For 65-year-old retiree Ariane Huber, the chemical plants near her home in the southern outskirts of Lyon, France, have always been part of the landscape. 

She never worried about them too much: “They were just there”, she said. Until one day, in 2022, when an investigative French TV show revealed the biggest PFAS pollution scandal to date in the country – right at her doorstep.

It was the first time she heard about PFAS. Also known as “forever chemicals” for their persistence in the environment – or bodies –, the molecules have lately come under increased scrutiny due to their potential risks to human health. Studies have notably linked them to metabolic diseases, decreased fertility, and even cancer.

For Ariane, the revelations came as a shock. She immediately thought of the vegetable patch in her backyard, which had happily fed her family with for years. Swiss chards, beans, tomatoes – all contaminated by PFAS, as later analyses revealed. 

“That really hit us hard, to think that we were growing organic produce, without any pesticides or fertilisers, so that our children could have healthy vegetables. When in fact, we were feeding them with PFAS, without even realising”, she said bitterly.

In early 2025, Ariane learned about a local initiative to take the manufacturers Arkema and Daikin to court and force them to stop polluting the area. She quickly joined the lawsuit, starting to hand out flyers and go door-to-door to raise awareness about forever chemicals in her neighbourhoods.

One of Europe’s largest civil lawsuits against PFAS

Only a few months later, she went to a routine breast screening, and was diagnosed with breast cancer. “I never thought I'd get breast cancer one day, because there's never been a case in my family”, she remembered. 

“It’s a hormone-dependent cancer and PFAS are known as endocrine disruptors”, she added. “So yes, I think there might be a link with the air we breathed, the food we ate.”

Among residents of the “Chemical Valley”, Ariane’s case is far from isolated. For many of the plaintiffs, the occurrence of certain health issues in the area is abnormally high. “In my street alone, there are three women with breast cancer. There’s me, and then there are my two neighbors, both on the left and on the right”, said Ariane. “For such a small street, I think that’s pretty high.”

€45 million in damages

Blood analyses found Ariane to have 19.25 micrograms of PFAS per litre in her bloodstream – way above what is considered the safe threshold at 2 μg/l. 

Whilst the scientific literature on PFAS exposure and the development of health issues remains limited in general, several studies do point towards a correlation between the onset of breast cancer and high levels of PFAS in the blood.

In January 2026, Ariane, alongside 191 other residents of the “Chemical Valley”, filed a new lawsuit against Arkema and Daikin. “The aim is to have [companies] realise that if they act irresponsibly, there will be citizens who take them to court”, she explained.

Since then, the list of plaintiffs has grown to more than 250, bringing the claims for damages to €45 million, according to environmental NGO Notre Affaire à Tous, which is accompanying residents in the case.

Contacted, Arkema declined to comment on an ongoing case. For his part, Gaël Marseille, president of Daikin Chemical France, stated that the company “has been doing everything possible for several years to ensure a responsible production and control its environmental impact through concrete and ongoing actions.”

A Europe-wide issue 

Whilst the “Chemical Valley” constitutes a so-called PFAS hotspot, the pollution doesn’t stop at its borders. In 2023, an international collaborative investigation identified nearly 23,000 PFAS-contaminated sites across Europe. 

According to a recent study ordered by the European Commission, nearly 1 in 6 Europeans – about 75 million people – could have high levels of contamination. Depending on evolving regulations, it estimates that depolluting the continent could cost up to €1.7 trillion over the next 25 years.

In January 2023, a consortium of five countries (Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Norway) submitted a proposal for a universal restriction on PFAS to the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA). 

But since then, not much has happened. NGOs and advocacy groups denounce how the proposal has been delayed and called into question multiple times, besides failing to address all industrial sectors.

Morgane Anneix