Researchers from Northwestern, UCLA, and several foreign universities published a research article titled “Low-temperature mineralization of perfluorocarboxylic acids” in the preeminent journal Science, where the authors report a promising advancement towards developing methods to degrade and remove PFCAs (a subset of PFAS chemicals). The authors note that current methods to remove PFAS have significant downsides, such as reliance on using harsh conditions (incineration, ultrasonication, etc.). The researchers, however, elucidated a mechanism that alleviates many prior limitations: “[i]n contrast to other proposed PFAS degradation strategies, the conditions described here . . . operate under relatively mild conditions with inexpensive reagents.” The authors predict that their findings can be leveraged to develop new PFCA degradation processes and may expand other PFAS chemicals beyond PFCAs.
