Read the full article by Lisa Sorg (Inside Climate News)
“The shipment arrived by FedEx, packed in dry ice. Inside were 119 plastic vials, each containing three drops of blood that had been stored at minus 112 degrees Fahrenheit for as long as a decade.
Jane Hoppin, an environmental epidemiologist at N.C. State University had ordered the blood. From 2010 to 2016, Wilmington residents had donated their serum to a biobank run by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to help scientists better understand how the body works. Now Hoppin wanted to learn if high concentrations of PFAS in the city’s drinking water were also present in the donors’ blood.
However, Hoppin and her fellow scientists didn’t anticipate finding one type of PFAS compound: TFA. The chemical industry has touted its toxicity as being ‘of lower concern,’ because it breaks down quickly in the body.” …