Sharp drop in ‘forever chemicals’ in seabird eggs hailed as win for regulation

Northern gannets on Canada’s Bonaventure Island, the birds’ largest colony in North America. Photograph: Betend A/Andia/Universal Images Group/Getty Images

Levels of some of the most dangerous Pfas compounds have dramatically fallen in Canadian seabird eggs, which the authors of a new peer-reviewed study say illustrates how regulations are effective.

Researchers looked at Pfas levels in the eggs of northern gannets in the St Lawrence Seaway basin over a 55-year period. Pfas levels shot up from the 1960s through the peak of the chemicals’ use in the late 1990s and early aughts, then fell.