Something in our world is unseen by the eye but is in every human alive. It is a toxin slowly killing and damaging all of us, the name of this something is PFAS chemicals. PFAS are chemicals produced by industry that are extremely harmful in various ways, from their widespread use in transportation to their bioaccumulative nature in many systems. They are one of the biggest issues affecting countries with developed industries because they have been unregulated and over-generated since the 1940s (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2024) (ref). So many populations of people are suffering from health incidences that could be fatal or lifelong. Additionally, wild populations and aquatic environments are decimated by these chemicals. So recourse from a PFAS using industries countries is essential for the world to be safer for people and all earth’s populations. 

But what are PFAS in a more literal sense? PFAS is a man-made series of chemicals used to ‘resist’. They are industrially manufactured novel chemicals that were created to resist grease, heat, water, oil, and almost every natural and unnatural method of chemical breakdown. Their chemical name is poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), and they can migrate easily and remain permanently during their production in the soil, water supplies, and environment. However, the main problem here is that any drifting of PFAS creates irreversible damage to the world. Their impossibly stable structure prevents them from ever being broken down naturally. They are currently found almost everywhere in soil along with animals and humans who have had repeated exposure to the chemicals because their exodus from the body is essentially impossible.

Some people may protest that since they are so impossible to remove from the environment we should just focus on the future. That the damage is already done and if these chemicals are so inevitable then there is no use in trying to stop their spread. Almost every country in the world indeed has some amount of PFAS production, and most are still completely unregulated. So some may think it wouldn’t be worth protesting the ‘lockdown’ of PFAS production because there is never a way every major producer country will unite on that front. While this is a true point, overall, it would be highly beneficial to create some resistance against the epidemic. Even if every household in a town had reverse osmosis filters or a city had a PFAS-preventing water filter, that would preserve the health of so many people. So while in the world we live in, exposure is essentially unavoidable, it is still valuable to avoid it as much as possible. Even after this, there could be other programs of education that could teach other countries and businesses the harm that they are doing to others and the world. Invoking any morality in these situations is the most viable option there is for reducing PFAS production.

The chemistry for PFAS was initially discovered by accident in 1938 by Roy J Plunkett at Dupont’s Jackson Laboratory in Deepwater, New Jersey. He was testing chemical reactions of tetrafluoroethylene (TFE), which is a refrigerant fluid, when something appeared to go wrong, and instead of the desired reaction, he created a waxy powdery solid. This was called polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), the first-ever PFAS created(Lucas & Samora, 2023). From this point, all companies wanted to figure out the secret behind Teflon leading to the subsequent creation of so many other forever molecules put under the branch of PFAS.

The chemical industry’s use peaked in the 1950s. The main turning point in the real discovery of PFAS was when DuPont was sued in the 1980s for ‘chemical dumping’ in an unregulated area. But this was further advanced upon when in 2003 a blood test was done on a sample population of residents of the United States and it came up that the presence of PFAS was in almost every single blood sample. This was the first major flag of their harm and when the study was expanded in 2006 where roughly  98% of people had some kind of exposure to PFAS(Coulson, 2024). Due to this, in 2009, the EPA set a maximum acceptable range for PFAS in drinking water of 400ppt(Kelley, 2024). In 2014 the study was repeated but with populations around the world and it was assumed to be essentially universal because of how high the percentage of people with some kind of PFAS exposure(Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, 2024). The regulations were then strengthened because of how difficult it was to stop the circulation of these chemicals in the environment. This is because almost every system including certain water treatment plants a few years back used PFAS in their system to increase machine longevity, which caused massive environmental runoff and civilian exposure. 

The main reason these chemicals are so harmful and deadly in the open world is their environmental motility. They are essentially parasites that can find their way inside of anything and there is no cure except for time. Meaning that these chemicals will never just go away like how a plastic bag eventually decomposes. It takes time for them to find rest in a biological system like a person or animal before they are taken out of circulation. But until then they gloat across the environment and world causing terrible problems everywhere they are. Typically around factories that produce PFAS, there is a high concentration of airbound PFAS, which in addition to affecting all life breathing that air, will eventually settle into water and soil potentially miles away(Wisconsin Department of Natural Recourses, 2023). Once in the soil it greatly hinders the microbiome of bacteria and other organisms at the base of the food chain. Additionally, PFAS are often sucked up into the roots of plants because of how it is already present in latent water sources so it is easily absorbed with the needed water for the plants(Wisconsin Department of Health Services, 2023) This contaminates many popular food sources for humans and animals. Then the water contamination greatly affects the wildlife delaying the reproduction and processes of zooplankton, bacteria, and algae. They also have been found to make the behaviors of fish and water-bound animals very strange, lowering reproduction rates(Ma, et al.). In this water transmission, they are found all over the globe even in the middle of the ocean in some amount. But any amount is so highly toxic, just as a comparison, cyanide, one of the most deadly poisons known to man is deemed safe in concentrations of 4.7 parts per million by the CDC. For PFAS, the amount considered safe is 4 parts per trillion, meaning this substance is almost 1 million times more deadly than cyanide and stays in the body forever unlike cyanide which is broken down(U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2024). So any contamination of the air, food, or water is dire in its consequences. 

However, while their presence in the environment and biological life was discovered in the early 1990s it took around a decade more to discover how harmful they were(Interstate Technology Regulatory Council, 2020). Originally it was thought that the original PFAS, (PTFE) was the only one in existence but after further research, it was found that the molecules were diverse. Today the number of PFAS molecule types created is over 15,000 or more(National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, 2024). Each is a man-made chemical whose health and biological effects are almost completely unstudied. The most studied subsets of this chemical group are (PFOA) Perfluorooctanoic acid and (PFOS) Perfluorooctanesulfonic acid chemicals. Because of the Dupont lawsuit, the most development happened in Dupont’s production line which was PFOA specifically. This was when the initial direct testing began, where animals were tested on and already infected humans were studied. It was found that exposure in male rats to various PFOA induced liver, pancreatic, and testicular tumors within a 2-year frame(National Toxicology Program Research Triangle, 2023). Another case study examined workers at a PFOA production factory in Minnesota that showed an extremely positive trend between PFOA exposure and prostate and liver cancer in humans(Flouride Action Network, 2024). Again in a PFOA manufacturing factory in West Virginia, there was a positive relation between PFOA and employee mortality due to kidney cancer(Viera et al. 2013). This was a Dupont factory and that West Virginia factory alone dumped around 1.7 million pounds of PFOA into the environment(United States Department of Justice, 2014). Additionally, An Environmental Health Perspectives study found that it is because of DuPont that the 6 counties surrounding this factory have nearly a 6x increase in their PFOA blood concentration as compared to the national average. Once the environment, wildlife, and people were studied in this area it was linked to ever-growing evidence of the toxicity of PFOA (Shin et al. 2011)

How did the PFAS outbreak start? It came from the multitude of important American and foreign industries that created so many variations of these chemicals for various purposes. These industries include automobiles, textiles, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, construction, consumer goods, firefighting, electronics, and other consumer goods. But these are not things of the past, they are still used in all of these industries today(Environmental Council of the States, 2023).

This is one of the major issues of PFAS, it is that they are being controlled after they are already produced. But controlling them is essentially impossible because they are released through industrial smokestacks into the air and they contaminate solids which in turn spread to groundwater and then the spread just continues from there(North Carolina Coastal Federation & Environmental Council of the States, 2018). So instead of the water in a certain town area being mandated to have a specific level of PFAS that is deemed “not harmful”, it should be the source of the PFAS that is actually regulated.

However, there is no real way to mandate a certain amount of PFAS or even to ban PFAS in industry use. This is because of the number of variants of PFAS in addition to the ones that are still being classified and found to this day. Due to this, there is no way to make a true federal mandate within the United States to stop all PFAS spread. While many states create individual sanctions and laws for controlling PFAS spread, they are primarily focused on the PFOA and PFOS strains of PFAS(United States Environmental Protection Agency 2024). As a product of this, there are still those other 15,000 strains of PFAS that are unregulated, unresearched, and being spread through the bodies of everyone in the United States. This is extremely concerning because it shows that there is not enough government prioritization of the health of the American people. These PFAS cause so many health conditions and most likely many more that we don’t know of yet. 

In recent research, PFAS has correlated with many health conditions. It may lead to decreased blood pressure and fertility in pregnant women, along with passing PFAS in the pregnant mother’s system along to the child. Developmental variability in children means accelerated or delayed puberty, uneven bone growth, low birth weight, and behavioral changes. It interferes with the body’s immune system and the effectiveness of vaccines in high-exposure people(Szilagyi et al. 2021). It increases the risk of cancer due to the hindered immune response but has been linked to the progenitor of kidney, liver, thyroid, breast, endometrial, and testicular cancer in addition to non-Hodgkin Lymphoma and childhood Lukemia(National Cancer Institute Division of Epidemiology & Genetics 2024). However, the effects of PFAS are difficult to directly correlate because of the number of variables. This includes the age in life that a person was exposed, the amount of exposure, the individual traits of an examinee’s body, the type of PFAS they were exposed to, and how long they have been present. However, it has been definitively found that PFAS are much more harmful to the quality of life of children because they affect their systems while they haven’t fully developed.

While the path to healing or recovering from PFAS exposure is extremely long it is possible. In a study that lasted about 14 years a large population range of people was examined annually for their PFOA content. There were populations of all races, body dimensions, ages, and people with a variety of lifestyle habits. In the conclusion of this study, it was found that on average for all people the average half-life of PFAS in the human body is 2.36 years(Batzella et al. 2024). Additionally, there were many interesting findings in the determination of half-life. The major determinants of PFAS half-life so far are sex, age, smoking, and drinking. Where women tend to eliminate PFOA more quickly than men and while age increases, the half-life increases for men but decreases in women. Meaning that women have a significant benefit when it comes to flushing of PFAS but this is because of the increase in flushing methods found in this study. These methods include urine, menstrual blood, breast milk, stool, and liver filtration(Batzella et al.). While menstrual blood and breast milk are obvious indicators that could decrease the half-life it is still unknown why the half-life for women decreases as they get older. Additionally, the use of alcohol and smoking increases the half-life in both genders, getting worse as the habits continue as the person ages(Batzella et al.).

Moreover, it may be too optimistic to say that there is a way for humans to get rid of PFAS in their bodies. This is because half-life is a measure of how long it takes for half of the substance to decay into something else. Something else is anything other than the original compound, which is highly problematic. This is because we don’t know what the decayed chemical constituents of PFAS are in the body so we have no way to measure them. Additionally, because of the strong carbon-fluorine bond, the degradation of the molecule is extremely minimal. Where it can potentially degrade into an even higher concentration of more harmful substances depending on the PFAS strain that is being denatured. Consequently, while the half-life of PFAS is quantized, no number defines when PFAS stop being harmful in the body. This is due to the number of potential derivatives of the PFAS all turning into equally strong, stable, and dangerous chemicals just like PFAS. Hence, more research needs to be done in this area because the only viable method of PFAS degradation as of 2024 is chemical incineration which is completely outside of any organisms, which is highly impractical and ineffective in a global sense.

On the other hand, someone may say that the health effects on the rest of the globe are ‘unseen’. However, the reason for this is because of PFAS’s bioaccumulative nature the effects of introduction to PFAS into a biological system will have very slow effects as they accumulate. Meaning that the health effects of PFAS are extremely slow and hard to notice but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there. But any bit of PFAS in the system does small things to harm the body a while that may sometimes be seen as a coincidence. For example, someone might begin to get sick very frequently and just think it is a coincidence when it is a byproduct of a PFAS buildup weakening the immune system. Such as the lowering of immune function, so people with higher PFAS concentrations are greatly affected by sickness. However, the more severe and fatal effects come from long-term high-concentration exposure. While all of these things are very dangerous the most deadly of them all is the immune manipulation by every added molecule of PFAS to the body. This is because the weakening and genetic mutations applied to the immune system by PFAS are among its most dangerous side effects. This is because that is the main killer of many other diseases like Cancer, which weakens the immune system, and autoimmune diseases like AIDS. It was found that PFAS can lead directly to spurts of autoimmune activity in the immune system to damage the healthy body. PFAS can also create pathway signal confusion for pathogens in the body where certain immune signals like hypoxia or apoptosis could be falsely applied to healthy parts of the body(Bline Et al. 2024). So essentially PFAS can make the body believe that healthy parts of the body are pathogens or cancers, simulating autoimmune attacks.

As discussed earlier, many industries create PFAS, but separate from that is firefighters, which happen to create a lot of PFAA and PFOS waste. On this, a case study was performed to see how much PFAA and PFOS constituent waste firefighters produce. In addition, the study helps to better predict the plume of PFAS for a variety of different industries because of a relative method of mobilization. The first part of the study was called the Comparison of Shallow and Deep Soil Samples at an AFFF Release Site. It took place at a former unlined burn pit where the levels of PFAA and PFOS constituents in the soil and their depth were studied. This part of the study found that there is some kind of unknown attenuation limiting vertical transmission in soil. This was because it was found that levels of PFOS in soil were mainly constricted to the top 2 feet of the soil while at 15 feet only the chemical constituents of PFOS were found. Also, the general concentration of all PFAA constituents was lowered greatly. 

The next part of the study called Radial diagrams illustrating PFSA trends at an AFFF Release Site went to study the amount of well contamination across the burn pit. This found that PFSA constituents will follow the direction of the groundwater and runoff flow. However, it also found that there is a specific radius around the burn pit that is independent of the direction of groundwater because of how densely populated it is with PFAA(McGuire, 2013).

The third study called PFAS composition in ground water went to find the concentration of PFAA contaminants in the water closest to the burn pit in the direction of the ground water’s flow and in another fire training site along the same waterway. This study found that the highest concentrations of contaminated river water were around the fire training sight, where the runoff from the burn pit creates the second most downstream waste(Carey Et al. 1999). 

While all of these things may seem rather implicit in how the PFAS is flowing, all of these measurements were plotted on radial measurement diagrams. This could be used in the field of Environmental Sequence Stratigraphy (ESS) which is a geologic method that uses Sequence Stratigraphy (a geological study of sediment deposits in the ground to understand the history of the Earth’s surface) and facies models (summaries of a specific sediment environment which looks at ancient and recent rock structure to help discover the history of the land) to predict the diversity of aquifers at hazardous waste sites(USEPA, 2017). This can help to quantize the direction of a plume given certain characteristics and properties. Which has a very strong future within AI, where AI and other programs could be used to accurately predict the concentrations, area, and directions of hazardous PFAA chemical constituents. Once this method is developed it can be generalized to a wide range of PFAS and their constituents which has helped people know how and where to implement preventative measures to remove toxicity from aquifers. 

There aren’t many methods of direct recourse for treating people who have already been exposed but there are methods that have been developed for prevention. Water is the most common way that PFAS are spread and many kinds of filtration systems have been invented and are in use around the country. One popular method is granular activated carbon filtration. Granulated activation carbon is used for its extreme reactivity and porous structure that can neutralize along with catching contaminants. 

It is something already used in many towns but there are some limitations. For instance, PFAS put a lot of strain on the system making the carbon have to be replaced more frequently. There is also a specific set of flow rate, carbon bed density, and depth that needs to be met so that PFAS can be effectively filtered out. The next method is Ion Exchange Treatment which is a method that employs cationic and anionic exchange resins. The water passes through these resins and the resin attracts and holds any cationic and anionic contaminants that may pass through the system.

This method is effective and has a very high capacity for PFAS, additionally, there is no direct waste of PFAS from the collection so there aren’t many extra steps involved in taking care of the contaminated resin. However, this method is much more expensive than activated Carbon and there needs to be specific determinations on the flow rate, and bed depth of the resins to take out PFAS. However, the most effective method so far is High-Pressure Membranes. This includes the use of nanofiltration and reverse osmosis. Reverse osmosis involves pressurizing water so that it passes through around 4-9 semipermeable membranes or filter media to clean the water fully where all of the debris that is caught is discharged from the system as wastewater and the purified water is pumped out of the main valve. 

Some may say that the methods of fixing PFAS in water supplies are highly complicated, expensive, and impractical. Additionally, they may say it is ineffective because of all the PFAS already in the food supply and ground. But to this, no price can be put on the health of the world’s population. Money is a big concern when looking at problems like this but people are the money, without people, there is no money flowing anywhere. If a place has an unideal PFAS concentration in their water supply people will naturally flee from the area, causing a lower GDP, which would affect the economic aspect of this issue much more. Additionally, while it is true that PFAS are widespread in other forms of unfilterable material, water is where it all starts. Almost all PFAS are transmitted to plants by contaminated water, all PFAS in their air eventually sink to the ground or into the water, where the water spreads it. Also, the most common way that people are infected is through water because of how much contamination it can contain. So where anyone should start in finding ways to counteract PFAS is through the water. Then after that other methods could be found to stop other modes of PFAS transportation. 

In conclusion, PFAS is a substance that has had a very short lifetime in the world but has caused so much damage. It is everywhere and in everyone in our world today. They are causing problems in the environment, agriculture, and in humans. Up until very recently humans have been very negligent on this topic and have refused to take responsibility for the damage created. So as a whole, our society needs to realize the damage they have caused to the world and recognize the need for prevention and expulsion of these harmful chemicals.  All in all, people must be informed on this topic because it is actively affecting them. Regardless of what any person is told these chemicals are inside of them harming them without their knowledge. Therefore, we need to be aware of this so we can take the initiative to improve our society and world for the better.

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