Las Américas y los Productos Químicos Eternos: PFAS en América Latina
Latin America—a region of 650 million people spanning diverse industrial, agricultural, and environmental contexts—is emerging as a significant PFAS contamination geography despite receiving little international attention compared to North American and European PFAS discussions. From Brazilian military airbases to Chilean copper mining operations, from Argentine industrial complexes to Mexican maquiladora zones, PFAS contamination is present and largely unmonitored—a public health issue hidden by the absence of systematic data rather than the absence of contamination itself.
Brazil: The Largest PFAS Footprint in the Region
Brazil—Latin America’s largest economy with extensive military, industrial, and agricultural sectors—presents the most well-developed PFAS contamination picture in the region. The Brazilian Air Force’s bases at Santos, Campo Grande, Canoas, and Natal have used AFFF extensively, with environmental investigations at several bases documenting PFAS groundwater contamination consistent with AFFF release histories. Brazil’s National Water Agency (ANA) has initiated PFAS monitoring in river basins near identified contamination sources, and the Brazilian Health Surveillance Agency (ANVISA) has acknowledged PFAS as an emerging contaminant requiring regulatory development in drinking water standards.
Brazil’s significant agricultural sector—producing soy, corn, beef, and coffee for global export—uses biosolids from urban wastewater treatment and irrigation from river systems that may be PFAS-contaminated, creating food chain PFAS pathways that have not been characterized. The Amazon River basin—receiving industrial and agricultural runoff from vast territories across multiple countries—has been the subject of preliminary PFAS monitoring studies that document low but measurable PFAS concentrations consistent with long-range atmospheric and river-basin transport sources.
Mining Industry: A Distinctive Latin American PFAS Source
Latin America’s dominant mining sector—producing copper, lithium, silver, gold, and iron ore that supply global technology and manufacturing supply chains—uses AFFF-based fire suppression systems at underground mines, processing facilities, and associated infrastructure. Chile, Peru, Colombia, and Mexico all host major mining operations with significant AFFF inventories and fire response histories. Mining sector PFAS contamination in Latin America is largely uncharacterized, reflecting both the limited regulatory monitoring requirements for emerging contaminants in most mining jurisdictions and the remote locations of many mining operations that reduce immediate community exposure concerns even if environmental contamination is significant.
The lithium mining boom in Chile, Argentina, and Bolivia—driven by electric vehicle battery demand—is attracting increasing environmental scrutiny. Lithium extraction operations in the Atacama Desert and Puna region rely on PFAS-containing processing chemicals and fire suppression systems in an extremely water-scarce environment where any chemical contamination of the limited available water resources has immediate community impact. PFAS monitoring in lithium mining districts is an emerging research priority for environmental scientists working with affected Indigenous Atacameño and Aymara communities in the lithium triangle region.
Civil Society and Academic Leadership
In the absence of comprehensive government PFAS monitoring and regulation, civil society organizations, academic researchers, and investigative journalists in Latin America are playing leading roles in building PFAS awareness and generating the data needed to drive regulatory action. The Conectas Human Rights organization in Brazil, environmental law clinics at major Latin American universities, and investigative science journalism outlets have documented PFAS contamination at military bases and industrial sites and litigated for public disclosure of environmental monitoring data. International academic partnerships—connecting Latin American universities with PFAS research groups in Europe, the United States, and Japan—are building the analytical capacity for systematic PFAS monitoring programs that can generate the data foundation for evidence-based regulatory development.