What are PFAS and why are they called forever chemicals?
You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. A hundred years ago, we didn't have nonstick pans. We didn't have Teflon. We didn't have Gore-Tex to make clothes waterproof. Until scientists discovered a special family of chemicals, PFAS, chemicals that repelled stains and dirt and water and oil that at first seemed like a miracle.
So PFAS stands for per and polyfluoroalkyl substances. There are, at last count, over 10,000 different individual types of PFAS. They started to become widespread in industrial use sometime, I think, in the 1940s.
That's Melissa Furlong. She's an assistant professor of environmental health sciences at the University of Arizona. She's also an environmental epidemiologist. And because PFAS chemicals have all of these useful properties, she says we put them in a lot of different things.
Applications that basically need to repel both oil and water. So like if you've got some stain-resistant furniture or stain-resistant carpet, there's a good chance it was treated with PFAS.
You might find them on your cooking pans, raincoats, some pesticides, maybe in your makeup.
And in you. If you are cooking with a nonstick Teflon pan, right, it's not like all of it is sticking to the pan. Some of the PFAS is coming off onto the food, and then you're exposed that way. If the PFAS has been applied to your carpet or if it's been applied to your furniture, then all of that sort of sheds into your environment.
And once they get into our bodies, they're hard to get rid of.
Instead of being excreted like normal environmental toxicants would be, they just get recirculated by the body.
Because these chemicals don't break down easily in the environment or in the human body, PFAS are known as forever chemicals.
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