A3_Workshop Talk

Thursday, 15 October | 2:30–4:00 p.m. | Herrenhausen Palace 

• Jose Miguel Calatayud, Freelancer, Valencia
• Gianluca Liva, RADAR Magazine, Venice
• Sarah Pilz, Freelance investigative journalist, Munich[Moderator]

A cross-border investigation with many links to science journalism (PFAS), cooperation with the scientific community, and cross-border collaboration: In 2023, The Forever Pollution Project, a pioneering cross-border and interdisciplinary collaboration, brought together journalists and experts to reveal and map, for the first time, the extent of PFAS contamination across Europe. In 2025, the follow-up The Forever Lobbying Project reveals how the chemical industry is using misleading arguments to try to water down a planned EU ban on PFAS ‘forever chemicals’. The findings show massive influence on political decision-makers to prevent environmental regulations.

The investigation was driven by 46 journalists in 16 countries – embarking on a pioneering experiment of “expert-reviewed journalism” with 18 international academics and lawyers – and examined over 1,000 arguments put forward by the industry. The team analysed thousands of documents and carried out around 200 freedom of information (FOI) requests.

How to map continent-wide chemical contamination when datasets don’t speak the same language? Or debunk industry science that cites real journals? Can you estimate the cost of the cleanup? The Forever Pollution team built replicable methods for all three. This session will focus on the practical: how the collaboration was set up across borders, how claims were verified, and how you can create a shared analytical framework when scientists and journalists operate at different zoom levels.