You may have heard of Forever Chemicals, which have a long scientific name that I’m not going to use. You have probably heard that they’re abbreviated with the initials PFAS. These chemicals have been manufactured and been in use since the 1940s and the are called Forever Chemicals because they never breakdown.
According to William Dichtel, Professor of Chemistry Northwestern University, “The problem is even a tiny, tiny amount of PFAS causes negative health effects, and it does not break down.”
PFAS has been used in nonstick cookware, waterproof cosmetics, firefighting foams, water-repellent fabrics and products that resist grease and oil. In other words, they are all around us and they’ve been making their way into consumer goods and our drinking water to the extend that 97% of us have PFAS in our blood!
Some of the negative health effects PFAS can cause are decreased fertility, developmental problems in children, increased cancer risks from a number of different types of cancers, reduced immunity to infection and increased cholesterol levels.
Even the US Environmental Protection Agency has found several PFAS to be unsafe even at trace levels.
So…do we just do the proverbial bury our heads in the sand? Fortunately, there are two methods that I’m aware of that are stopping PFAS in its tracks.
One method uses a chemical that attacks a part of the PFAS that is vulnerable and which causes it to be destroyed. This means that the part that was invulnerable can no longer function. It’s similar to cutting the head off the beast. The body is still there, but it cannot function. The researchers are working on expanding the number of PFAS that can be impacted by this approach.
The second methods is from Australia where they are using magnets to quickly and simply remove the dangerous PFAS chemicals from water. What the researchers are doing is using a substance that is a magnetic fluorinated polymer sorbent. They add it to the water and the solvent binds to the PFAS and since the solvent is magnetic, a simple magnet will remove the PFAS.
The process takes only 30 seconds and removes 95% of the PFAS in the water samples tested. The additional plus for this method is that the solvent can be reused up to 10 times! The researchers are gearing up so that the process can be used in homes and also on large scale commercial projects.
So…this is one case where we can all be glad” Forever” is starting to lose its definition and its power over us!
(Reported Northwestern, Winter 2023 and the Brisbanetimes.com 2023)
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