Reacción a "Reactions: Study warns of PFAS contamination in global water systems"

In this study, O'Carroll et al. investigate the global extent and distribution of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) contamination in surface and groundwater. PFASs, known as 'everlasting chemicals' due to their persistence in the environment, are a class of several thousand chemicals widely used in industrial applications and consumer products due to their various properties as water, oil, stain, etc. repellents and their high physicochemical stability. The study, supported by robust and proven methods, is based on an extensive global environmental dataset, including information from more than 12,000 surface water and 33,900 groundwater samples. PFAS concentrations in these samples are assessed against current PFAS regulations or guideline values for drinking water.

The study shows that current PFAS monitoring programmes may be underestimating PFAS contamination in the environment due to the limited number of PFASs that are commonly analysed in monitoring programmes. Therefore, the actual contamination in global water resources may be higher than currently documented. Overall, this study provides an important wake-up call that a large fraction of surface and groundwater globally exceeds international PFAS advisories and regulations and is likely to underestimate the future environmental burden of these perennial chemicals. Much additional work is therefore needed to develop more powerful analytical techniques to quantify the large spectrum of PFASs in environmental matrices, to develop a more systematic sampling regime for water sources globally, and to quantify the human and ecological impacts of the wide range of PFASs in the environment.

While PFASs are the focus of this study, the work also highlights the need to better understand the use, fate and impacts of anthropogenic chemical compounds because of the major implications this can have for human health and planet Earth.