PFAS in Drinking Water: Understanding the 'Forever Chemicals'
- Published:
- Updated: January 2, 2025
Summary
PFAS, or ‘forever chemicals,’ pose significant health and environmental risks due to their persistence and bioaccumulative nature:
- Everyday Exposure: PFAS are present in common items like cookware, clothing, and food packaging, contributing to widespread exposure.
- Health Implications: Exposure to PFAS is linked to various health risks, including increased cholesterol levels and potential cancer risks.
- Pathways to Contamination: Industries, landfills, and firefighting foams are major sources of PFAS contamination in drinking water.
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a class of synthetic chemicals in use since the mid-20th century. There are more than 4,000, and PFOA and PFOS are the most well-understood ones. They are incredibly resistant to heat, water and oil, and so can be used for all sorts of applications.
PFAS have been called the ‘forever chemicals’, since they don’t degrade. They too bioaccumulate, in that their concentration accumulates in living organisms over time, such as us. This persistence in the environment and in us is the main reason for alarm and the primary reason why their content in drinking water is becoming more of a focus.
PFAS in Everyday Products: More Than Just Drinking Water
Even though the drink water aspect has all the attention, you can bet PFAS aren’t hard to find in everyday products. These chemicals were used to tremendous effect because of their specific characteristics and are incorporated into almost everything you buy.
Cookware: Most non-stick pans are PFAS-based and make them non-stick.
Fabrics and clothes: Protective, stain-resistant clothing, carpeting and upholstery often include PFAS.
Food Wrappers: There is PFAS in many fast food wrappers and microwave popcorn bags to resist grease and oil.
To realize how ubiquitous PFAS can be in everyday life, then, shows the extreme difficulty in staying safe from these persistent chemicals.
Understanding the Risks: Health Implications of PFAS Exposure
It is not yet clear whether long-term health effects of PFAS are known, but it is known that studies in the early years associated PFAS with various health threats. PFAS, for example, has been linked to higher cholesterol, liver enzyme changes and lower vaccine responses in children.
Far more concerning are studies linking it to kidney and testicular cancer, hormonal abnormalities and developmental defects in infants and newborns. And not to mention how these compounds are bioaccumulative – meaning they might not show up on your face right away, and could still come out years or decades later.
How do PFAS get into drinking water?
There are multiple routes by which PFAS enter our drinking water. Businesses that manufacture or process PFAS are the main culprits, their waste and runoff polluting waterways around us.
Moreover, landfill leachate – the fluid that comes out of a landfill – can contain PFAS from debris and can pollute surface and groundwater. The other big source of PFAS is firefighting foams, which can leach into groundwater or drain off into surface water when used in training or during actual firefighting operations on military bases and airports.
Measuring PFAS: Detection and Current Regulation Standards
Water is very difficult to measure for PFAS without lab-exclusive equipment such as liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. Once they are found, the concentrations of PFAS are compared to regulatory requirements provided by the environmental agencies. But those standards change at different sites, and may shift as we learn more about PFAS.
To date, there is no safe PFAS concentration that has been accepted by all stakeholders. There are nations with advisory concentrations of particular PFAS, such as PFOA and PFOS, and others that regulate PFAS in the total amount. These polarised standards mirror the long-running controversy about how much PFAS exposure is considered safe.
The Challenge of PFAS Removal: Available Treatment Methods
The Removal Problem of PFAS: Treatment Options available for it?
PFAS are difficult to remove from water as they are chemically stable and don’t respond well to conventional treatment. Two approaches are promising at present:
Activated Carbon: Activated carbon can be added to the water to filter PFAS from the water. But the results will vary depending on the PFAS used, and the filters should be changed periodically for proper function.
Reverse Osmosis: reverse osmosis is also an option for PFAS reduction, but consumes lots of energy and isn’t always possible with big-scale water treatment.
The two techniques are both insufficient, and neither can entirely remove PFAS, which is why PFAS contamination must be prevented at the source.
Beyond Drinking Water: PFAS in the Food Chain and Environment
PFAS’s impact is not just localised to water. They are also unaffected by degradation and can float hundreds of miles through the air and water, poisoning faraway land. PFAS builds up in crops and animals and can end up in our food. This is especially concerning for fish and other marine animals, which can build up dangerous amounts of PFAS if they inhabit contaminated water.
PFAS are also harmful to wildlife, causing damage to growth, reproduction and survival in many species. The persistence of PFAS in the environment and the effects they have on eco-systems also point to the urgency of controlling their production, consumption and disposal.
Future Outlook: The Path Towards PFAS-Free Water
Since PFAS are difficult to filter out, a renewed focus is on PFAS prevention at the source. That includes regulation changes that will limit PFAS use in products, improved waste management and the invention of new materials.
They are also collaborating to discover better and more affordable ways to purify water of PFAS. Advances in this space could also benefit drinking water quality and the general environment.
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