Read the full article by Benji Jones (Vox)
“Right now, you likely have something unnatural lurking inside your body. It was made by a large corporation and could potentially harm you.
That something is called PFAS…
…To understand what these chemicals really are and how they might affect our bodies, I chatted with Sunderland, an expert on the topic, last summer. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Explain it like I’m 5: What are PFAS?
Benji Jones
How would you explain PFAS to a 5-year-old?
Elsie M. Sunderland
They are chemicals that we add to everyday products, such as our rugs, our fast-food packaging, and our cosmetics. Those chemicals repel oil and fat, and they are very profitable. And it turns out that when humans ingest them — either through their diet or water — they can cause some bad health effects.
Benji Jones
How would you explain them to a college student?
Elsie M. Sunderland
The chemical structure of PFAS is one thing that differentiates them from other chemicals.
An organic molecule has bonds of carbon and hydrogen atoms. To make PFAS molecules, you replace the hydrogen with fluorine. So PFAS are molecules that have chains of fluorine-carbon bonds, and it’s incredibly difficult to break these bonds.
Benji Jones
Why are they called ‘forever chemicals’?
Elsie M. Sunderland
They are among the most persistent chemicals we’ve ever created. It takes a huge amount of energy to break down that carbon-fluorine bond.
[The term ‘forever chemicals’ is also a play on words: The ‘f’ in ‘forever’ comes from ‘fluorine’ and the ‘c’ in ‘chemicals’ comes from ‘carbon.’ The Harvard researcher Joe Allen coined the term ‘forever chemicals’ in a 2018 op-ed in the Washington Post.]
PFAS are absolutely everywhere — in fast-food wrappers, water, and even the air
Benji Jones
Where do PFAS come from?
Elsie M. Sunderland
The companies 3M, DuPont, and Chemours. Chemical companies make PFAS and sell them to other companies that use them in an incredibly diverse array of products. They’re really in everything: furniture, rugs, textiles, outdoor gear, paper packaging, food packaging.
They’re mainly used as surfactants — they repel oil and water. So when you have a spill on your furniture, and want to keep it clean, then PFAS are often added.
[DuPont has had a complicated history of mergers, acquisitions, and divestments, including spinning off its chemicals business in 2015 into what’s now known as the Chemours Company. In a statement to Vox, DuPont spokesperson Daniel Turner said, ‘the company has established a set of commitments to take responsible action related to PFAS.’ You can read DuPont’s full statement regarding PFAS here.]
[3M spokesperson Sean Lynch told Vox that PFAS are important materials that can be used and manufactured safely. ‘3M is taking proactive steps to reduce our reliance on persistent materials through innovation.’ You can read 3M’s full statement here.]
[Cassie Olszewski, a spokesperson at Chemours, said ‘the world depends on our products, and we are committed to manufacturing these essential chemistries responsibly.’ Here’s the company’s full statement.]
Benji Jones
How do these chemicals contaminate the environment?
Elsie M. Sunderland
A major source of community contamination across the US has been a product called aqueous film-forming foam, or AFFF, which suppresses oil-based fires. The military actually requires AFFF at bases and they’ve used it for decades during training exercises [to put out purposefully set fires]. It’s 8-10 percent PFAS by weight, which is incredibly high. So you just need a tiny quantity of that to contaminate drinking water.
If you’re trying to save a life during a fire, maybe you’d want to have AFFF, if you don’t have an effective alternative. The problem is that the military has used huge quantities of it for training. It contaminated the groundwater in all of these communities next to military bases. There are more than 600 known sites like this across the country.
[In a statement to Vox, the Department of Defense acknowledged that PFAS are a national problem and said it’s committed to protecting human health. ‘The Department prioritizes resources and addresses sites where risk to human health is the highest,’ Defense officials said. Peter Hughes, a spokesperson for the department, also shared a memo from April 2022 that details a new policy that restricts the use of AFFF for training. You can read the complete statement here and the new AFFF policy here.]
Benji Jones
What consumer products expose us to PFAS?
Elsie M. Sunderland
One of my undergrads did a day in the life of a Harvard student and tested things around campus. She found PFAS in her Doc Martens, in the carpet, in the furniture’s upholstery, in shower curtains. It’s also in cosmetics like lotions and mascaras. Eye drops actually have it.
And if you’re into outdoor activities there are a ton of them. They’re in ski waxes and bike chain oils and outdoor clothing…
Benji Jones
…Are they in the air, too?
Elsie M. Sunderland
It is in the air. There’s a plastic manufacturer in New Hampshire, for example, that has volatile emissions. You can see it in the soils surrounding the plant. Factories like these don’t emit the PFAS that people are concerned about — chemicals like PFOS or PFOA — but they emit compounds that degrade into them.
It’s also important to consider the indoor environment, because it’s on furniture and other things. Inhalation is actually another way it can enter your body.
What PFAS do to your body, at different levels of exposure
Benji Jones
Should we be worried about our exposure?
Elsie M. Sunderland
The people who should be most worried are those who are inadvertently exposed to those really contaminated sites. They have more severe problems — things like cancer. There’s been some sort of statistical association between PFAS and every major organ system in the body, which is not comforting. You name the disease and you can find an association.
In children, PFAS exposure has been associated with a decline in antibody production in response to routine vaccination. That’s an indicator of whole immune health. There are a bunch of studies showing increase in severity of Covid-19 with higher levels of exposure to certain PFAS. It’s also been linked to diabetes and the ability to lose weight.
Another really sad impact is related to breastfeeding. PFAS can interfere with fat metabolism. Anecdotally, there are a lot of reports of women who aren’t able to continue breastfeeding their children because they lack the [breast milk] supply.
Benji Jones
How do PFAS impact our body at lower levels of exposure, which an average American might experience?
Elsie M. Sunderland
Exposure to PFAS may do nothing or it may do something. The question is how meaningful is that risk relative to all the other risks you undertake. It’s not going to kill you immediately. And there’s a lot of evidence showing that some people are more sensitive to exposures to environmental chemicals than others.
A new advisory for drinking water from the EPA essentially says that any level of exposure to these chemicals is going to cause some health impacts. I agree with that.
Benji Jones
Why are these chemicals, specifically, so harmful to us?
Elsie M. Sunderland
Their half-lives [i.e., how long they take to decompose] are very long, so they accumulate in your body. They look like phospholipids [a kind of fatty acid], so they’re mimicking some other bodily function. Typically, when a chemical is harmful it’s because your body thinks it’s something else and it triggers some kind of response.
When you create synthetic organic chemicals that look like something else that the body uses naturally, you often run into problems. Some PFAS can also cross the blood-brain barrier, and some of them cross the placental barrier.
Benji Jones
Are all PFAS created equal?
Elsie M. Sunderland
Chemically, different PFAS molecules look quite different from each other. If you’re talking about something like lead, you’re talking about one compound; it looks one way and has a series of effects in the body. The problem with PFAS, in part, is that there are thousands of chemical structures. If you prove one is bad, we have all of these other ones.
Everybody calls PFAS the chemical wack-a-mole. You get rid of one of them and the industry just uses another one. Then, it takes a decade to figure out that this other PFAS chemical is just as bad, and then the industry uses yet another one.”…