Why use them if they don't really work?
Tatum McConnell for the Environmental Health News
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PFAS, also known as "forever chemicals," are a family of chemicals added to fabrics, non-stick cookware, food packaging and other consumer goods for their purported ability to repel water and oil. They contain a strong chemical bond that makes them difficult to break down.
This persistence has made PFAS, short for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, a widespread environmental pollutant found in drinking water, the blood of about 97% of Americans and even wild polar bears.
PFAS
are endocrine-disrupting chemicals, meaning they can impact the body’s
hormones, and elevated levels of some PFAS have been linked to health concerns
including kidney and testicular cancer, high cholesterol levels, low birth
weights and decreased vaccine effectiveness in children, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“PFAS have been detected in the dust of homes,” Jaime DeWitt, a professor of pharmacology and toxicology at East Carolina University who is unaffiliated with the study, told Environmental Health News (EHN). When textiles with PFAS coatings, including furniture, wear down they can release the toxics and increase exposure, she said.
In the new study, published in the AATCC Journal of Research, scientists put
PFAS fabric treatments to the test after hearing from textile manufacturers
that the coatings might not be effective, Carol Kwiatkowski, an author on the
study and science and policy senior associate at the Green Science Policy
Institute, told EHN.
Coffee stains were easily cleaned from both
PFAS-treated and untreated fabrics under varying levels of pressure, sit-times
and fabric wear, meaning the PFAS coating provided no benefit. For fabrics with
abrasion representing normal wear and tear, balsamic vinegar stains also
impacted PFAS-treated and untreated fabrics equally.
The one scenario where PFAS-treatments
outperformed untreated fabric was a balsamic vinegar stain under ideal
conditions: no abrasion to the fabric, no pressure and a short sit-time. “Those
are pretty unusual conditions,” Kwiatkowski pointed out.
“What really stood out is that the PFAS
don’t provide that protection in the long term,” DeWitt said.
The most important variable for stain
resistance was the type of fabric, Kwiatkowski explained. “That’s a cost
effective approach. We don’t have to look for some new replacement for the
PFAS,” she said. Not using PFAS treatments and picking furniture with fabrics
that naturally repel stains can be more impactful, the study shows.
Cutting PFAS exposure
The Environmental Protection Agency recently announced standards for six types of PFAS in drinking water that are “very low,” said Kwiatkowski. She explained that manufacturing of PFAS and products that contain the toxic chemicals is a major source of drinking water contamination.
Water treatment
facilities will soon need to upgrade equipment to filter PFAS and find a way to
dispose of it once collected. Meanwhile, workers and communities around
manufacturing sites where PFAS are used face elevated levels of exposure that
could lead to poor health outcomes, DeWitt said.
“We’re spending all this time to clean up,
but we’re still adding more and more PFAS that are ending up in the water,”
Kwiatkowski said. “Why not stop it on the front end?”
It’s important to think about what uses of
PFAS are essential versus which are avoidable, DeWitt echoed. “This [study]
doesn’t tell us about every PFAS coated fabric that’s out there,” she said,
“but it does suggest that the qualities that PFAS confer aren’t really all that
necessary, and in fact, don’t outperform untreated fabrics.”
Tatum McConnell is a reporting fellow at
EHN.org. Follow her on Twitter at @tatum_mcconnell.
Related: What are PFAS?