As the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency cracks down on insidious “forever chemical” pollution in the environment, military and commercial aviation officials are seeking ways to clean up such pollution from decades of use of fire suppressant foams at military air bases and commercial airports.
As the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency cracks down on insidious “forever chemical” pollution in the environment, military and commercial aviation officials are seeking ways to clean up such pollution from decades of use of fire suppressant foams at military air bases and commercial airports.
Fire-suppression foams contain hundreds unhealthful forever chemicals, known by chemists as PFAS or poly- and per-fluoroalkyl substances. These compounds have stubbornly strong fluorine-to-carbon bonds, which allow them to persist indefinitely in the environment, hence the moniker “forever chemicals.” Also found many other products, PFAS compounds now contaminate groundwater supplies tapped by municipal water suppliers at many locations throughout the nation.
Because they are linked to higher risks for certain cancers and other maladies, the EPA imposed a new rule last month requiring water utilities to reduce contamination if levels exceeded 4 parts per trillion for certain PFAS compounds.
Fortunately, a collaborative discovery by scientists at UC Riverside and Clarkson University in Potsdam, N.Y., provides a new strategy to clean up these pollutants.
Read more at University of California - Riverside
Image: Jinyong Liu (Credit: Stan Lim/UC Riverside)
