69% of the planet’s groundwater contains chemical contaminants

69% of the waters surface and underground surfaces of the planet is contaminated by chemical substances persistent, potentially harmful to the health and the environment, according to data from a study published this Monday in the journal Nature Geoscience.

The research refers to a group of 14,000 chemicals known as PFAS (for the English abbreviation of perfluoroalkylated and polyfluoroalkylated substances) that began to be manufactured in the world in the 1950s.

Where are they

Due to their enormous ease of resisting heat, water, grease or stains, they are present in all types of products for daily use, such as non-stick pans, clothing, cosmetics, insecticides, food packaging, or specialized industrial products, such as foam. anti-fire.

PFAS substances have been known for decades as persistent or eternal chemicals because it has been seen that once released into the environment or the human body they tend to remain forever, although until now the magnitude of their presence in the water supply was unknown.

The present study, carried out by Australian and American universities, offers the first global view of the extent of water contaminated by PFAS.

Its data comes from 273 studies carried out over the last 20 years, in which more than 12,000 surface water samples and 33,900 groundwater samples have been analyzed to collect data for government reports or scientific studies.

Researchers have seen if the levels of PFAS contamination in these samples exceeded the various national regulations, verifying that 69% of them exceeded the safety criteria for drinking water of the Canadian regulator, which is the most demanding.

For its part, a 32% of the same samples exceeded the danger index for drinking water that the United States has, which is one of the least demanding.

The results show that the extent of contamination by persistent chemicals is “has underestimated”, underlines one of the authors, the professor of environmental engineering at the water studies center at the University of Sydney (Australia) Denis O’Carroll.

Where are they concentrated?

Researchers have been struck by, among other things, the high concentrations of PFAS that have been analyzed in reservoirs in Australia, especially in areas where firefighting foams have been used in the past, such as military or fire training institutions.

Just because it is in dams does not mean it is in drinking water, because treatment plants are usually designed to reduce the amount of chemicals in water, such as PFAS, although researchers warn that ““Not all water providers routinely measure levels of these substances.”

Although little research has been done on the health impact of persistent chemicals, public health institutions in the United States and Europe have linked PFAS to problems such as lower birth weight in babies, higher cholesterol levels , reduced kidney function, thyroid diseases, reduced response to vaccines and cancers of the liver, kidney and testicles.

The World Health Organization (WHO) declared PFOA, a type of PFAS, a category one human carcinogen in 2023.

Precautions

O’Carroll maintains that both manufacturers and consumers should be careful when using products containing PFAS: “We manufacture and distribute many chemicals without having a complete evaluation of their possible health effects,” it states.

“We should make judicious use of some of these chemicals. Just because they are available, doesn’t mean we should use them,” he adds in a statement from the University of Sydney.

The researcher and his team are working to develop technologies that can degrade PFAS in drinking water systems, and studying the development of predictive models that determine where PFAS end up in the environment.

“This study raises an important wake-up call that a large fraction of global surface and groundwater exceeds international PFAS advisories and regulations, and the future environmental burden of these perennial chemicals is likely underestimated.”“says Begoña Jiménez, researcher at the Institute of General Organic Chemistry (IQOG-CSIC) in a reaction on the SMC.EFE platform.

It may interest you