But what Reardon calls stability, others call persistence. Data compiled by Alexandrino and his team show half-lives (the amounts of time it takes chemicals to dissipate by half in the environment) ranging from a few days to 2.5 years for top-selling fluorinated pesticides. That is less than the half-lives of some older pesticides such as DDT, but at the upper end of the scale, it is still a relatively long time: the EPA defines a “persistent” pollutant as having a half-life of 60 days or more. As Kyla Bennett, science director of the nonprofit environmental advocacy organization Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), bluntly puts it, “Why on earth would you allow PFAS to be put in something that’s sprayed on millions and millions of acres every single year? It’s called a forever chemical for a reason.”
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