On New York University Week: Where are PFAS chemicals in our wastewater facilities coming from?
Bridger Ruyle, assistant professor of civil, urban and environmental engineering, says the answer may be surprising.
Faculty Bio:
Bridger Ruyle is an Assistant Professor of environmental engineering in the Civil, Urban and Environmental Engineering Department at New York University Tandon School of Engineering.
His research explores how human activity, the biosphere, and climate change affect water quality. Specifically, research foci in the Ruyle lab include developing analytical tools to quantify chemical contamination in environmental media and associated uncertainty, understanding biogeochemistry and impacts of fluorinated chemicals including per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS, i.e. forever chemicals) and pharmaceuticals, and integrating in-situ and remote sensing data to assess climate impacts on water quality.
Transcript:
When you pee or flush medications down the drain, you probably assume wastewater treatment plants remove chemicals before the water flows back into the environment. Our study analyzing eight large treatment facilities nationwide revealed something unexpected.
We’ve been focused on PFAS, also known as “forever chemicals”, a class of toxic chemicals usually associated with firefighting foams and non-stick pans. But when we measured PFAS at these wastewater facilities, we found that common prescription drugs account for the vast majority.
Here’s why this is concerning. Many pharmaceuticals contain fluorine and meet the chemical definition of PFAS. The fluorine additions stabilize the drugs in your body and help improve their effectiveness as medicines. But that same stability means they are hard to break down during wastewater treatment or in the environment. We found that even the most advanced treatment systems remove less than twenty-five percent before discharging water back into rivers and streams.
We used a national model to track how wastewater moves through our waterways and reaches downstream drinking water supplies. During average river conditions, we estimate that about fifteen million Americans receive drinking water containing hazardous levels of PFASdue to wastewater discharges alone. During droughts, when there’s less natural baseflow to dilute the wastewater, that number climbs to twenty-three million people. However, current EPA regulations for drinking water cover only eight percent of the PFAS we detected.
These pharmaceuticals are designed to be biologically active at very low doses. What we don’t yet understand is what it means when people who aren’t prescribed these medications are unknowingly exposed to them through their drinking water over years or decades.
Read More:
[NYU Tandon School of Engineering] - “Forever chemicals” in wastewater far more widespread than previously known, new multi-university study reveals
[NY Times] - ‘Forever Chemicals’ Reach Tap Water via Treated Sewage, Study Finds
