Thousands of kilometres of drinking water pipes in France are contaminated with a carcinogenic substance called CVM. The problem has been known since the 1970s. New analyses reveal the extent of the health scandal and the state’s inaction.
Hundreds of thousands of French people are no longer able to drink their tap water. The cause is VCM, or vinyl chloride monomer, a gas known to be carcinogenic. Fifty years after the first warnings, Reporterre provides unpublished analyses that reveal widespread pollution… and the inertia of the state.
The revelations were made possible by a whistleblower, political scientist Gaspard Lemaire. With some difficulty, he obtained thousands of water analyses from the health authorities. The results, which Reporterre was able to see, show significant contamination. A total of 6,410 drinking water samples in nine regions are contaminated by this toxic compound [1] . Enough to speak of a “major health scandal”, according to the doctoral student.
A health scandal played down
To understand the story, let’s go back a few decades. CVM is used in the manufacture of PVC plastic products, in particular pipes. But evidence of its toxicity had been accumulating since the 1930s. Until 1987, when the International Cancer Agency classified it as a definite human carcinogen.
Despite the warnings, “for years PVC producers tried to hide the toxicity of VCM and the dangers it posed to workers and consumers alike,” notes Gaspard Lemaire in an article. As a result, this plastic flooded the booming pipeline market from the 1960s onwards. In France, “it was only in the 1960s and 1970s that the western part of the country was supplied with water,” says Frédéric Blanchet of the Scientific and Technical Association for Water and the Environment (Astee). At that time, many hamlets and isolated farms were connected.
In the 1980s, new manufacturing processes made it possible to eliminate most of the VCM in PVC. But the damage had already been done. The Ministry of Health estimates that there are about 140,000 km of PVC pipes laid before 1980 or whose installation date is unknown [2]. “It’s considerable,” notes Franco Novelli of the National Federation of Concessionary and Regulated Communities ( FNCCR ).
However, it took several decades for the public authorities to get to grips with the problem. “Informed of the risks associated with the contamination of water networks by this substance, the legislator has shown a serious lack of diligence,” notes Gaspard Lemaire in his article. It was only in 1998 that the European Union set a maximum limit for VCM in drinking water: 0.5 micrograms per litre (µg/l).
Then, “although the French state should have taken measures to avoid these excesses, the first systematic campaign to detect the presence of [this substance] in water dates back only to 2011,” the researcher said. Questioned by Reporterre, the Ministry of Health gave a different version: “The analysis of vinyl chloride monomer (VCM) in tap water has been systematic since 2007,” he told us by email.
In 2007, the government issued a decree that finally made it possible to carry out analyses of drinking water. But the first mission to detect the toxic compound in the networks did not take place until 2011, according to Astee, which took part in the programme. Late research that confirmed the fears of the authorities.
In the last ten years, the red signals have multiplied. Residents have discovered overnight that they can no longer drink tap water, as Reporterre reported in 2017. Municipalities have been forced to distribute bottled water. As a matter of urgency, water companies have opened the valves on their pipes and set up flushing systems to clear the networks of contaminated water [3] In short, it’s all hands on deck.
Small towns left behind
But there is no question of letting the scandal go! As Reporterre has reported, residents are often poorly informed or unaware of the pollution. And health authorities are reluctant to share their analyses. After several complaints and a visit to the Commission for Access to Administrative Documents, Gaspard Lemaire finally obtained the results of the samples taken by nine regional health authorities (ARS).
According to these results, communicated to Reporterre and the media Le Monde , Politis , France culture and ” Envoyé spécial “, 6,410 non-conformities have been identified in nine regions between 2014 and 2024. Exceedances of quality limits are up to 1,400 times the threshold set by European regulations. There are big differences between the regions: in Normandy, 11% of water samples were found to be non-compliant, while in Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, this rate drops to 0.5%.
Overall, the small communities at the end of the network are most affected, as the water tends to stagnate in the pipes and become loaded with CVM [4]. In total, according to an instruction published by the Ministry of Health in 2020, “more than 120,000 CVM analyses have been carried out on the water distribution network since October 2012, with a compliance rate of almost 97%”.
Not very reassuring, says Gaspard Lemaire: ” A non-compliance rate of 3% suggests that a significant number of French people are clearly exposed to CVM. “No precise estimate of the number of communities and people affected has been published. However, according to a position paper published in 2010 by the French Institute for Public Health Surveillance, 600,000 people are affected by non-compliant CVM levels. The researcher thus denounces a “concealment of the problem by the state […] which has systematically minimised the risks. “
Too expensive solutions
How can we explain this attitude on the part of the authorities? We put this question to the ministry, which believes – as we wrote above – that it reacted in 2007. In other words, nine years after the adoption of the European directive on the subject. In its email, the executive also points out that it has “gone further than the European regulation”, which does not require sampling or detailed analysis of drinking water. For the rest, it refers us to the municipalities that own the networks, “which are responsible for carrying out the necessary work in the event of the presence of CVM”. In short, move on, there is nothing to see.
For Frédéric Blanchet of Astee, the (late) awareness of the authorities can be explained by a lack of expertise: “In the water sector, there is an analytical barrier: we can only evaluate what we know how to analyse. For a long time, we did not know how to quantify CVM at 0.5 µg/L. “It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack without good glasses.
The expert also recalls the “total confusion” at the end of the 2000s when it became urgent to deal with this contamination. “We were seeing more and more non-conformities [of drinking water with too much VCM] and we didn’t know what to do,” he recalls. “We had very few examples from other countries and no regulatory framework to deal with these situations. “
An argument that Gaspard Lemaire qualifies: “In the United States, as early as 1975, the Environmental Protection Agency was able to detect the presence of VCM in water with a detection threshold of 0.03 µg/L,” he notes in his article. For the researcher, the reason for the government’s inaction lies in the complexity of the issue: once the problem is known and recognised, action must be taken. But the solutions are costly and difficult to implement.
” If we find repeated exceedances of the 0.5 µg/L limit, the water is declared non-compliant and we have three years to deal with the problem,” explains Franco Novelli. “We can dilute the contaminated water, distribute bottled water, flush the pipes… But in the long term, the only solution is to replace the pipes. “
But this last – and only – solution takes time, a lot of time. First, the pipes at risk have to be identified using complex computer models, and then a series of samples have to be taken. In Côtes-d’Armor, it took more than two years just to identify the 77 problematic km of the department’s 4,500 km of pipes. “If we want to do things well, with precision, we have to take our time,” says Joël Rivallan, former director of the departmental water union.
But even when the sections in question have been clearly identified, they still have to be changed! Replacing 1 kilometre of pipe costs between 50,000 and 200,000 euros, depending on the configuration of the site, according to the ministry.
A colossal sum that small rural communities – which are mainly affected – generally do not have. “It’s a real headache,” sighs Bertrand Hauchecorne, first elected official of Mareau-aux-Prés in the Loiret and member of the Association of Rural Mayors of France. As we do not have the means to renew the networks, we take out loans, but this increases the price of water, sometimes to amounts that are difficult for users to accept. “
Despite President Macron’s promises, the aid is not enough. “The water plan has had no impact on the ground,” notes the councillor. “The water agencies have diminishing resources, the Green Fund is being gradually reduced and the departmental allocations are not systematic. “Faced with this wall of investment, the authorities seem tempted to bury their heads in the sand.
” It is difficult to inform the public that pipes are carcinogenic and that nothing has been done for years,” summarises Gaspard Lemaire. According to the researcher, ” the way this affair is being handled is not an isolated case, but rather illustrates the general inability of the state to protect its citizens from growing health risks. “
Notes
[1] The ARS that replied are: Normandy, Haut-de-France, Burgundy-Franche-Comté, Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, Grand Est, Brittany, Corsica. Some of the most affected regions, such as Pays de la Loire and Centre-Val de Loire, have not yet published their results.
[2] This represents 14% of the total length, estimated at 1 million km, of all materials combined.
[3] As CVM accumulates in stagnant water, flushing allows the water in the network to be renewed. Contaminated water is generally discharged into the natural environment. In 2017 in Maine-et-Loire, there were about 78 purges in operation, or about 700 m3 per day (700,000 litres).
[4] Small rural communities are often located at the end of networks, where demand is mechanically lower. Water therefore tends to stagnate in the pipes and become contaminated with VCM. It is therefore not all the water that passes through pipes containing VCM that is contaminated, but particularly the water at the end of the network.
