This blog entry highlights the research done at Texas A&M University for a bio-remediation technology for cleaning up per-fluoroalkyl and poly-fluroalkyl substances or PFAS. PFAS are used in food-wrappers and packaging, dental floss, fire-fighting foam, textiles and electronics. PFAS can cause health issues like reproductive effects in pregnant women, development effects or delays in children, some kinds of cancers, lower abilities of the body’s immune system , interfere with the body’s hormones, etc.
The current method of disposal is to burn them, but this is an expensive multi-step process. Active carbon is used to adsorb the PFAS compounds and then the absorbed material is sent for incineration. Dr Susie Dai, Associate Professor of the Texas A&M Department of Plant Pathology and Dr Joshua Yuan Professor at Washington University, St Louis (formerly of Texas A&M University) developed a technology of using plant-based material to adsorb the PFAS and dispose them off with microbial fungi that eat the forever chemicals – PFAS.
Further research has been done by Dr. Dai’s group to develop a technique for removing extremely small and potentially dangerous plastic particles from water.
Interested readers may go through the web articles at –
The Indian context can be reviewed at
https://www.drishtiias.com/daily-news-analysis/sujalam-2-0-grey-water-recycling-project
Another interesting article on PFAS
https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2024/12/pfas-found-firefighter-gloves-hoods-and-wildland-gear
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