Canada

I got shocked at first but then I read it's about polymers. Fluoropolymers indeed have a completely different safety profile than the typical PFAS culprit like C8, PFOS and so on. The polymer molecules are different and can't do what the non-polymers can. PTFE (Teflon) for example has wide uses in surgical implants. The health concerns around PTFE stem from C8 and other PFAS used during its production, through work exposure and residues on the final PTFE due to insufficient cleaning. There's something to be said about the manufacturing of PTFE but PTFE itself is inert up to 200-something Celsius. And then it breaks down to poisonous gases but not non-polymer PFAS.

The most significant sources of exposure to PFAS is via stain-resistant furniture, carpets, and oil-resistant food packaging. Then you have exposure via food, from pesticides, biosolid fertilizer (shit collected at the water treatment plants, only legal in the US, so shouldn't be a thing in Canadian produce), manufacturing processes where it's used to keep equipment clean. Then you have exposure via drinking water, from firefighting foam (AFFF, used at all airports), factory dumping, firefightand all other sources that eventually end up in the water. All of those examples are non-polymers.

I'm not saying there isn't a problem with the industry writing regulation. I'm very much against that and I'm very suspicious. I'm just saying that if the exception is about polymers only, while the rest of PFAS are regulated as a class, then this isn't the loophole that it seems it is. I wrote a letter about the PFAS draft report during the citizen comment period where I stressed PFAS should be regulated as a class because it's too easy to find alternative molecules that aren't forbidden to workaround specific-compound regulation.