Pfas are chemicals widely used in industry. There are almost five thousand “types”, some with proven harmful effects on health, many others with highly suspected and under-established risks. They are defined as eternal pollutants because they remain in the environment for very long periods of time. And they therefore have many opportunities to enter our body, accumulate there and exert their harmful effects.
In 2026, a European directive will impose a limit threshold for the presence of PFAS in drinking water, but currently in our country there are no regulations on the matter, and therefore there are no institutional monitoring programs that investigate the levels to which citizens are exposed Italians. A gap that Greenpeace has decided to fill, with a survey just published that analyzed the water coming out of the taps of 235 Italian cities, arriving at a less than reassuring result: PFAS are present in 79 percent of the samples analyzed, with peaks that in some cases they exceed the thresholds established by European regulations.
The investigation
Greenpeace’s analysis covered municipalities across the entire national territory and all regions, searching for 58 banned substances (as in the case of PFOA) or considered potentially dangerous to health by the scientific community.
The results show an association between Pfas and the level of industrialization of the territories, and therefore also a geographical gradient that sees less contamination in the South of the country, and higher levels in the North and in the areas with a stronger industrial vocation.
High levels emerged in Lombardy (including almost all samples taken in Milan), Piedmont, Veneto, Emilia-Romagna, Liguria and Tuscany. But also, less expectedly, in Sardinia (in the areas of Olbia, Sassari and Cagliari) and in Perugia in Umbria. The regions with the fewest positive samples were Abruzzo, Sicily and Puglia. With variable levels, however, the problem concerns the entire peninsula (including islands): the analysis of the 260 samples collected revealed at least three positive samples for each Region.
Pfas in our taps
Greenpeace analyzes monitored 58 potentially dangerous substances, double the 24 that will be taken into consideration in 2026 with the transposition of the European directives on the matter. Among the Pfas researched, the most widespread in Italian waters were Pfoa, a known carcinogen present in 47 percent of the samples analyzed, followed by trifluoroacetic acid, or Tfa, an ultra-short chain molecule that forms from the degradation of many other compounds , and that in the samples in which it was present (40 percent of the total) it was always the most abundant substance, and Pfos.
- The municipality where the highest levels of PFOA contamination were recorded are Bussoleno (TO), with 28.1 nanograms per liter, followed by Rapallo (GE), Tortona (AL), Turin (Corso Sclopis), Imperia, Fossano ( CN), Aosta, Genoa (Piazza Aprosio), Comacchio (FE) and Suzzara (MN). Particularly critical situation in the city of Turin where, in addition to the sample taken in Corso Sclopis, high contamination was recorded in two other sampling points: Piazza Borromini (15.8 nanograms per liter) and Corso Castelfidardo (15.3 nanograms per liter).
- PFOS (Perfluorooctane sulfonate), classified as a possible carcinogen by the United Nations Agency for Research on Cancer, was detected in 22% of samples (58 out of 260). The highest values were recorded in Milan (Via delle Forze Armate), Bussoleno (TO), Ancona (Piazza Fontana), Rimini, Montesilvano (PE), Rovigo, Carrara, Teramo, Comacchio (FE), Fiorenzuola d’Arda ( PC) and Arzignano (VI).
It is good to remember that Pfoa and Pfos have already been banned globally, since 2009 and 2019 respectively: finding them still in our tap water demonstrates their very long persistence in the environment and makes the problem current even years, and decades, after they stopped using them.
Contaminated water, the new alarm: in addition to PFAS, TFA must also be looked for
There is another eternal pollutant that has ended up at the center of the attention of the scientific world and shows widespread diffusion in Italian municipalities. TFA (Trifluoroacetic Acid) was found in 40% of the samples analyzed, i.e. 104 out of a total of 260. With the exception of Arezzo, in all the other samples in which the presence of TFA was ascertained, this constitutes almost totality of PFAS measured in terms of mass.
Sardinia (77% of positive samples), Trentino Alto Adige (75% of positive samples) and Piedmont (69% of positive samples) are the regions in which TFA contamination was found to be most widespread.
A picture that is anything but reassuring: millions of Italians are exposed through drinking water to dangerous and bioaccumulative chemical substances, known to be endocrine disruptors and cause the onset of serious pathologies, including some forms of cancer. There are few territories not affected by contamination, with the greatest critical issues emerging in almost all the Central-Northern regions and in Sardinia.
Looking at the PFAS levels that emerged in the survey, only in one case do they exceed those that will be introduced in 2026, equal (for the “sum of PFAS” parameter used in the regulation) to 100 nanograms per liter. However, Greenpeace points out that these thresholds, established in 2020, are now considered insufficient to protect human health by the European Environment Agency itself, based on the most recent knowledge on the matter.
Comparing the situation that emerged with the limits in force in other nations which, unlike ours, have decided to apply more stringent rules than the EU ones, the water from Italian taps was found to exceed American safety thresholds in 22 percent of the samples analyzed , and beyond the Danish ones in 41 percent.
“It is unacceptable that, despite overwhelming evidence of the serious health damage caused by PFAS, some of which are recognized as carcinogens, and the widespread contamination of Italian drinking water, our government continues to ignore this emergency, failing to adequately protect public health and the environment”, said Giuseppe Ungherese, Pollution campaign manager at Greenpeace Italy, during the presentation of the report.
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“Still today there is no law in our country that prohibits the use and production of PAS. Eliminating this contamination is an imperative that can no longer be postponed. The Meloni government must break the silence on this crisis: the population has the right to drink clean water , free from poisons and contaminants”.
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