Many substances harmful to human health are finding their way into our drinking water.
These include the so-called ‘forever chemicals,’ per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). A group of fluorinated chemical compounds, they are resistant to degradation, bioaccumulate in tissues, and are highly mobile in the environment.
Widely used as non-stick coatings, stain repellents and surfactants, among other industrial applications, PFAS have become a major environmental and health concern over the last 10 to 20 years.
PFAS can now be detected almost anywhere using the right analytical equipment. This has raised concerns about the health effects of current exposure levels.
Multiple exposures
Our exposure to PFAS comes from drinking water, air, food and, to a lesser extent, absorption through skin. Although it is difficult to reduce exposure by the airborne route, more frequent cleaning of the house can help to minimize the inhalation of dust containing PFAS. However, this route of exposure requires further research.
Significant levels of PFAS can also be found in food and food packaging. As long as regulation in this area remains limited, it will be particularly difficult to try to reduce our exposure to PFAS by changing our eating habits, unless it becomes clear what food is less contaminated or if a large portion of the products available in the grocery shop are contaminated.
Drinking water remains the easiest source of PFAS to treat when we seek to reduce our overall exposure to these substances. Termeh Teymoorian, a doctoral student in chemistry at the Université de Montréal, is working on PFAS in water. She is co-supervised in her doctoral thesis by Sébastien Sauvé, a professor in environmental chemistry at the Université de Montréal and a specialist in emerging contaminants, and Benoit Barbeau, a professor at Polytechnique Montréal and co-holder of the Industrial Chair in Drinking Water.
We recently published an article in Frontiers in Environmental Chemistry in which we evaluate the effectiveness of domestic water filters in eliminating PFAS.
Drinking water treatment
The most effective way to treat drinking water is to modernize treatment plants to eliminate PFAS, thereby guaranteeing safe drinking water for everyone, whatever their socio-economic status. This modernization effort is all the more essential given that conventional water treatment is often ineffective in eliminating these substances. However, specific treatments for PFAS can be costly and time consuming to implement.
Consuming bottled water, while an easy solution, is not necessarily affordable for everyone. When compared to tap water, bottled water also has a significant ecological footprint, particularly due to the transport and disposal of containers.
Boiling water is not an effective way to destroy PFAS. In some situations, bringing water to a boil does reduce PFAS concentrations in the water very slightly, but it transfers some of their volatile components into the air, so the problem is displaced rather than solved.
