Outside Magazine

When the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) emailed me in December, hoping to daylight a manufacturer filing an anonymous application to use a toxic chemical, the message carried the sort of dire rhetoric that the EDF has, in past campaigns, unleashed on Dow Chemical Company and DuPont. The phrases “lung waterproofing” and “concern for systemic and male reproductive toxicity” glinted on my screen alongside a note from the EDF’s lead senior scientist, Richard Denison. Denison described a new product whose key chemical ingredient was rejected for commercial use by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) late in 2018, and then oddly approved by the same agency last June, through a decision-making process that is largely hidden from the public. 

What was this noxious new stuff he was decrying? Insecticide? A solvent to degrease construction machinery? No, Denison and the EDF were focused on a lightning-fast ski wax. 

The chemically complex glide wax was developed by Swix Sport, a venerated 74-year-old Norwegian company that today commands a 60 percent market share in the $150 million global ski-wax industry. Swix’s new wax compound has application for skiers in all disciplines and also for snowboarders, but it’s aimed mainly at nordic ski racers, who can save minutes in a single 50-kilometer event if their skis glide well. The wax’s active ingredient is a chemical whose tight molecular bonds, yoking fluorine and carbon, are super stable and thus both impervious to ski-slowing moisture and very resistant to breaking down. This chemical belongs to a large and notorious family of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, which are collectively known as PFAS. Often called “forever chemicals,” PFAS are sold in vastly greater quantities in firefighting foams and as a waterproof coating for frying pans, raincoats, and pizza-delivery boxes.