Scientists invent filter to remove forever chemical PFAS

September 24, 2024 9:29 PM

Scientists invent filter to remove forever chemical PFAS and use it in renewable batteries. The University of Queensland invention can extract PFAS compounds, which are notoriously difficult to remove from the environment or human bodies.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries (17 comments total)

If a process works and can scale, it would be good timing:

Her Children Were Sick. Was It ‘Forever Chemicals’ on the Family Farm?

The Dosties later learned from state officials that the previous owners of their land had used PFAS-contaminated sludge fertilizer decades earlier, in the 1980s and 1990s.

“They shut us down. Said, ‘You guys are done,’” he said.

But in the meantime, Mrs. Jumper immediately stopped using beef from Dostie farm, which they had cooked for the family perhaps once a week. Steaks, hamburgers and Sunday pot roast stews. “I didn’t want my children to eat that anymore,” Mrs. Jumper said. “I knew that for sure.”

She worked with her pediatrician to get specialized blood tests for her children. But even something that basic proved tricky, as only a few labs offer PFAS testing. And she and her husband were largely on their own: There’s no playbook for this kind of health scare.

The test results confirmed her suspicions. Her then-10-year-old son had levels of PFOS, a well-studied variation of the chemical, higher than more than 95 percent of Americans. “My child who always cleaned his plate had the highest levels,” Mrs. Jumper said.

Her two younger children had levels higher than 75 percent of Americans, according to test results reviewed by The Times, as did she and her husband, Cullen, a urologist.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 9:45 PM on September 24, 2024 [7 favorites]

Filtering a high amount of the many types of PFAS out of drinking water efficiently (and cost effectively) at treatment plants will be a huge step towards slowing or stopping the build up in people over time - they've been linked to liver damage, thyroid disease, obesity, fertility issues and cancer in the EU.

Hopefully this will also be applicable for farm animals' water, as that's another route for them to build up throughout the food chain.

Even more hopefully this won't stop efforts to drastically cut down or outright ban certain PFAS use or emissions into the wider environment, as once they're out there (via direct discharge into ground/river water or via sewage) they break down extremely slowly, and affect lots more life than just us.
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 2:58 AM on September 25, 2024 [14 favorites]

Echoing that this process, if it turns out to be useable outside the lab at a reasonable scale, would be a literal life-saver.
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:17 AM on September 25, 2024 [5 favorites]

Some helpful numbers to assist with scaling:

~30% of global groundwater (1,685,200 cubic miles) is contaminated.

Global yearly wastewater treatment capacity is 45 cubic miles (1/37,448 of the contaminated supply).

Global yearly water consumption is 1,103 cubic miles. Most of that's agriculture, but PFAS concentrate in crops.

Global production of PFAS is >1,000,000 tons per year.

As PFAS contamination correlates with behavior changes, any rational technoutopian must consider the possibility that their faith in technological solutions to this problem is the result of poisoning.

posted by Richard Saunders at 6:37 AM on September 25, 2024 [10 favorites]

previously.

The end of this CBC article displays PFAS levels in various waterways and great lakes in Canada, some of which have higher PFAS levels than drinking water guidelines in the US. including mentioning the drinking water guidelines of the US vs Canada "Those guidelines call for provinces and territories, which regulate drinking water quality, to limit levels of PFOS – a common type of PFAS – to 600 nanograms per litre. That is 150 times higher than the new U.S. regulation of just four nanograms per litre."
posted by ecco at 6:59 AM on September 25, 2024 [2 favorites]

"Oh thank goodness. For a while I thought this might be a problem that affects us." -rich people
posted by AlSweigart at 7:15 AM on September 25, 2024 [5 favorites]

corrected link to CBC article with table of waterways in Canada and their levels.
posted by ecco at 7:52 AM on September 25, 2024 [1 favorite]

I missed the connection with batteries. Is it that PFAs make fine dielectrics?
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 8:10 AM on September 25, 2024

Not my area of expertise but it looks like there is some discussion and cites of use of PFAS as components in batteries here:

Lithium-ion battery components are at the nexus of sustainable energy and environmental release of per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances

Studies have noted uses of PFAS in the energy sector including windmill coatings, semiconductors, solar collectors, and photovoltaic cells. Literature2,3,4 and patents5,6,7 also document use of PFAS as electrolytes in rechargeable, lithium (Li)-ion batteries (LiBs). LiB electrolytes must be conductive and electrochemically stable, with low volatility and flammability8. lonic liquids, including the Lit salt of bis(trifluoromethy|sulfonyl)imide (bis-FMeSI,
CAS 90076-65-6), are used as a primary or secondary LiB electrolytes5,6,7. The Li salt of bis-FMeSI is also incorporated as an anti-static agent in polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) composites which are used in LiBs as electrode binders and as part of the separator between the cathode and anode9,10,11.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 8:37 AM on September 25, 2024 [1 favorite]

Depends on the PFAS; LiPF6 is a common electrolyte salt in lithium ion batteries, and teflon as a binder in various types. Obviously making more of those is a not great idea, as they often end up in landfill and leech out in runoff, but I guess it's better than making fresh PFAS, especially if it can be directed to say gridscale batteries instead of consumer electronics.
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 8:45 AM on September 25, 2024 [1 favorite]

Oh great, is this the ethyl lead of this generation? We pushed millions of tons of it into the atmosphere and it turned our seniors into rage-fueled morons (only a slight exaggeration), now all our kids are growing up with PFAs frigging everywhere. Uuggghhhhh.
posted by seanmpuckett at 9:04 AM on September 25, 2024 [4 favorites]

"Oh thank goodness. For a while I thought this might be a problem that affects us." -rich people

let them drink champagne!

this is an amazing breakthrough, and as noted above, I hope it will be used for agricultural animals too. I don't worry about myself so much (I'm old, eh) but the impact on babies and children must be massive.
posted by supermedusa at 9:45 AM on September 25, 2024

Its not at this point clear that this global poisoning will be a near miss, like ozone depletion and lead; and each of these poison/pollution catastrophes are the counter-arguments when someone says education, science, rationality, industrialism etc are good and that Luddites/primativists/traditional life ways are bad or not as good as modernity.

Modernity is a suicide pact, if we play russian roulette enough times, we will get blasted. PM2.5, microplastics, pfas, pops, pesticides, ozone depleters, livestock pandemics, greenhouse gasses, radioactive releases.... click click click click boom.

If you have a time machine, skip Hitler and kill Newton or Bacon or at least Haber.
posted by No Climate - No Food, No Food - No Future. at 10:51 AM on September 25, 2024 [1 favorite]

better yet, Columbus.
posted by No Climate - No Food, No Food - No Future. at 10:52 AM on September 25, 2024 [2 favorites]

As a precautionary principle, just assume that anything available in a consumer product will be in your food.
posted by clew at 1:46 PM on September 25, 2024 [3 favorites]

We don't need to kill her, obviously, but whichever time-traveller convinces Loretta Lynn to write a song about windmills instead of Coal Miner's Daughter will never pay for another beer in their life.
posted by stet at 4:03 PM on September 25, 2024

And also gets Van Lear Rose on streaming.
posted by stet at 4:03 PM on September 25, 2024