Skip to main content

The EU Is Moving to Restrict 10,000 PFAS. Korea Has Flagged 18 of Its 147.

PFAS — per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, the "forever chemicals" — are the target of the largest chemical restriction in EU history. A proposal to limit more than 10,000 of them at once is moving through the EU system, with a decision expected in 2026. Several US states have already banned them from cosmetics, textiles, and furniture.

Korea's chemical database, K-REACH, registers 147 PFAS. None carry the "prohibited" flag. Eighteen are classified as persistent organic pollutants. The rest — about 129 — are registered with no hazard classification at all.

What PFAS are

PFAS are a family of synthetic chemicals built around carbon-fluorine bonds, among the strongest in chemistry. That bond is why they resist heat, water, and oil, and why they are used in non-stick coatings, waterproof fabrics, food packaging, and firefighting foam. It is also why they do not break down — they persist in water, soil, and human blood for years. Hence "forever chemicals."

The class is large. Estimates put it above 10,000 distinct substances. They are not one ingredient with one risk profile; they range from well-studied compounds like PFOS and PFOA to thousands of polymers and precursors that have never been individually assessed.

What Korea flags

We searched K-REACH for substances with perfluoro or polyfluoro structures, plus the known identifiers for PFOS and PFOA. The search returned 147 registered substances. Their regulatory flags break down like this:

  • Prohibited: 0. No PFAS in the database carries the outright-prohibited flag.
  • Persistent organic pollutant: 18. The strictest classification Korea applies to any PFAS.
  • Toxic: 4.
  • Rotterdam Convention (trade-controlled): 1.
  • CMR (carcinogenic, mutagenic, or reprotoxic): 1.
  • No hazard flag: about 129. Registered as existing chemicals, nothing more.

The single most-regulated PFAS in the database is a PFOS salt. It carries five hazard classifications — toxic, persistent organic pollutant, Rotterdam, priority-management, and CMR — more than any other PFAS in the set.

The 18 trace back to a treaty

The 18 persistent organic pollutant entries are not a domestic Korean initiative. They align closely with the substances listed under the Stockholm Convention, the global treaty on persistent organic pollutants. Only three PFAS subgroups are listed under that treaty: PFOS, added in 2009; PFOA, added in 2019; and PFHxS, added in 2022 — each "including its salts and related compounds." Korea, as a party to the convention, brings those listings into its own persistent organic pollutant rules, where the parent compounds and their related substances expand to the 18 entries in the database.

In other words, Korea's PFAS regulation so far is mostly the floor set by international obligation. The 18 flagged substances are the ones a treaty required it to act on. The broader domestic restrictions that the EU and several US states are building — covering thousands of PFAS regardless of treaty status — do not have an equivalent in the Korean data.

PFOS, classified over a decade

The PFOS salt's classifications did not arrive at once. They accumulated over more than ten years. It entered the database as a registered existing chemical in 2014. A carcinogenic-mutagenic-reprotoxic flag followed in 2018, priority-management status in 2022, persistent-organic-pollutant classification in 2023, and a human-health hazard listing in 2025.

The pattern is incremental tightening on a single, well-documented substance, rather than a sweep across the class. The most recent step — the 2025 human-health listing — shows the regulatory attention is still active, and still moving substance by substance.

Two regulatory philosophies

The contrast with the EU is not about strictness in the abstract. It is about method.

The EU's universal PFAS proposal starts from the class: every PFAS is restricted unless a specific use earns a derogation. The burden sits with industry to justify each continued use. Korea's approach starts from the substance: a PFAS is regulated when a specific assessment or treaty puts it on a list, and the default for an unlisted PFAS is no restriction.

Neither is unique to PFAS. It mirrors a broader split we have written about before — the EU leaning toward the precautionary principle, Korea toward case-by-case risk management. PFAS is just the largest current test of the difference. One approach reaches more than 10,000 substances; the other, so far, reaches 18.

What the data does not show

K-REACH records regulatory classification, not contamination or exposure. The database does not say whether any of these 147 substances are present in Korean products, water, or food, or at what levels.

The 147 figure is also a function of how we searched. PFAS definitions vary between regulators — some count only specific carbon-chain lengths, others include any fluorinated structure — so a different definition would return a different count. Our search used perfluoro and polyfluoro name patterns plus known PFOS and PFOA identifiers. It is a close approximation of the PFAS registered in K-REACH, not an official inventory.

Regulations also change. The EU proposal is still in evaluation, and Korea's most recent PFAS classification dates to 2025. Both numbers — 10,000 and 18 — are snapshots of a moving target.

Methodology and Sources

Chemical and regulatory data: K-REACH Chemical Substance database, covering 47,517 registered substances, with nine regulatory flags per substance.

PFAS identification: substances whose English names contain "perfluoro" or "polyfluoro," plus substances matching known PFOS and PFOA identifiers. This returned 147 substances. Flag counts and regulatory classifications were read directly from the database.

International context: EU universal PFAS restriction proposal (ECHA, updated August 2025); Stockholm Convention listings for PFOS (2009), PFOA (2019), and PFHxS (2022); US state-level restrictions effective 2024–2025. Korean classification years were drawn from the regulatory notices recorded in the database.

For Korea's broader banned-substance list, see our earlier post: 47,000 Chemicals in Korea's Database. Only 97 Are Banned.

For the underlying data, see K-REACH Chemical Substance API.

Important Notice: This article is for informational purposes only. It is not legal, regulatory, or medical advice. Chemical regulations change and vary by market, and PFAS rules in particular are evolving quickly. Anyone making compliance decisions should consult the current text of the relevant regulation and a qualified professional. For full terms, see our Disclaimer.

Decoded Korea publishes data-driven analysis of Korean cosmetic ingredients, chemical regulations, and safety data.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sunscreen UV Filters: A 10-Country Comparison

A sunscreen formulated for sale in Seoul cannot always be sold as-is in New York, Paris, or São Paulo. Each country maintains its own list of permitted UV filters, and the lists rarely match. A filter that is legal at 10% in one market may be banned in the next, or capped at 5%, or allowed only in specific product types. We mapped UV filter approvals across 10 markets — the EU, Korea, Japan, China, Taiwan, ASEAN, the US, Canada, Brazil, and Argentina — using a structured database of 21,796 cosmetic ingredients with 30,960 regulatory records. Below is what the data shows. What every country agrees on Two UV filters are approved in all 10 markets: Zinc Oxide — mineral filter, broad spectrum (UVA + UVB) Titanium Dioxide — mineral filter, UVB and partial UVA These are the only filters with universal approval. Any formulation designed to sell identically across all 10 markets without reformulation must rely on these two ingredients. This is why most global brands lead with minera...
Post a Comment
Read more

Banned in Europe, Legal in Korea: 5 Ingredients That Split Global Regulators

The same moisturizer that sits on a shelf in Seoul could be pulled from a store in Paris. Not because of a labeling error or a packaging defect — but because an ingredient inside is classified differently by two governments looking at the same scientific data. This happens more often than most consumers realize. The EU and South Korea — both major cosmetics markets with sophisticated regulatory systems — frequently disagree on where to draw the line. The EU's cosmetics regulation (EC 1223/2009) maintains one of the strictest banned substance lists in the world, with over 1,600 entries in Annex II. Korea's MFDS takes a different approach, often allowing the same ingredients under specific concentration limits or without restriction. Neither system is wrong. They operate under different regulatory philosophies: the EU leans toward the precautionary principle — restrict first, revisit later. Korea tends toward risk management — allow under controlled conditions, monitor outcomes...
Post a Comment
Read more

Your 20% Vitamin C Serum Has No Concentration Limit. In Any Country.

Vitamin C serums are sold at 10%, 15%, 20%, and sometimes 30% concentration. These are high numbers for an active ingredient. For comparison, the EU recently capped retinol at 0.3% in most cosmetics. So how is 20% vitamin C legal when 0.3% retinol is the EU limit? Because no country regulates L-Ascorbic Acid concentration in cosmetics. None of the 10 markets in our database — EU, Korea, Japan, China, Taiwan, ASEAN, Brazil, Argentina, the US, or Canada — has a limit. 76 forms of vitamin C Our database contains 76 ingredients with "Ascorbic" or "Ascorbyl" in their INCI names. Vitamin C in skincare is not a single ingredient — it is a family of compounds, each with different stability, potency, and skin penetration characteristics. The ones consumers encounter most often: Form INCI name Characteristics L-Ascorbic Acid Ascorbic Acid Most potent, least stable. Requires low pH. The form used in 10–20% serums MAP Magnesium Ascorbyl Phosphate Stable,...
Post a Comment
Read more