Solar, PFAS, and Wildlife: Poison in Milk and Meat

The statement went viral in the media, and it is the perfect example of a truth that has been tailored to function as an argument.

We have examined the claim and draw the arc to where the debate belongs according to our core mission: the protection of wildlife, habitats, and ultimately the people who stand at the end of the same food chain.

A Reality Check on the Fall Statistics

The Suva recorded an average of 183 recognized occupational accidents involving falls from roofs during work on solar installations per year between 2013 and 2022. In Germany, BG Bau reported three fatal PV-related falls in ten months during 2025. These figures deserve to be taken seriously, but they are far from Steinhauser’s rhetorical “any number.”

Deaths per Terawatt-Hour: The Honest Metric

The peer-reviewed metric from Our World in Data shows: solar (0.02 deaths/TWh) is marginally safer than nuclear power (0.03 deaths/TWh). Steinhauser’s comparison only works if workplace accidents are fully counted while the long-term radiation consequences of nuclear energy are excluded.

Rain Washes Out Toxins — That Is Documented

A study by the University of Stuttgart, commissioned by the German Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs, confirms: lead and the carcinogenic cadmium from solar modules are “almost completely” leached out by rain over a period of several months. By 2016, 11’000 tonnes of lead and 800 tonnes of cadmium had been installed in modules worldwide, with three square kilometers of solar surface area being added every day. Since PV modules are exempt from the EU hazardous substances regulation RoHS, solder may still contain up to 36 percent lead, even though lead-free alternatives are available “with minimal additional effort.” Hail, micro-cracks, fires, and aging are sufficient for rain to penetrate the modules and release toxins.

PFAS: The Forever Chemicals of the Energy Transition

In addition to heavy metals, a second class of substances is built into solar panels: per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). The environmental organization ChemSec predicts a growing number of lawsuits over PFAS, which are found in solar panels among other products. Due to their extremely stable carbon-fluorine bonds, PFAS are virtually non-degradable, accumulate in organisms, and are suspected of causing reproductive disorders, immune damage, and cancer. The EU is currently debating a comprehensive PFAS ban. More than 10’000 substances in this group are in circulation, including in key technologies of the energy transition.

We have already covered this topic using wind energy as an example in PFAS from Wind Turbines Threaten Wildlife . The same logic applies to photovoltaics: backsheet films, seals, and coatings contain fluorinated polymers that are released through abrasion, fire, and disposal. PFAS are now detectable in the blood of virtually the entire European population, with children and pregnant women considered particularly vulnerable groups.

Bioaccumulation: When Toxins Travel Up the Food Chain

This is where the debate becomes relevant to wildlife protection. The technical term for the accumulation of toxic substances through the food chain is bioaccumulation: pollutants are absorbed faster than they can be broken down. A study by the University of Ulm published in “Science of the Total Environment” shows that millions of wild animals, mostly birds, die from lead poisoning every year — not only from ammunition used by hobby hunters, but also through industrial contamination by lead, cadmium, mercury, and other heavy metals. In flamingos, ten trace elements were detected in their plumage, including precisely those also found in solar panels: cadmium, copper, lead, tin, and zinc. The Bavarian State Office for the Environment confirms that in forest-dwelling wildlife species, bioaccumulation means “higher concentrations of pollutants in the organism are to be expected.”

PFAS in Wild Boar: The First Major Warning Signal

In 2024, the State Investigation Office of Rhineland-Palatinate detected such high PFAS levels in wild boar livers that consumption, processing, and marketing were banned. Due to their ground-rooting feeding behavior, wild boars are an excellent measuring instrument for large-scale environmental contamination. What is no longer allowed to end up on hobby hunters' plates had previously been accumulating unnoticed in the living animal — and both are the same warning: the poison is already in the food chain.

PFAS in Swiss milk and meat — the final destination: humans

What sounds like a distant problem has long since become reality in Switzerland. The canton of Appenzell Ausserrhoden conducted a voluntary PFAS investigation of dairy farms between October 2025 and March 2026: elevated levels were measured in approximately one in three farms inspected, and in several cases EU benchmark values were massively exceeded. In the St. Gallen Rhine Valley, five farms are no longer permitted to sell the meat of their animals because the soil has been contaminated with toxic chemicals. In the canton of Glarus, an analysis conducted by ZHAW and ETH Zurich on behalf of BAFU detected PFAS in over 99 percent of all soil samples. The canton of Thurgau has also launched a three-year project for systematic milk testing.

Across Switzerland, cantonal chemists tested around 900 meat, fish, and egg samples at the end of 2025. Fewer than one percent exceeded the legal maximum value; among the additionally analyzed milk samples, around two percent exceeded the non-binding benchmark value. Not yet a comprehensive picture, but clear hotspots.

The primary cause in eastern Switzerland is not today's energy transition, but rather PFAS-containing sewage sludge that was permitted for years as fertilizer on agricultural land until it was banned in 2006, along with firefighting foam from training sites. And that is precisely the lesson: a disposal pathway banned twenty years ago is producing sales bans for Swiss farms today. What the backing films, seals, and coatings used in today's solar and wind energy industry will leave behind in soils and waterways over the coming decades follows the same logic — just with a new source.

Particularly revealing is the political reaction: the cantons of St. Gallen, Thurgau, and both Appenzells are rejecting a planned federal directive on stricter PFAS controls in food. The government of Appenzell Ausserrhoden warns that a sales ban would very quickly push agricultural businesses into financial distress and threaten their livelihoods. In the end, the bill is paid by consumers, by wildlife in soils and waterways, and by those hobby hunters whose game meat must increasingly be tested separately for contaminants in more and more regions.

The circle closes at disposal

As we documented in «Solar Module Waste: The Disposal Problem» , solar modules generate roughly 300 times more toxic waste per unit of energy than nuclear power plants. The Stuttgart study explicitly warns: «The dangers and risks posed by toxic substances in photovoltaic modules appear to be particularly great in countries where there are no orderly waste disposal systems.» At the same time, IG Wild beim Wild demands that forests and forest edges be kept free of solar and wind power installations “without any ifs or buts,” so as not to impede the migration and genetic exchange of wildlife.

Parallels to wind power

As outlined in «The Effects of Wind Turbines on Wildlife and the Debate About Clean Energy» , the following holds true: “Clean” does not automatically mean “nature-compatible.” Both technologies involve toxic substance problems (PFAS, heavy metals), land-use conflicts, and bioaccumulation risks — and in both cases, staged pro/con debates distract attention from the wildlife, the soils, and the people who stand at the end of the food chain.

What must follow politically

Rooftop PV must be prioritized over open-space PV and large alpine installations as a binding requirement. Forests, forest edges, and wildlife corridors must be kept completely free. Inclusion of PV modules in the EU RoHS Directive, lead-free solder as standard. A PFAS ban with no exceptions for the energy transition industry. Mandatory PFAS and heavy metal monitoring for wild boar, birds of prey, soil organisms, groundwater, and drinking water intakes within the vicinity of all solar and wind power installations. Mandatory take-back and recycling obligations with real collection quotas instead of export loopholes. And last but not least: the legacy sewage sludge contamination of eastern Switzerland must be taken seriously as a historical warning. Every supply chain of today’s energy transition must be scrutinized to determine whether it is setting the stage for an eastern Switzerland scenario in the 2050s.

Steinhauser's rhetorical sharpening is a distraction, but the toxic substance problem of the solar industry is real and must be named with full clarity. Lead, cadmium, and PFAS do not simply end up in landfills — they migrate into soils, waterways, and through the food chain into flamingos, birds of prey, wild boar, into cow's milk, beef, and thus into the bodies of our last wild neighbors and our own. The PFAS-contaminated dairy farms in Appenzell and the sales bans in the St. Gallen Rhine Valley show that the step from wildlife to humans is not theoretical, but measurable. The honest energy debate will not be decided between reactor cores and rooftop installers, but on the question of how much poisoned tissue we impose on wildlife and ourselves, and how resolutely we regulate supply chains, disposal, and site selection.