Finding Forever Chemicals Wherever They’re Hiding

They're called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, a group of thousands of compounds that contain a chemical bond between fluorine and carbon. That bond has proved to be one of the most stable and unbreakable known to chemistry - a fact baked into the common nickname "forever chemicals," because once PFAS are created, they last a very long time.

First manufactured in the 1940s, PFAS have seeped into our daily lives, and our bodies. In recent years, they have emerged as a serious public health concern. Scientists have reported evidence that certain PFAS, at high enough concentrations, may harm health by suppressing the immune system or causing cancers, obesity, thyroid problems and birth defects.

Forever chemicals have also been found in remote forests, in the Arctic and at the bottom of the ocean. Reminiscent of pesticides like DDT in the 1960s and PCBs in the 1970s, they've emerged as some of the most pervasive and troublesome environmental contaminants of our time.

At the same time, health researchers are still determining how harmful PFAS are at the levels most of us are exposed to. And some of the studies that have raised the most alarms have used measurement methods that can overestimate the chemicals' concentrations.

Researchers and regulators now face a daunting task: They must accurately measure PFAS in the countless places they've ended up and assess when and where these compounds have reached dangerous levels. To do so, scientists must often measure the chemicals at extremely low concentrations. PFAS can be found in food, drinking water and other materials in concentrations of parts per billion or even parts per trillion - equivalent to a few drops in an Olympic-size swimming pool.

This is where the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) comes in. NIST scientists have pioneered methods that have made laboratory tests for PFAS in food, water, soil, firefighter gear and other materials more accurate. NIST research will support laboratory tests needed to implement the nation's first-ever PFAS drinking water regulations, which the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is currently developing.

NIST researchers have also produced one of the world's largest public databases of empirically measured PFAS masses, to help other researchers and labs more efficiently sniff out these troublesome compounds.

PFAS represent the kind of measurement challenge that NIST was made to tackle.

"In the federal government space, NIST was ahead of the game on PFAS," says NIST research chemist Jessica Reiner.

The PFAS industry started in the late 1930s and early 1940s, after an engineer at the company DuPont invented a fluoropolymer that became known as PTFE. Marketed as Teflon, PTFE became a blockbuster, launching a multibillion-dollar industry of nonstick coatings applied to cookware and an almost unlimited range of other products.

Over the ensuing decades, thousands of PFAS were manufactured and incorporated into industrial lubricants, water-repellent clothing and carpeting, food packaging and more. If you've ever marveled how the wrapper around a greasy fast-food burger keeps your hands clean, or how effortlessly your lightweight rain jacket sheds water, you can probably thank a PFAS.

"Chemically they're amazing - they do amazing things," says John Kucklick, leader of the Biochemical and Exposure Science Group at NIST. "Anything that repels grease is probably fluorinated."

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