5/22/2025
WT Staff
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WT reached out to Kyla Bennett, Director of Science at PEER, the non-profit government employee whistleblower support group for comment on the in-home separation and concentration of forever chemicals .
Destruction technology is important, but it's not the answer. The answer is to stop putting this stuff into the environment. Full stop.
According to Bennett, reducing PFAS in our drinking water is absolutely a positive move, no question about it. The separation technology has been available for some time, we can filter PFAS from water at the household scale or at the municipal treatment plant scale. Reduction of PFAS in is a positive step, even if special care is required for disposal of the filters.
Safe handling of the filters is important. Householders can use gloves to change the filter, isolating the contaminated filter from the regular household waste. The used filter can be sealed in a bag and stored securely until it can be transferred to the local municipality's hazardous waste depot. Anyone with PFAS separation and concentration technology (filters) has a responsibility to ensure PFAS do not find the way back to the environment. Inquire with your local The municipality for the hazardous waste disposal protocol, whether that be an on-demand service or an annual hazardous waste collection day.
Slaying the PFAS dragon - Destruction Tech
According to Bennett, "There have been some small successes, at the bench level, as we call it in the lab, in a test tube, it can be done." To scale that destruction technology to handle PFAS at the public drinking water facilities is another matter. "Destruction technology is definitely of interest and something that should continue to be looked at. The energy costs are extremely high, typically." Bennett adds, "We also don't know a lot about these technologies. It turns out that they may be making smaller, short chain PFAS". Short chain PFAS such as Gen-X were intended to replace the highly toxic legacy PFOS. We are learning that these shorter chain fluorine-carbon molecules are not necessarily an improvement, and may in fact be more readily absorbed to bio-accumulate.
"I have not yet seen a technology that's cost-effective... that is not so energy-intensive that we're going to be contributing even more to climate change. We don't want these ultra short chain PFAS coming out either. I have yet to see (destruction technology at industrial scale) and I would be surprised if we saw it in the next decade or so," says Bennett.
"If we stopped emitting PFAS tomorrow, we are still going to have it in our groundwater, our drinking water, our soil, our food, our air. It's going to slowly start coming down over decades and hundreds of years, but that is why we have to stop manufacturing."
From the original article published March 24, 2025:
Dec 11, 2023 Seoul, South Korea – NSF, the leading testing and certification organization in the water industry, announced today that Microfilter, a South Korean water filter manufacturer, has earned certification to NSF/ANSI 53 for its FP-10, FP-10S, FP-15, FP-15S, FP-17, FP-17S, FP-21 and FP-21S products. With this certification, Microfilter becomes NSF’s first client in the world to receive this certification for total PFAS reduction.
Dozens of filters have since been added to the list certified by NSF for PFAS reduction in drinking water, prompting WT to inquire about the disposition of the used filters.
When toxins are separated from bulk water, whether it be drinking water on the way to your tap or glass, or wastewater effluent returning to the environment, the clean water stream has certainly been improved. On the other hand, a highly toxic waste stream, now reduced in volume, is concentrated and contained within the water filter media. The forever chemical hazard jumps to an elevated threat level.
The Hazardous Materials Transportation Act regulates over 800 substances, all require licensed handlers, all subject to federal and state laws protecting public health, water and the environment. With the advancement of home water filtration systems to remove PFAS, the dangerous fluorine-carbon bonds may end up back in the environment, where they continue to move through the hydrologic cycle, re-combining and returning to drinking water sources.
See our prior article on PFAS, Georgia State University Griffin Professor Huang on PFAS destruction technology, here.
The Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA)protects public health through the administration and delivery of quality drinking water supplies across the USA. The US EPA establishes standards for drinking water, monitors and enforces treatment techniques for surface water and groundwater, sets maximum limits for around 100 contaminants ensuring public disclosure of deviations and discrepancies.
WaterToday opens the record books of the federal drinking water regulator to bring awareness to the local raw water supply and the compliance record of licensed water treatment facilities. The New York Department of Health inspects 8,139 licensed and active public drinking water facilities, reporting the results to the EPA. Check back here for drinking water news and alerts as they arise in NYS.
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