Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment her Department has made of the potential merits of grouping Perfluoroalkyl and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) in regulation.

PFAS represent a group of thousands of chemicals, with hundreds used commercially across many sectors of industry and society. The structural diversity of PFAS poses a challenge to grouping.

The Health & Safety Executive (HSE) published an “Analysis of the most appropriate regulatory management options (RMOA)” for PFAS in March 2023. This RMOA addresses PFAS, that are potentially on the GB market, by applying a grouping approach to improve manageability and help address the issue of regrettable substitution. HSE’s Restriction Report on PFAS in firefighting foams, published in August 2025, takes a group approach on this basis, using the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD 2021) definition of PFAS.