PFC Treatment Befuddles Researchers

The conundrum of how to treat perfluorinated compounds (PFCs) is an increasingly compelling area for researchers as regulators increase their scrutiny of these contaminants and water utilities across the country reckon with this difficult form of pollution, which is often linked to industrial and military sites.

Researchers from the University of Minnesota are trying to develop effective ways to separate PFCs from water. For the past two year, Matt Simcik, an associate professor, has sought new ways to solidify PFCs to make them easier to remove, The Minnesota Daily reported.

“We don’t have a great handle on the toxicology yet,” Simcik said, per the report. “These chemicals are much different from anything we’ve dealt with before, so that makes them a bit scary.”

Simcik described why PFCs pose such a treatment challenge.

“It’s very difficult, even in the laboratory, to cause these molecules to break down … anything that sticks around forever isn’t necessarily a good thing … you can put them in nitric acid in the lab and they just don’t break,” he said.

“[PFCs were used in] tons and tons of consumer products … all of that stuff doesn’t stay where we want it to stay — it ends up in our waste stream … which becomes someone else’s drinking water,” he continued.

The U.S. EPA issued a health advisory in May about PFC exposure as various cities wage high-profile battles against the compounds, including Hoosick Falls, NY, the Philadelphia suburbs, and factory towns across the country.

When the EPA changed its PFC guidance, some Minnesota cities and towns found themselves exceeding the news limits, according to The Minnesota Daily. Public officials are communicating with residents and handing out water filters, and regulators plan to test hundreds of homes for PFCs in the coming months.

“In some areas, PFC drinking water concentrations have fallen slightly which could be from gradual dilution or normal methods of processing water such as carbon filtering or reverse osmosis that can partially filter out PFCs,” the report said, citing Gary Krueger, a Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) supervisor.

There’s a growing call for PFC research as regulations tighten and water utilities reckon with this form of industrial contamination.

In the suburbs around Philadelphia, residents are fighting for the federal government to fund research into local PFC contamination. They want the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to conduct a study “to determine if the presence of the chemicals in their drinking water made them sick,” The Intelligencer reported.

The U.S. EPA says it is researching hundreds of alternatives to certain PFCs, WNYT reported. An EPA official told WNYT: "There are many reasons to expect a range of toxicities. But more research is needed, particularly on the environmental fate of these compounds to fully evaluate these compounds."

Here are the treatment methods the EPA recommends to water utilities facing PFC challenges:

In some cases, drinking water systems may be able to reduce concentrations of perfluoroalkyl substances, including perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS), by closing contaminated wells or changing rates of blending of water sources. Alternatively, public water systems can treat source water with activated carbon or high pressure membrane systems (e.g., reverse osmosis) to remove PFOA and PFOS from drinking water. These treatment systems are used by some public water systems today, but should be carefully designed and maintained to ensure that they are effective for treating PFOA and PFOS. In some communities, entities have provided bottled water to consumers while steps to reduce or remove PFOA or PFOS from drinking water or to establish a new water supply are completed.

Research indicates exposure to PFCs over certain levels “may result in adverse health effects, including developmental effects to fetuses during pregnancy or to breastfed infants (e.g., low birth weight, accelerated puberty, skeletal variations), cancer (e.g., testicular, kidney), liver effects (e.g., tissue damage), immune effects (e.g., antibody production and immunity), thyroid effects and other effects (e.g., cholesterol changes),” according to the EPA’s health advisory.

To read more about combating PFCs visit Water Online’s Drinking Water Contaminant Removal Solutions Center.