Stoiber and her colleagues at EWG keep watch over the consumer-grade water filtration programs obtainable within the US. The group’s checks have discovered that widespread pitcher filters from manufacturers akin to Brita and Berkey don’t all take away PFAS equally nicely. However some do a wonderful job, based mostly on EWG’s checks, together with the pitcher filter system made by Epic Water Filters, a US-based agency.
“I might say PFAS is by far the primary contaminant that we’re getting suggestions for our prospects being concerned about,” says Joel Stevens, cofounder of Epic Water Filters. The filters his firm makes for its water pitchers embody a carbon block. “1000’s upon hundreds of layers of carbon fibers which might be wrapped round a block,” he explains. Because the water trickles by way of these fibers, the carbon takes off PFAS and different contaminants, together with chlorine and lead.
In about three months’ time, the corporate will launch a brand new pitcher filter that may additionally take out heavy metals and fluoride. Fluoride is added to water in some areas with a view to enhance dental well being, although some individuals would favor to not drink it due to a possible hyperlink between fluoride and opposed neurological results. Scientific evaluation suggests that the chance from faucet water in international locations such because the US, nevertheless, is extraordinarily low.
Whereas there are some very efficient water filter merchandise available on the market, says Stoiber, many individuals nonetheless throw spent filters within the trash, which suggests they in the end find yourself at landfill websites the place the PFAS can leach out into the atmosphere once more.
Clients of Epic Water Filters can return their spent filters to the corporate. “The filters are then despatched to a particular recycling middle the place the plastic is recycled and the interior filters are incinerated,” says Stevens in a follow-up e mail.
Stoiber’s analysis means that some types of incineration of PFAS supplies can launch dangerous compounds into the atmosphere. “We nonetheless don’t have good disposal suggestions for spent remedy media,” she says. It’s potential to interrupt PFAS compounds down, although, at extraordinarily excessive temperatures, whilst excessive as 1,500 levels Celsius (2,730 F). Some researchers are presently exploring how chemical components akin to granular activated carbon may cut back the quantity of warmth required to interrupt down PFAS compounds.
There’s one other drawback with present approaches to PFAS. “Neighborhood-level ingesting water remedy is what’s wanted at this level, as a result of the prices shouldn’t fall on the person,” says Stoiber. “It shouldn’t be unfair, who has a filter, who doesn’t, who will get uncovered.”
Whereas some US ingesting water amenities at the moment are putting in large-scale PFAS filtration expertise, akin to in Tampa, Florida, the price of doing this throughout the nation may spiral into the billions, in response to some analyses. Whereas Stoiber says the simplest technique for avoiding PFAS contamination is to not use these chemical substances within the first place, numerous corporations nonetheless do, and it could possibly be a very long time earlier than they disappear completely from shopper merchandise, if that ever occurs.
For now, there’s a danger that the Trump administration may weaken the brand new US water laws that demand the elimination of some PFAS molecules from faucet water provides, says Stoiber. “We’re preventing to guard the ingesting water legal guidelines that had been simply handed,” she says. “I feel all eyes are on that.”
