What Do Pizza Boxes, Raincoats and Frying Pans Have in Common?

Detecting PFAS in everyday products and our environment

PFAS, per and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are a class of synthetic chemicals that you may not have heard of, but have certainly been in contact with. These chemicals have unique and useful characteristics and can be used to make products heat and stain resistant, non-stick and water repellent. They are present in a myriad of consumer products, from the pans we use to cook our food, to our raincoats and even some dental floss. Unfortunately, they are very stable compounds that accumulate and persist in our environment and have been linked to a number of health risks. Eurofins companies have been at the forefront of developing methods to test for these compounds.

PFAS comprise a group of thousands of synthetic chemicals that have been in commercial production since the 1940s. They can be found in everyday products like non-stick cookware, cosmetics, fire retardants, stain and water repellents, some furniture, waterproof clothes, pizza boxes, food packaging, carpets and textiles, firefighting foam, rubbers and plastics, electronics and even some dental floss. The primary sources of PFAS in the environment are manufacturing facilities and PFAS-containing products which have gone into landfill over the decades, as well as firefighting foams. PFAS are largely unsusceptible to degradation and remain in the environment almost indefinitely and are often termed "forever chemicals". Their water solubility allows them to penetrate soil to enter ecosystems.

Some PFAS accumulate over time to increased concentrations in humans, animals and the environment. They are dispersed through air and water, to such an extent that they have even been found in the environment of the Arctic and its polar bears, and open ocean waters. PFAS have also been found in fish, shellfish, vegetables and other produce grown in contaminated soil or water. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found PFOA, a specific PFAS, in the blood of 98% of Americans, as well as in breast milk and umbilical cord blood.

The health effects of the various kinds of PFAS are under constant research, however evidence has linked exposure to some of the chemicals to developmental issues, cancer, liver damage, immune system disruption, resistance to vaccines, thyroid diseases, impaired fertility and high cholesterol. Certain PFAS have been classified as “possibly carcinogenic” to humans by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the International Agency for Cancer Research (IARC).

With public concern regarding the health effects of PFAS outpacing the regulatory framework to address these complex chemicals, the scientific community stepped in and worked to develop an approach to assess the prevalence of PFAS in the environment. Eurofins Environment USA became the first commercial laboratory to test environmental samples for PFAS in the USA. In 2016, Eurofins Environment Testing Sweden AB became the first accredited commercial laboratory to be able to detect PFAS in water at LOQs (limit of quantification) of 0.3 parts per trillion (ppt). One part per trillion is equivalent to a single grain of sand in an Olympic sized swimming pool. These levels are even lower than those required by the European Union Water Framework Directive (WFD). PFAS testing is a field where change and learnings are developing rapidly and being at the frontier of research is extremely important.

Eurofins Environment Testing Sweden was also the first major commercial laboratory to introduce an analysis for a new class of PFAS in water, for so-called “ultrashort PFAS”. One such "ultrashort PFAS", for instance, is Trifluoromethanesulfonic acid (TFMS), which is used in Lithium-ion batteries and has already been detected in drinking water in Germany.

Of the estimated thousands of PFAS chemicals, laboratories are only able to analyse for about 100 known PFAS compounds, as many remain largely unidentified or lack analytical reference standards. Eurofins’ teams of expert scientists and its investment in state-of-the-art equipment has made identifying some of these unknown PFAS in the environment and their sources possible. In 2016, Eurofins introduced the Total Oxidizable Precursor Assay technique, which allows for the measurement of unknown PFAS by identifying precursors of PFAS that have the potential to transform, when oxidation occurs in the environment, into the PFAS compounds that can be analysed. Eurofins Environment USA have been called upon to support the validation of several US EPA methods to measure PFAS in potable and non-potable water as well as solids.

In addition to water testing, Eurofins companies have also expanded their PFAS testing across other matrices, including food, and feed. In 2023, e.g., the EU set limit values for PFAS in food like fish, meat and egg, and the importance for testing food for these chemicals is growing. Also in 2023, Eurofins Consumer Product Testing and Eurofins Sustainability Solutions' global network of laboratories launched Total Fluorine (TF) and Total Inorganic Fluorine (TOF) PFAS screening services for textiles and other consumer products' matrices, to augment their targeted PFAS testing.

Additionally, through a Eurofins empowerDX and Eurofins Environment Testing collaboration, the companies launched the first direct-to-consumer PFAS Exposure™ Test to identify the chemicals in blood samples. As a result, Eurofins Belgium was tasked in 2022 to carry out the largest European biomonitoring project for PFAS in blood, commissioned and funded by the Agency for Care and Health of the Flemish Government.  The blood of over 90,000 inhabitants within a 5 km zone around the 3M factory in Antwerp will be analysed for the presence of PFAS in their blood.

Today, a growing concern regarding PFAS is how they are spread through air pathways. PFAS are emitted into the air from manufacturing facilities or facilities that treat waste of products that comprise PFAS. Eurofins companies have pioneered sampling and analytical techniques to collect and analyse PFAS from these sources, including soil vapour and stack emissions, and monitor ambient outdoor and indoor air for these chemicals, to collect the information we need to keep the air around us safer. Such specific analysis requires unique and highly specialised equipment, often only found in research laboratories and academia. Eurofins companies maintain more of this specialised equipment than any commercial laboratory in the USA and are using it to develop techniques with the aim of closing some of the data gaps that currently exist in relation to PFAS.

The science behind