The carefree handling of eternal drives

The public prosecutor was afraid of a large criminal investigation – a knee in front of the global corporation, as critics rightly say. Instead, she took a legal abbreviation on administrative criminal law and sold the company with a criminal order with a läppische CHF 5,000.

Just because a editor of this newspaper shows the criminal commands of the canton of St.Gallen in laborious little work every week, the offense came to light at all. This triggers the uncomfortable question: How many similar incidents remain in hidden because nobody accidentally comes by and the media eyes of the media not reach every hidden angle?

The law enforcement authorities are wrong, but not without reason, the legal department of the million -dollar concentration, shows the legal replica for a search for files of this newspaper. Until before the Federal Supreme Court, Amcor defended himself against the complete publication of the files. Twice without success.

It is obvious that the authorities should have acted harder against the group and failed. Fortunately, there has been something since the Havaria on the AMCOR company in dealing with the so-called eternal drives by the PFAS group-which also includes PFOs. With a measures plan, for example, the canton of St.Gallen wants to prevent such incidents in the future and consistently punish. This correctly includes the increase and specialization of the public prosecutor’s office in environmental offenses.

But that’s not enough, as the present case shows. A pollution of Lake Constance or the Thur is not a cantonal matter, but at least has to call the federal government onto the schedule. Because water does not stop at the cantonal border. However, Bern has so far been reluctant to deal with PFAs. A ban on the chemicals group is needed, which holds several thousand substances. If – as planned – individual connections are prohibited, as happened in 2011 with PFOs, they are simply replaced by alternatives with similar properties. In the worst case, these are no less harmful, but simply less researched.

It must be clear to everyone: The damage is done – PFAs are in our ecosystem and will stay there forever. Incidentally, they not only get there through environmental offenses, but also through diverse, very legal and everyday applications such as teflon pans, outdoor clothing or ski wax. By 2006, the long -term poison was also held into the soils via sewage sludge, which served as a slurry replacement.

Now you need a measures plan at the federal level to coordinate the handling of the chemicals group, to determine new limit values ​​and to renovate soils. In any case, one thing has to be clear: the carefree handling of PFAs is over.