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Known as “forever chemicals” because of how long they remain in the human body and in the human environment, perfluoroalkali and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, are an ever-increasing health concern.
Present in the blood of about 98% of Americans, the hormone-disrupting chemicals are so worrisome that the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine set “nanogram” levels of concern in July 2022 and called for testing of high-risk individuals. , including infants and older adults.
In April, the US Environmental Protection Agency announced historic rules designed to tightly control levels of five of the most studied PFASs in the nation’s drinking water, one of the ways with human exposure. Contamination can also come from the presence of PFAS in food packaging, stain-resistant textiles and thousands of consumer products such as cookware, tampons and cosmetics.
However, a new study takes a closer look at another understudied avenue of potential exposure – the presence of PFAS in pesticides used in agricultural and residential pest control, including pet flea treatments.
“This is really the first study in the US to look comprehensively at how pesticides may be contributing to global PFAS contamination,” said Alexis Temkin, co-author of the study published Wednesday in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives. She is a senior toxicologist for the Environmental Working Group, or EWG, an environmental and health advocacy organization based in Washington, DC.
Food staples such as apples, corn, kale, spinach, strawberries and wheat are often sprayed with PFAS-containing pesticides, said co-author David Andrews, senior scientist and deputy director of investigations at the Environmental Working Group.
“These pesticides are applied to thousands of farm fields across the United States in relatively high quantities, and they contribute to PFAS contamination,” Andrews said. “The use of these pesticides may partially explain some of the unidentified PFAS contamination that scientists see occurring in our waterways.”
PFAS pesticides are also used in flea treatments for pets and insect-killing sprays in homes, according to research by scientists at EWG, the Center for Biological Diversity in Tucson, Arizona, and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility in Silver Spring, Maryland. .
“The only pesticide listed in the paper was fipronil. This is in specific flea/tick products that can be put on pets! I didn’t know this was PFAS,” said environmental toxicologist Dr. Jamie DeWitt, director of the Pacific Northwest Center for Translational Environmental Health Research, in an email.
“The study provides empirical evidence for the extent of PFAS in pesticides,” said DeWitt, who was not involved in the research.
More supervision required
Despite the presence of PFAS, the chemicals are not often considered in federal pesticide regulatory efforts or in toxicological evaluations of pesticides, said Stephanie Eick, an environmental and reproductive epidemiologist and assistant professor at Emory University in Atlanta. She was also not involved in the new study.
“Regulations surrounding pesticides are currently outdated and ineffective, so this discovery of the presence of PFAS in pesticide formulations is a new opportunity for the US EPA to improve the scientific validity of pesticide risk assessment for real-life exposure scenarios better capture reality,” Eick said in a commentary published with the study.
As with other scientific contributions, the Environmental Protection Agency will review the new report and is “committed to addressing the risks from PFAS from all sources, including pesticides,” a spokesperson said. the EPA to CNN via email.
In addition, the EPA has taken “significant steps” in recent years to understand and address PFAS in pesticides, including removing 12 PFAS ingredients from pesticide manufacturing, the spokesperson added.
The American Chemistry Council, an industry association, told CNN that pesticides are among the most heavily regulated products in the United States.
“We would need time to do a rigorous review, but it appears that these researchers are lumping a lot of pesticides as PFAS that are not,” said Tom Flanagin, senior director of product communications for ACC .
Although farm workers and others who work with or near pesticides are most at risk, pesticide exposure is widespread. It is estimated that more than 90% of the US population has detectable amounts of pesticides in their urine or blood.
PFAS helps pesticides last longer
The study’s authors submitted Freedom of Information requests to various state and federal government agencies in the US, including the EPA.
The analysis found that 66, or 14%, of all active ingredients in pesticides are PFAS, which are added intentionally to improve the product’s ability to kill pests, Andrews said.
“They add PFAS components to pesticides because it also increases pesticide stability in the fields,” he said. “The pesticide is less likely to break down as quickly, so it can remain effective for a longer period of time without reapplying.”
Pesticides also contain inert ingredients, which don’t kill pests but are added as “a carrier for the active ingredient, like a capsule that carries a medication,” said Rainer Lohmann, a professor at the University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanology who studies. sources of PFAS. He was not involved in the study.
Inert ingredients do not need to be disclosed on the product label, Andrews said. The analysis found eight inert ingredients approved by the EPA as PFAS, including the non-stick chemical Teflon. In February, the EPA recommended the elimination of Teflon in pesticide products.
The analysis also found that nearly one-third of new ingredients approved by federal agencies for use in pesticides over the past decade contained PFAS, likely because of the longevity and other benefits, Temkin said.
“Registration of pesticides that require PFAS is increasing,” she said. “This seems to be a trend.”
containers that create PFAS
Another unusual source for PFAS comes from the pesticide containers themselves as a result of a chemical reaction, Andrews said.
“Fluorine gas is put into a plastic container, and the fluorine reacts with the surface to make it more stable,” he said. “The EPA has found that the reaction creates long-chain PFAS byproducts such as PFOA and PFOS, which are banned.”
An estimated 20% to 30% of plastic containers containing pesticides and fertilizers are fluorinated and can leach PFAS into the material, according to the paper.
After first learning in 2020 about potential PFAS contamination in fluorinated plastic pesticide containers, the EPA has developed new ways to detect PFAS at low levels in pesticide containers and products, a spokesperson said.
“The chemical reaction is not just limited to pesticide containers,” Andrews said. “It applies to some fragrances and other consumer product containers. It’s a big issue that goes beyond pesticides and may contribute significantly to how the worrisome long-chain PFAS lingers in the environment.”
The long-chain PFAS chemicals perfluorooctane sulfonic acid, or PFOS, and perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, are among the most studied of the nearly 15,000 types of PFAS used by industry. Both chemicals have been linked to an increased risk of serious health problems such as cancer, obesity, thyroid disease, high cholesterol, reduced fertility, liver damage and hormone disruption, according to the EPA.
“These are hidden sources of PFAS at the source of contamination of our waterways, the environment and potentially in our bodies,” said Andrews.
How significant are these exposures? More research is needed, experts say. However, the paper “makes a good case that fluorinated pesticide compounds are a major contributor to unidentified PFAS out there and appear to have a much larger contribution than expected,” DeWitt said.
“(This research) confirms that PFAS are part of pesticide products either as an active ingredient of the pesticide or as a contaminant introduced from the pesticide packaging,” he said.
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