PFAS chemicals seemed like a good idea at first. Like Teflon, they made pots easier to clean from the 1940s. They made coats waterproof and carpets stain resistant. Food packaging, extinguishing foam, even make-up seemed better with perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances.
Then tests began to detect PFAS in people’s blood.
Today, PFAS are ubiquitous in soil, dust and drinking water around the world. Studies suggest they are in 98 percent of Americans’ bodies, where they have been linked to health conditions, including thyroid disease, liver damage, and kidney and testicular cancer. There are now over 9,000 types of PFAS. They are often referred to as “forever chemicals” because the same properties that make them so useful also keep them from breaking down in nature.
Scientists are working on methods to capture and destroy these synthetic chemicals, but it’s not easy.
The latest breakthrough, published Aug. 18, 2022 in the journal Science, shows how a class of PFAS can be broken down into mostly harmless components using sodium hydroxide or lye, an inexpensive compound used in soap. It is not a direct solution to this enormous problem, but it does offer new insights.
Biochemist A. Daniel Jones and soil scientist Hui Li working on PFAS solutions at Michigan State University explained the promising PFAS destruction techniques being tested today.
How does PFAS get from everyday products into water, soil and ultimately humans?
There are two main routes of exposure for PFAS to get to humans: drinking water and food consumption.
PFAS can get into the soil from the application of biosolids to land, i.e. sludge from wastewater treatment, and they can leach from landfills. When contaminated biosolids are applied as fertilizer to agricultural fields, PFAS can end up in water and in crops and vegetables.
For example, livestock can consume PFAS through the crops they eat and the water they drink. Cases have been reported in Michigan, Maine and New Mexico of elevated levels of PFAS in beef and dairy cows. The magnitude of the potential risk to humans is still largely unknown.
Scientists in our group at Michigan State University are working on materials that are added to the soil that can prevent plants from absorbing PFAS, but it would leave PFAS in the soil.
The problem is that these chemicals are everywhere and there is no natural process in water or soil that breaks them down. Many consumer products are loaded with PFAS, including makeup, dental floss, guitar strings and ski wax.
