The project
Collegio Carlo Alberto is the host for the project "PFAS Exposure and Children Development: Evidence from an Italian Environmental Incident" (PECHID), awarded the Seal of Excellence (SoE) by the European Commission for a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship. The project is funded by Compagnia di San Paolo with Trapezio grant, awarded to a selection of excellent Horizon projects.
Motivation
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are highly stable carbon fluorine compounds used since the fifties, among other things, to make products heat and water resistant. These substances, informally known as “forever chemicals,” persist in the environment and can accumulate in the body. The American CDC, in its fourth National Report on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals, concluded that “PFAS are found in the blood of people and animals all over the world”. While many recent studies showed robust associations between PFAS exposure and adverse health effects, including among children and newborns, there is currently no evidence proving a causal link. The main aim of the project is to fill this gap by providing the first credible causal evidence on the relationship between PFAS exposure, children's cognitive development and health.
Setup
Waste disposed by a large PFAS producer located in Veneto, Italy, resulted in an extensive contaminant plume (shaded in yellow in the picture). The plume eventually contaminated Europe's second largest aquifer, used by a water supplier to feed the population of roughly thirty municipalities. The environmental incident was discovered only in the summer of 2013, when local authorities intervened and potential PFAS exposure ended. Roughly 140,000 were exposed to PFAS for two decades, making this the leading European case of PFAS contamination.
Main goals
The project exploits the quasi-experimental setup provided by the localized nature of the incident and the dynamics related to its discovery to identify how PFAS exposure affected children's cognitive development and health in contaminated municipalities. The same setup is used to investigate whether mortality increased due to PFAS contamination in the broader population. The project also examines how discovery of the environmental disaster impacted the affected community, considering changes in social composition, house prices, tap water consumption, and health-related behavior.
Execution
The first stage of the project involved researching documentation, contacting relevant stakeholders, securing access to restricted data and developing proficiency with GIS techniques. The second and longest stage involved collection and manipulation of all data necessary for the analysis. The current empirical analysis is based on INVALSI education data, Multiscopo survey data accessed at Laboratorio Adele, administrative school data on certified disability and enrollment (provided by the Ministry of Education), real estate data (provided by Agenzia delle Entrate), ISTAT demographic data, ISTAT census data, ISTAT census of water resources, digital cartography (by ISTAT, ARPAV and Azienda Zero del Veneto), ARPAV environmental contamination data, INEMAR pollution data. The third stage consists in empirical analysis, paper preparation, presentation and paper submission for each branch of the project. Effects of interest are identified exploiting econometric techniques from the causal micro-econometric toolbox, in particular geographic regression discontinuity design and difference-in-differences. This stage has been completed for the core part of the project, which investigates effects of PFAS exposure on health and cognitive development for specific cohorts of exposed children.
Research products
- Luca Facchinello, 2024. “PFAS Exposure and Cognitive Development: Evidence from an Italian Environmental Incident”, Collegio Carlo Alberto Working paper series, n. 721, June 2024. Available online.
- Luca Facchinello, 2024. “PFAS Exposure and Cognitive Development: Evidence from an Italian Environmental Incident,” SSRN working paper. Available online.
Presentations
- 2025/01 Joint Research Center of the European Commission, Ispra
- 2024/06 International Workshop on Applied Economics of Education, Catanzaro
- 2024/04 SOFI brown bag, Stockholm
- 2024/03 ESOMAS internal seminar, Turin
- 2024/03 Collegio Carlo Alberto internal seminar, Turin
Research team
Luca Facchinello - PI
Giovanni Mastrobuoni - Scientific advisor
Claudia Villosio - Research Manager
