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PFAS in the News 2019–2026: article-level dataset and coverage tables
A dataset of news about per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS, often called "forever chemicals") from a global news index, January 2019 – July 2026, built with the Prism News API (historical and real-time news, https://radar-api.fliarbi.com/news). Every row is one news article about PFAS, with its date, location, tone, editorial priority, themes and the organisations it names, plus a link that returns the full article through the API.
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Key findings
In a global news index, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) took 1.95 of every 10,000 news articles in 2025, against 1.01 in 2019, a 1.93-fold rise in their share of news coverage, after a low of 0.75 per 10,000 in 2020.
Basis: Annual PFAS articles divided by all articles in the index for the same year, complete years 2019–2025; 23,502 matched articles from January 2019 to July 2026.
April 2024, the month in which the US Environmental Protection Agency finalized the first national drinking-water limits for several PFAS, was the month in which PFAS took their largest share of global news between January 2019 and July 2026, at 4.7 articles per 10,000, 2.37 times the 2024 annual share.
Basis: Monthly PFAS articles (855 in April 2024) per 10,000 news articles, every month from January 2019 to July 2026.
The second-highest monthly share of PFAS news between January 2019 and July 2026 came in March 2023, the month the US Environmental Protection Agency proposed those drinking-water limits, at 2.96 articles per 10,000 news articles.
Basis: Monthly PFAS articles (509 in March 2023) per 10,000 news articles.
Of PFAS articles carrying a tone label between January 2023 and July 2026, 59.2% were negative in tone, 1.76 times the 33.6% negative share across all news in the same index.
Basis: Top sentiment label of each article, grouped into negative, neutral and positive; 99.6% of sampled articles carry a label.
Machine-assigned priority ratings placed 89.9% of PFAS articles at critical priority (7 or higher on a 1–9 scale) between January 2023 and July 2026, 2.11 times the 42.6% share for all news.
Basis: Top priority label per article; critical = priority ≥ 7.
Charts and maps
Coverage by country
Primary location of located articles, January 2023 – July 2026. Lift = the country's share of this topic's news ÷ its share of all located news (above 1 = over-covered).
| Country | Articles | Share | Lift |
|---|---|---|---|
| United States | 4,528 | 75.24% | 1.55 |
| United Kingdom | 278 | 4.62% | 0.79 |
| Australia | 170 | 2.82% | 1.32 |
| France | 123 | 2.04% | 1.04 |
Use the API
This dataset was built with the Prism News API, which serves historical and real-time news. Install the command-line client, log in with an API key, and query the topic yourself:
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/fliarbi/prism-news-api/main/scripts/install.sh | bash
prism-news login
prism-news trends "pfas" --granularity monthly --tableCite
Fliar BI. PFAS in the News 2019–2026: article-level dataset and coverage tables. January 2019 – July 2026. https://fliarbi.github.io/news-datasets/pfas/