Lee, Maria; (2025) Forever chemicals and tort law – causation. Journal of European Tort Law (In press).

Text 2025-04 PFAS article.pdf - Accepted Version Access restricted to UCL open access staff until 22 January 2026. Download (395kB)

Abstract

The ubiquity of the thousands of artificial substances known generically as PFAS is increasingly apparent. Their presence in human blood, drinking water, commercial fisheries, soil, and consumer products, alongside their association with a range of health and environmental impacts, is stimulating tort claims globally. These claims are likely to raise recurring causal challenges for claimants and courts. This contribution will explore some of those challenges, focusing on English law, and on core issues around, first, scientific uncertainty about the effects of these chemicals, and secondly, the existence of multiple possible causal factors in many cases. Establishing causation for disease (rather than contamination) is likely to be extremely difficult. As in other areas of complex causation, maintaining strict causal requirements might reasonably be understood either as protecting or as undermining the fundamental values of tort; even if this dilemma cannot be resolved, it is worth raising.

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