Editorial 1 Tribologie + Schmierungstechnik · volume 72 · issue 1/ 2025 DOI 10.24053/ TuS-2025-0001 At the European Council meeting of 12 December 2019 The Netherlands, Danish, Luxembourg and Swedish delegations presented information on risks related to polyand perfluorinated alkylated substances (PFAS). What happened since then? The industry faces a EU Restriction proposal of PFAS under the EU REACH Regulation and started to voluntarily phasing out fluorosurfactants, which are the PFAS substances under the most intense spotlight. As the current restriction proposal on PFAS is much wider and may restrict some applications that are critical to society with a huge impact on many downstream products in use in our daily lives. PFAS are a large class of thousands of synthetic chemicals and are increasingly detected as environmental pollutants and some are linked to negative effects on human health. As I learned early in my career when visiting a lead engineer at a car OEM from his printed statement behind his desk, “in god we trust, all others bring data”. Hence, I found two related information portals. In the Collaborative Research Center (CRC) 1349 “Fluorine-Specific Interactions”, 50 PhD students and Post- Docs are conducting research in the field of fluorine chemistry in 20 working groups of the Freien Universität Berlin, the Humboldt University Berlin, the Technical University Berlin, the Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing and the Leibniz Research Institute for Molecular Pharmacology on fluorochemical issues. The scientific objectives are to understand and control the complex interactions that can emanate from fluorinated structural units in chemical systems. This will shed light behind the European Chemicals Agencies (ECHA) position on “negative effects on human health”. On the topic of “increasingly detected as environmental pollutants” the OECD publishes series or reports on Risk Management of Chemicals. One report presents a synthesis of publicly available information on perfluoropolyethers (PFPEs), with the aim of elucidating the identities of PFPEs on the global market and analyzing their life cycle. This includes their production and use, presence of other PFASs as impurities in commercial formulations, degradation mechanisms, and environmental releases of PFPEs and other PFASs present in commercial formulations. Even though in discussions I had over the last couple of years that e.g. for bearings PFPE might be easier substituted than the sealing material PTFE I think that report is most relevant for the lubricant society in general. Indeed, during ECHA’s recent meetings of their Committees for Risk Assessment (RAC) and for Socio-Economic Analysis (SEAC) they progressed their evaluation of the proposed restriction on PFAS. The committees reached provisional conclusions for applications of fluorinated gases and announced the sectors they will evaluate in their upcoming meetings in June include Medical devices, Lubricants, Transport, Energy and Electronics and semiconductors. In my earlier career I had dealt with PTFE in Anti-Friction Coatings and proposed PFPE fluids as wind turbine gear box oil, so remember Tribology is everywhere. Your editor in chief Manfred Jungk PFAS?