The current risk assessment based regulatory system is largely dependent on understanding the sources of exposure to a chemical, or class of chemicals, and making reasonable estimates of exposure to an average individual based on those estimates. In Nature Geoscience published on April 8, 2024, Diana Ackerman Grunfeld of the University of New South Wales and co-authors collated studies of concentrations of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in a variety of consumer products and product groups, including packaging, to find the range of PFAS measured and overall concentrations.
They compared their concentrations to the US Environmental Protection Agency’s draft method (1633) for measuring PFAS in aqueous samples and found the EPA’s protocol missed much of the PFAS measured in these other studies. “If only the PFAS listed in draft method 1633 were used to quantify PFAS in consumer products within this dataset, the total embodied PFAS would be substantially underestimated.” They conclude, “[t]his suggests that traditional EPA-based methods do not adequately capture PFAS embodied in consumer products and their potential environmental burden.”
The EPA also recently set federal limits for PFAS in drinking water. While water infrastructure could theoretically be a source, PFAS contamination of drinking water is often attributed to environmental pollution of the groundwater, generally from industry or historical use of PFAS-containing firefighting foams. In another part of the study of PFAS exposure, Ackerman Grunfeld et al. gathered available evidence on the global distribution of PFAS in surface and groundwater. They found that “a large fraction of surface and groundwaters globally exceed PFAS international advisories and regulations and that future PFAS environmental burden is likely underestimated.”
References
Ackerman Grunfeld, D. et al. (2024). “Underestimated burden of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances in global surface waters and groundwaters.” Nature Geoscience. DOI: 10.1038/s41561-024-01402-8
EPA. (2024). “Biden-Harris Administration Finalizes First-Ever National Drinking Water Standard to Protect 100M People from PFAS Pollution.”
Other recent PFAS publication(s)
Klingelhöfer, D., et al. (2024). “The “forever” per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS): A critical accounting of global research on a major threat under changing regulations.” Chemosphere. DOI: 10.1016/j.chemosphere.2024.141694
