You might not have heard of “forever chemicals,” but you’ve certainly been exposed to them. This large family of molecules can be found in everything from the wrapper on your take-out burger to the stain-resistant fabric on your couch. You might unwittingly encounter them when you floss your teeth, apply your mascara, or fry an egg in your nonstick pan.
Known to scientists as PFAS (shorthand for perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances), these pervasive chemicals can linger for many years in soil and water — and in our bodies, where they have been linked to a range of diseases. They’ve been found in the drinking water in many parts of the US, particularly areas near chemical plants that currently or previously made them. So much of this stuff is out there that researchers recently detected unsafe levels in rainwater.
Now, there might be a way to strike the “forever” from those chemicals. Scientists at Northwestern University have come up with a simple and cheap method of breaking down some of these molecules into benign parts. That feat, and, more realistically, others it might inspire, has the potential to play a critical role in the massive and costly effort to eradicate these chemicals from the environment. The discovery is far from an immediate solution to the world’s PFAS problem. But it arrives at a time when the U.S. is starting to put real money into efforts to pull these contaminants out of the water supply, which would create a lot of PFAS waste with nowhere good to go.
