Major PFAS treatment and destruction using the conventional water and wastewater treatment processes has not been highly effective and requires novel treatment technologies. My research group focuses on the sustainable design, scalable synthesis, and innovative application of novel and multifunctional nanomaterials and nano-systems for water quality engineering while keeping their potential public health impacts to a minimum. I will present my group’s research efforts on the PFAS treatment through the rational and safer-design of catalytic nanomaterials. I will also discuss how we can leverage advanced manufacturing and membrane processes to design sustainable and scalable technologies for PFAS treatment.

According to the US EPA, the universe of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) likely to be found in the environment is 15,525 with the great majority of them lacking (eco)toxicity data. Therefore, there is a need for new approach methodologies (NAMS) to enable rapid prediction of ecotoxicity for unstudied PFAS. NAMS have advanced the field of toxicology, but they are not always linked to ecologically relevant endpoints and have not often been validated under field conditions, limiting confidence in real-world applicability of NAMs-derived data. A lack of ecotoxicity data for many untested PFAS introduces significant uncertainty in hazard assessments, and ecological risk assessors need cheap and fast ways to predict PFAS toxicity. PFAS are highly proteinophilic and known to bind to structural and circulating proteins. Importantly, studies report a high correspondence between protein PFAS binding affinity/energy and toxicity supporting the use of this parameter to screen understudied PFAS for bioactivity. In this presentation, I will discuss our research and that of others on the use of NAMS for screening and evaluating the toxicity potential of PFAS, with an emphasis on approaches that assess their protein binding affinity including computational approaches (quantitative structure-activity relationship models and protein docking), fluorescence spectrometry and equilibrium dialysis. I will also summarize our research on the effects of PFAS on amphibians using a combination of tools including NAMS and mesocosm studies.

This talk will review the known human health effects of PFAS exposure. It will also review the common everyday exposures to this substance, as well as blood testing for PFAS levels.