What is (…are??) PFAS?
In this The Facts, STAT! video, I explain “forever chemicals” in two and a half minutes.
The latest storylines in PFAS:
Journalist’s Resource has an excellent and up-to-date (as of summer 2023) PFAS summary to get you up to speed.
Some PFAS History:
Nathaniel Rich’s New York Times Magazine story about Rob Bilott, the lawyer who exposed that PFAS manufacturers knew about the dangers of PFAS and continued to poison their own employees with them, is one of the best places to start for background.
This story was the basis for the 2019 Mark Ruffalo movie Dark Waters, and you can read about it in Bilott’s own words in his book Exposure.
Until recently, 3M’s role in the PFAS crisis was quite underreported. Deena Winter at the Minnesota Reformer has an excellent, damning piece about what 3M knew and when, as well as another piece about Washington County, MN residents who are left to wonder if 3M gave them cancer because the state doesn’t allow medical monitoring lawsuits.
National PFAS Coverage:
For investigational pieces on the PFAS crisis, check out Sharon Lerner’s series called Bad Chemistry at The Intercept.
For comprehensive and nuanced up-to-date coverage of PFAS regulation, follow E.A. Crunden (and Ariel Wittenberg’s) coverage at E&E News.
For updates on PFAS news through a chemical lens, follow Cheryl Hogue and colleagues’ PFAS coverage at Chemical & Engineering News.
For coverage on PFAS waste and disposal specifically, follow developments at WasteDive.
State-specific reporters who cover PFAS (suggestions welcome!):
Illinois: Brett Chase, Chicago Sun-Times
Michigan: Garret Ellison, mLive
North Carolina: Lisa Sorg, NC Policy Watch
Wisconsin: Laura Schulte, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
An academic overview:
I recommend starting with this review from Evich et al., which covers most of the major concerns in the PFAS field today.
For a more general overview with a focus on the federal regulation process and current state standards (as of Oct 2022), the Rockefeller Institute has a very comprehensive and comprehensible report available here.
The second season of Rudy Molinek’s Under Our Feet Podcast takes a comprehensive look at PFAS. It is really good; I highly recommend checking it out.
Australian journalist Kayleen Bell hosts the Talking PFAS Podcast with a variety of PFAS expert guests.
My media appearances page has more videos and podcasts if you want to hear me talk. My conversation with Climate Money Watchdog gives a relatively comprehensive overview of PFAS and the state of PFAS destruction. You can also find the episode of Science Friday that I appeared on.
PFAS (“PEE-fas”) (and not “PFAs”!) stands for “per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances” and encompasses the entire family of “forever chemicals.”
PFOA (perfluorooctanoic acid) and PFOS (perfluorooctane sulfonic acid) are specific compounds with in the PFAS family.
While names like GenX and ADONA are trade names for specific PFAS compounds, there actually is a system to how compounds like PFBA, PFBS, PFHxS, etc, are named. This helpful review by Buck et al. lays out the differences between different groups of PFAS and how they’re named.
You might hear that there are 3,000 or 4,000 or 9,000 compounds. It depends what definition you use for PFAS (outlined succinctly in this review by Hammel et al.), but the EPA CompTox PFAS master list currently has over 12,000 fluorine-containing compounds listed.
Though new PFAS are continually being added as we discover more of them, the number on the EPA dashboard is approximately the current upper limit of known PFAS compounds, as other definitions are more restrictive.
What can I do about PFAS?
The CDC’s Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry has a page for PFAS that addresses many of these topics.
To find local information:
- Many municipalities test for PFAS and report them in their monthly, quarterly, or yearly reports. Check out your local water utility report for the most updated numbers.
- The Environmental Working Group periodically updates a rather comprehensive interactive map of PFAS contamination in the US, which you can find here.
- The PFAS Project Lab at Northeastern University also maintains an interactive map of PFAS contamination, and the data used to make this map can be viewed here.
- However, a recent Northeastern study suggests that there are thousands more sites that are contaminated but have not yet been tested for PFAS.
To find state-by-state information:
- Look at your state’s contamination data/map under the “US State Drinking Water” entry on the PFAS Central Data Hub
- See if your state currently (as of Oct 2022) has regulations, which would be summarized in this Rockefeller Institute report
- Check out this 2020 paper from Gloria Post at the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection contextualizes and summarizes different US states’ PFAS regulations
- Search around a bit on Google
Local journalists often cover PFAS contamination and laws! Check your local newspaper as well.
As long as your Teflon pan isn’t chipped or scratched and you don’t leave it on high heat while it’s empty, it’s likely fine. The bulk of the problem with Teflon pans is the PFAS used to manufacture it.
That said, if you’re looking for pans without PFAS, don’t rely on a “PFOA-free” or “PFOS-free” label; those are just two of many PFAS. Make sure the pan uses a Teflon alternative.
There are a lot on non-stick alternatives. Consumer Reports has a roundup of a few here.
I personally like anodized aluminum and find that its non-stickiness lasts longer than ceramic non-stick, which becomes sticky over time due to how ceramic non-stick pans work.
A study from NC State showed that fridge activated carbon filters do filter out some PFAS, and under-the-sink reverse osmosis systems did a better job. However, they noted that pitcher water filters aren’t expected to be very effective because of the show amount of time that the water is in contact with the filter.
Cyclopure offers PFAS-specific water filters that fit inside a Brita pitcher. Included in the cost is mailing the used filter back to Cyclopure for proper PFAS disposal. (Disclaimer: Cyclopure was co-founded by my PhD advisor.)
In states such as New York, you can request to get your blood measured by the Department of Health if you think you’ve been exposed to PFAS. In many places, you can also request or check the water quality report for your water utility to see the latest levels of PFAS measured (or not measured!) in your water.
If you’re worried about PFAS exposure through products, learn more about where you might be exposed and try to buy/use fewer of them: Clothes or other fabric items that are “waterproof” or “water resistant,” certain types of dental floss, any kind of paper that has been water-proofed or grease-proofed (burger wrappers, microwave popcorn bags, takeout bowls, paper straws, etc.)
(Thanks to Dr. Casey Ching and Dr. Jordin Metz for assistance on this answer!)
- You can call your representatives, both state and congressional representatives and senators. Congress is thinking about PFAS legislation, as are many states.
- Tell your local city council (or equivalent) about your concerns. If possible, look up PFAS levels in your area online (you could try calling your water utility), as many utilities monitor for PFAS and have to publish a list of monitored contaminants, such as PFOS, PFOA, PFBS, etc. If you can’t find local numbers, see if the closest big city or the state has PFAS numbers.
- Look for local and national advocacy groups. Two national advocacy groups with experience in PFAS advocacy are the Environmental Working Group and the Green Science Policy Institute.
- If you find out about PFAS in goods that you use/like, contact that company and express your interest in them stopping the use of PFAS and/or finding PFAS alternatives.
- Talk to your friends and neighbors about the issue to increase the number of people taking the above actions
Thanks to Dr. Jordin Metz for assistance on this answer!
How do we get rid of PFAS? and other technical questions
Activated carbon is currently the industry standard for removing PFAS from drinking water. While ion exchange resins, reverse-osmosis, and specialty PFAS adsorbents are better for PFAS removal than activated carbon, these technologies are used less often in municipal settings, either because they are unavailable, unsuitable for the site’s water, or too expensive. (See details in question below.)
My longtime collaborator Dr. Casey Ching, who studied the properties affecting PFAS removal for her PhD, has several suggestions for where to learn more about PFAS adsorption.
If you’re just starting out, you might begin with Merino et al. (2016), which discusses both destruction and adsorption. Ross et al. (2018), while a bit outdated, also helpfully points out the pros and cons of adsorption and destruction techniques.
Casey says she’s “cited the heck out of” Zhang et al. (2016) as well as Gagliano et al. (2020), which outlines many of the principles that the PFAS field has discovered over the past few years regarding what factors affect long- and short-chain PFAS uptake. Vu and Wu (2020) also add some insights that aren’t covered by Zhang or Gagliano.
A good review to start with is this one by Nzeribe et al. SCWO is not covered in that review, but Krause et al.‘s evaluation of three SCWO methods is also helpful. Bentel et al.’s work, including followups to this paper, showcases many of the mechanistic concerns in this field.
This study by Liang et al. shows the promise of treatment train techniques (“separate-concentrate-destroy”) for PFAS destruction, which can lower the EE/O (the amount of energy it takes to decrease the concentration of PFAS by one order of magnitude) by several orders of magnitude.
Of course, I’d like to tell you that the PFAS destruction technique my colleagues and I discovered is the most promising technique, but in reality, there are other technologies that are much more likely to actually be used to destroy PFAS soon.
In my opinion, both HALT (hydrothermal alkaline treatment; being commercialized by Aquagga) and SCWO (supercritical water oxidation; being commercialized by several companies including 374Water, Battelle, and Aquarden) currently show the most promise for degrading PFAS effectively at scale, especially when coupled to treatment trains.
When evaluating any PFAS destruction technology, make sure to understand whether the developers are measuring degradation, defluorination, or mineralization, which sound the same but is the difference between cleaning up PFAS or releasing more PFAS! This article by Arp and colleagues is critical reading for anyone getting into PFAS destruction.
The PFAS Central data hub has a compilation of useful PFAS-related links, such as databases of authoritative lists of PFAS, toxicology databases, US state drinking water contamination summaries, etc.
SERDP (a Dept of Defense program that funds a lot of PFAS remediation research) has a wiki of PFAS topics written by experts, where you can find more information on other remediation techniques and topics like PFAS sources and transport.
The Interstate Technology and Regulatory Council also has a very thorough website with data tables, video explainers on PFAS naming conventions and analytical methods, as well as detailed info on types of AFFF, site risk assessment, and much more.