PFAS: five recommendations after the BfR conference — including more sensitive analytical methods and use of non-target data
On 25 September 2026 the BfR announced that the conclusions of its international PFAS conference (Berlin, October 2025) have been published in Archives of Toxicology. Participants — about 200 experts from 18 countries — formulated five recommendations for the health risk assessment of this group of more than 21,000 substances.
- The five recommendations: prioritising substances by objective criteria (e.g. production volume and human exposure), improving analytical methods, filling data gaps, promoting open science with shared data infrastructure, and clear and consistent risk communication.
- On analytics, the authors state that robust exposure assessment requires more sensitive methods combined with new predictive tools to quantify, identify and make better use of non-target data.
- The conference covered analytical methods, human exposure, toxicokinetics and toxicity; EFSA’s 2020 opinion was cited as the reference point after which PFAS research intensified worldwide.
- The article “PFAS: challenges and scientific perspectives in human health risk assessment” was published online on 25 August 2026; broad restrictions on PFAS are under consideration in the EU.