Europe will sabotage its chances of developing a green economy if it pushes ahead with proposals to ban so-called forever chemicals on health and safety grounds, the chief executive of one of the world’s leading chemical companies has warned.

Mark Newman, head of Delaware-based Chemours, said “the race to decarbonise through hydrogen is going to be thwarted” if the EU decided to ban a class of high-performance, long-lasting fluoropolymers known as PFAS. “You can’t have electric vehicles without fluoropolymers, you can’t have semiconductors,” he added.

These synthetic chemicals are used in millions of applications from non-stick cookware to textiles, batteries and smartphones. The chemical industry argues that their strong resistance to water, oil, temperature and corrosion makes them indispensable to many green technologies.