For decades, scientists knew there was a huge swath of undetected and unaccounted for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in the atmosphere, often referred to as PFAS dark matter, but no one knew how much was missing or how to measure them.
For decades, scientists knew there was a huge swath of undetected and unaccounted for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances in the atmosphere, often referred to as PFAS dark matter, but no one knew how much was missing or how to measure them. Now, an atmospheric chemistry research team has devised a way to test for one of the most ubiquitous elements of these potent greenhouse gases.
"I expected missing fluorine, but I didn't expect it to be so much. This new technique can measure all fluorinated things in the atmosphere, which has never been done before and shows the majority cannot be accounted for using our usual measurements," says senior author of the study Professor Cora Young, an atmospheric chemist and Guy Warwick Rogers Chair in York's Faculty of Science.
"Our lack of focus on this has been mostly because we didn't have the techniques to look at it properly. It's not that people hadn't thought that this might be important, it's that we didn't know how to do it, but now we do," says lead author RenXi Ye, a PhD student in Young's lab. "Any fluorinated gas is a potent greenhouse gas, but the impact of that depends on how long it lasts in the atmosphere, but what is the impact of breathing this? When it comes to outdoor air and human exposure, we don't know a lot about how much we breath in," she says, adding she doesn't think anyone should panic, but it is an area that needs more research and could certainly have important implications.
The study shows that most PFAAs are present in the ice at Mt. Oxford icefield on Ellesmere Island and that over 50 years, there is a steady increase of PFCA deposits, but it also highlighted how ice cores are helpful in understanding how PFAS are transported long-range.
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Our favorite PFAS-free cookware is on sale during Amazon Prime DayBrandt Ranj is a commerce reporter at Popular Science. He writes about the latest and greatest gadgets, from headphones and TVs to chargers and cables. He splits his time between New York City, Long Island, and Croatia, carting test gear around the U.S. and the globe.
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