Title:

Quantifying the PFAS Cycle

PFAS (Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances) are an emerging class of contaminants that are of increasing concern for many communities in the United States. PFAS are considered environmentally persistent and are therefore able to cycle through the environment as a result of their ability to remain undegraded. The goal of this project was to quantify the mass flows and storage values for these contaminants as they moved through the different sectors of the PFAS cycle (such as through soil storage to ground water) to identify where PFAS contaminants were most prevalent in the environment. The most commonly found PFAS in the environment are PFOA (Perfluorooctanoic acid) and PFOS (Perfluorooctanesulfonic acid) and were chosen to focus research on. Concentration and flow values was collected from already existing test results and field work, and then scaled up to represent our geographical boundary of the United States. These values were then used to calculate mass flow values between sectors of the cycle, and then were utilized in a modeling software to calculate storage values over time. The results of these calculations showed that some sectors of the cycle, such as wastewater effluent to surface waters and wastewater treatment plant sludge to landfills, had some of the highest mass flows and therefore were most relevant in the cycle. However, because of the preliminary nature of the research and the uncertainties in scaling the existing available data to a nationwide scale, it is difficult to make concrete conclusions on where PFAS is moving in the greatest quantities at this time. It is recommended that this research be continued in to finalize the results further, in order to possibly be adapted for use in future remediation strategies.

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