A Comprehensive Discussion Of Forever Chemicals And How To Remove Them From Your Water

From popcorn bags to waterproof backpacks and shoes, forever chemicals are all around us. The world is finally starting to understand the impact they have our health – and how to get rid of them.

In 1938, chemist Roy J. Plunkett was experimenting with refrigerant gases when he noticed that one compound had transformed into a white, waxy solid. The solid Plunkett discovered had extraordinary properties. It was impervious to heat and chemical degradation and also extremely slippery. 

Plunkett discovered Teflon. Today, the world produce more than 200,000 tons of Teflon. Teflon is used in everything from non-stick frying pans to medical catheters. Though undoubtedly useful, Teflon was also the first of a group called perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), better known as :forever chemicals.”.

Almost as soon as Teflon was invented, concerns were raised about its potential impacts on the environment and our bodies. Today, the world is finally getting to grips with just how dangerous forever chemicals are to our health. In January 2024, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) added nine forever chemicals to its list of hazardous constituents. A few months later, the US imposed its first ever limits on levels of PFAS in drinking water, albeit in a belated bid to reduce exposure to these ubiquitous chemicals. But what risks do they actually pose and what should we be doing to remove them from our lives? Researchers face a huge challenge in finding the answers, but are starting to make real headway.

What are forever chemicals?

PFAS are a diverse group of about 16,000 artificial chemicals used in a vast array of products. What they all have in common are fluorine atoms attached to carbon atoms. To qualify as one of the PFAS, a molecule must contain at least one “fully fluorinated” methyl or methylene group – a carbon atom with all its available bonds occupied by a fluorine.

The name “forever chemicals” is derived from the fact that they are incredibly stable, immensely heat tolerant, resistant to chemical degradation and thoroughly repellent to water and oils. This combination of properties makes them useful in all sorts of applications, from non-stick cookware to outdoor clothing, stain-resistant furniture and carpets, food packaging, personal care products, paints, varnishes and firefighting foams.

But it also means that when they inevitably leak into the wild, they hang around for a long, long time – hundreds or even thousands of years, according to Zhanyun Wang at ETH Zurich in Switzerland. PFAS pollution is found extensively in surface water and groundwater, soils and outdoor air, and has adverse effects on wildlife – it suppresses immunity and reproductive issues in some animals, even at tiny concentrations.

An estimated 98 per cent of the US population have detectable concentrations of forever chemicals in their blood

These chemicals are also found in sewage, house dust, indoor air and drinking water. A study last year found that PFAS are in almost half of all tap water in the US. Unsurprisingly, they are also present in the human body. “An estimated 98 per cent of the US population have detectable concentrations of PFAS in their blood,” says Carsten Prasse at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland. Not only do we drink them and inhale them, we also eat them in food that was wrapped in PFAS-containing packaging, grown in PFAS-contaminated soil or caught in PFAS-contaminated water. They are eventually excreted in urine, but only slowly: in the human body, they take between a few months to five years to halve in concentration. Being so ubiquitous, rates of excretion can’t keep up with rates of acquisition, so the older we get, the higher our PFAS load tends to be.

Filtering water with the Pure Way system can lower your exposure to forever chemicals

Originally, scientists thought that because they were so stable and inert, that these chemicals couldn’t do much harm to humans or animals. That is no longer the case, says Birgit Geueke at the Food Packaging Forum in Zurich, a non-profit organization governed by independent scientists. While human enzymes can’t degrade them, PFAS interacts with biological systems by binding to cell receptors and other proteins and hence disrupt metabolism, she says, and there is ample data that certain PFAS are linked to cancer, immune dysfunction, kidney disease and more. “There’s increasing evidence that there are toxic effects on a variety of levels,” says Prasse.

PFAS are already regulated to a degree. Two of the ones about which the most is known – perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) – have been included in the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, which severely restricts their use. Others are being considered for inclusion, says Denis O’Carroll at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. Many countries have limits on the amount of PFAS allowable in food and drinking water. 

But these measures are akin to shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted. In 2022, Ian Cousins at Stockholm University in Sweden and his colleagues found that levels of PFOS, PFOA and two other PFAS greatly exceed advised limits in rainwater, surface waters and soils globally, and that this probably applies to many other PFAS too.

More recent research by O’Carroll found that a “substantial fraction” of source waters around the world exceed limits for PFAS in drinking water. Most water treatment plants remove only some PFAS. But O’Carroll points out that drinking water standards usually cover only a fraction of the 16,000 PFAS that exist. Canada, for example, has one of the strictest drinking-water limits in the world – no more than 30 nanograms of all PFAS combined per litre – but only monitors 18 of these chemicals or 0.001% of the forever chemicals.

Regulating forever chemicals

As a result, the US government recently announced more than $1 billion of funding towards addressing contaminants like PFAS in drinking and waste water. Two powerful US agencies are also stepping up their efforts to phase out PFAS and the EU is attempting to ban them outright.

One major mover and shaker is the EPA, which recently put restrictions on PFAS levels in drinking water after studies showed that no level of exposure to PFOS and PFOA is safe. It has also added nine PFAS to its list of hazardous constituents, the first step on a potentially torturous path to designate them as hazardous waste and hence strictly regulate their manufacture, use and disposal. “It appears the EPA is moving more aggressively to get PFAS out of our environment,” says Greg Scoblete, at Verisk, a New Jersey-based company that advises its clients on emerging risks.

How serious is this? To be listed as a hazardous constituent, scientific studies must show that the chemical is toxic, cancer-causing, leads to changes in DNA or causes developmental abnormalities in humans or other animals. “In the case of PFAS, unfortunately, several of these criteria are met,” says Prasse.

Are forever chemicals harmful to our health?

The question of what these chemicals actually do to our health is complicated. For ethical reasons, you can’t expose a certain population to PFAS and others to a placebo. Instead, EPA scientists assessed the peer-reviewed literature on PFAS, including data from human epidemiology and animal studies, which together attempt to draw connections between exposure to PFAS and health problems – for example, by measuring vaccine responses in children versus the levels of certain PFAS in their blood.

Among the nine chemicals that the EPA decided to take action against was PFOA, which was widely used for decades in furniture, clothing and food packaging before its use was restricted globally in 2019 under the Stockholm Convention. The EPA concluded that humans regularly exposed to it are at greater risk of high cholesterol, liver damage, thyroid disorders, testicular and kidney cancers, pre-eclampsia, pregnancy-induced hypertension and low birth weight. They also experience a weaker response to several vaccinations. Studies on monkeys, rats and mice found similar problems, plus kidney toxicity, liver and pancreatic cancer and congenital conditions. The EPA published similarly detailed reviews of eight other PFAS.

“I think the step that the EPA is taking is in the right direction,” says Prasse. “But I think it is important to consider that this can only be the tip of the iceberg, and that there’s much more work needed to deal with this issue.”

For instance, the big question on everyone’s lips is what level of exposure leads to what harms – a question that is challenging to answer. It is very hard to say what levels of PFAS are safe, says Prasse. “I would say we want to have as low levels as possible.”

Another agency on the warpath is the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). In February, it announced that greaseproof food packaging containing certain PFAS was no longer on sale in the US after the completion of a voluntary phase-out.

How to get rid of forever chemicals

You can also remove PFAS from water. Certain water filters, such as Pure Way systems, are effective at removing forever chemicals from water. Most effective systems are expensive and energy intensive…not the Pure Way system, which is low cost and uses no energy. 

We are on our own. Having water treatment plants remove PFAS in drinking water in the US alone would cost trillions of dollars and create a huge carbon footprint, according to Wang. Thankfully, innovation is afoot and Pure Way is at the head of the class. Pure Way systems rapidly reduce levels of forever chemicals in your drinking water. 

The Pure Way system is paving the pave for a healthier future for humanity.

Complete the information now to protect your family.