Read the full article by Alec Luhn (New Scientist).
“Trifluoroacetic acid (TFA), a potentially toxic ‘forever chemical’, has more than tripled in the global environment in two decades due to refrigerants that are helping to close the hole in the ozone layer.
The amount of TFA falling out of the atmosphere via wind and rain has risen from 6800 tonnes per year in 2000 to 21,800 tonnes in 2022. Although that is below known safe thresholds, TFA’s effects on human health haven’t been studied in detail and its accumulation in the environment is expected to accelerate.
TFA caused eye deformities in most of the rabbit fetuses exposed to it in one trial. The European Union has classified it as harmful to aquatic life and is considering whether to deem it toxic to human reproduction.
‘It is shocking that we’re emitting large amounts of a chemical into the environment that we have a very poor understanding of its impacts, and it’s irreversible basically,’ says Lucy Hart at Lancaster University, UK, who led the new research.”…