Understanding the path to degradation, according to Dichtel, is important to the future development of “actual practical methods to remove these pollutants” from contaminated water.ĭichtel said he could envision this type of technique being integrated in the future with technologies that extract PFAS from water, such as reverse osmosis. Scientists have already found connections between PFAS exposure and a long list of illnesses, including testicular cancer, thyroid disease and kidney cancer.ĭichtel and first co-author Brittany Trang, who recently completed her PhD in his laboratory, worked alongside Ken Houk, an organic chemistry professor at the University of California, Los Angeles and Yuli Li, a student at China’s Tianjin University, who employed powerful computational methods to simulate PFAS degradation.
“Even just a tiny, tiny amount of PFAS causes negative health effects, and it does not break down.” “PFAS has become a major societal problem,” lead author William Dichtel, a professor of chemistry at Northwestern, said in a statement. They published their findings - which they acknowledged as a “seemingly impossible” but potentially “powerful solution” - in Science on Thursday afternoon. There are thousands of types of PFAS, none of which are naturally occurring and many of which can take decades to degrade.īut a group of chemists at Northwestern say they have developed a simple method that employs low temperatures and inexpensive reagents to break down two major classes of PFAS, while leaving behind only harmless byproducts. These chemicals, called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), earned the “forever” qualifier due to their propensity to linger in the human body and the environment. ( The Hill) – Scientists at Northwestern University say they have devised a method for breaking apart some of the infamously unbreakable toxins known as “forever chemicals.”
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