic Environmental Chemistry at SLU Uppsala.

The presentations will be followed by a plenary discussion. The overall aim of the SWACCS interaction seminars is to enhance scientific exchange and networking between researchers. This is the first organized seminar, but it is our hope that initiatives for new seminars will be taken by members in SWACCS with the overall goal to increase scientific interactions between research groups within topics that are of interest for members. If you want to be part of the SWACCS scientific interaction working group or have suggestions for future seminar topics, please contact elin.engdahl@ebc.uu.se.

The seminar will be held on zoom. The zoom link will be sent to registered participants 1 day before the seminar.

Horizon 2020 workshop

4 September, 2019 (10 am to 5 pm) @ Stockholm university

Högbomsalen, Geovetenskapens hus, Svante Arrhenius väg 12

Directions can be found here

In autumn, EU will officially publish the last round of calls within the H2020 framework. Despite being confidential, preliminary (but quite fixed) versions of the call texts are circulating, and there is one of great interest to our research fields, namely SC1-BHC-36-2020: Micro- and nano-plastics in our environment: Understanding exposures and impacts on human health. The budget allocated for this call allows for about 4-5 project, supposedly covering different aspects named in the call (e.g. “toxicology and uptake of micro- and/or nano-plastics and additives/adsorbed contaminants” or “effects and transport of micro- and/or nano-plastics across biological barriers”). The call will be launched in autumn 2019, and it is thus high time to start discussing ideas and forming working groups to prepare competitive applications when it is out. We have planned a workshop for this, similar to the one we had 2 years ago in Stockholm where we formed 4 consortia for the EDC call with complementary application, which were all successful.

We would like to invite you to a similar workshop on the 4th of September at Stockholm University which is easily accessible from Stockholm central station. We are planning a one-day workshop (approx. 10am-5pm) with interested colleagues from Sweden and the rest of Europe. The aim of this workshop will be to form project ideas that suit the call and identify working groups that will elaborate on these ideas. Mark this date in your calendars; more detailed information including a link to the registration form will follow soon. Please distribute the invitation to others that you regard as potentially interested. 

Please note that Swaccs (Swedish Academic Consortium on Chemical Safety, the academic Swetox successor) will fund the workshop but you will have to pay for travel expenses yourself.

Please indicate your potential attendance by emailing: joelle.ruegg@ki.se so that we will get an idea on how many participants we can expect.