Hey Readers,
This week we get into a PFAS bumper crop of innovations and news. Also more stuff….stay tuned.
Innovations Roundup
Under-sink Water Filter that removes PFAS
This Swedish water purifier company has been around for awhile, but in response to the growing knowledge about PFAS, they have come out with a water purification system that they say removes up to 99.97% of toxic chemicals and other contaminants. The device is compact enough to fit under the sink, and delivers up to 900 liters of purified water daily. It uses their trademarked SuperiorOsmosis™ filtration solution, which is verified as able to remove toxic PFAS chemicals. It is also said to outperform its rivals with an upto 70% recovery rate, addressing a critical flaw in traditional reverse osmosis systems – water wastage.
They also provide a mineral additive solution for the purified water, which is delivered via an IoT infuser system steered by a smartphone app allowing users to adjust the mix of minerals according to their taste and wellbeing preferences. In a nod to user experience, they have designed it such that the users visually verify water quality the device shifting from an orange shade during the water purification process to an all-blue colour when fit to drink.
Cleaning solution to remove PFAS
Going from personal use to industrial or municipal scale use cases, this California based company has been awarded recently for its solution to PFAS remediation at scale. Their registered solution is a PFAScrub® cleaning agent, is targeted at the PFAS resulting from firefighting foam. Their solution for removing aqueous film forming foams (AFFF) causes the dissolution and desorption of PFAS into a solution. This solution is then flushed out of the system removing the PFAS. They say that their solution can work in a recirculating closed loop which makes it more economical and effective compared to the excessive waste volumes generated through conventional water-flushing methodologies. What’s more their PFAScrub® can be reused until PFAS saturation levels warrant a change-out to a fresh solution.
High-resolution mass spectrometry to the rescue
We’ve talked in the past of all the problems with testing water samples and how the brave folks doing that are constantly facing an uphill battle. Simply put, traditional approaches to monitoring water quality involve taking lots of different measurements with many devices, which takes a lot of time. Enter a group of scientists at the University of Cambridge and Trent University, Canada. Their technique is a very simple way to get a comprehensive overview of what’s going on in a particular river or lake. They use High-resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS) which can measure mass so accurately that they can detect the minute differences in mass between two compounds that, on a regular low-resolution instrument, would appear to be identical.
How does HRMS work? - a sample, which in this case is liquid, is ionized, by bombarding it with a beam of electrons. This causes some of the sample's molecules to break up into positively charged fragments or simply become positively charged without fragmenting. These ions (fragments) are then separated according to their mass-to-charge ratio. For example by accelerating them and subjecting them to an electric or magnetic field, ions of the same mass-to-charge ratio will undergo the same amount of deflection.
Another key differentiator is that traditional approaches involve separately measuring many indicators such as the level of particular pollutants like nitrogen. These can indicate the condition of the water, but not why this state has arisen. Their technique allows you to look at the composition of individual molecules in the water sample, and thus identify the source of the pollution found.
News Roundup
First up in the news roundup is proof that irrigation programs have not worked - there is a popular and policy consensus that improving irrigation is crucial to conserving water. Yet, the scientific consensus is that, as a rule, improving irrigation efficiency alone does not conserve water and, in most cases, increases water consumption.
Bottled water companies still suck - Four brands of bottled water from the Nestlé Waters group in France do not conform to health quality regulations, a new report from food and health agency Anses has shown. They found widespread contamination of bacteria, pollutants and some amount of PFAS as well.
For those confused by the breadth of poor coverage on the new federal PFAS standards, here’s a good explainer from the EWG on EPA’s PFAS standards
In the better news section - the Department of the Interior announced that up to $320 million is available to assist federally recognized Tribes and Tribal organizations as they plan and construct domestic water infrastructure.
And finally for this week, the PFAS pollution settlement agreement between 3M and U.S. public water suppliers (PWS) received final approval from the U.S. District Court in Charleston, South Carolina. Under the same, 3M is on the hook for up to $10.3 billion payable over 13 years. Now to get this money where it’s needed.
That is it for this Friday, until next week,
Peace!