How NC State and ECU will study ‘forever chemicals’ in new federally funded center
N.C. State University has launched the Center for Environmental and Human Health Effects of Per- and Polyfluoralykl Substances (PFAS), the university announced Wednesday.
The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Superfund Research Program has awarded the university a five-year, $7.4 million grant, according to a N.C. State release. PFAS chemicals are a class of long-lasting, water-resistant substances that are used in a wide range of industries. The same characteristics that make them useful in things like food packaging, Teflon and fire fighting foam make them extremely difficult to destroy in the environment, and they have been linked with several human health risks.
A team of 17 researchers from N.C. State and three from East Carolina University will study how the chemicals move in the environment; how they accumulate in and affect people; and treatment options for drinking water. Specific studies include how PFAS exposure has affected thyroid health along the Cape Fear River, how the substances work to suppress the human immune system, how they accumulate in aquatic food webs and how granular activated carbon systems remove the chemicals from drinking water.
Carolyn Mattingly, who heads N.C. State’s Department of Biological Sciences, will be the center’s director. In a prepared statement, Mattingly said, “PFAS are emerging as a major public health problem not just in North Carolina but across the U.S. Despite increasing evidence that they are found ubiquitously in the environment, we don’t know much about their toxicity, routes of human exposure or remediation strategies.”
Many of the researchers who are part of the new N.C. State Center are also involved in research funded by the N.C. PFAS Testing Network.
Detlef Knappe, an N.C. State environmental engineer, will lead the granular activated carbon study.
In 2016, Knappe’s lab published a study showing that the PFAS chemical GenX was emanating from Chemours’ Fayetteville Works facility, flowing down the Cape Fear River and passing through Wilmington-area water treatment technology into the region’s drinking water. Since that study was published, Knappe has been involved with research showing that historic PFAS exposure on the Cape Fear was much higher than previously acknowledged and another study assessing in-home water treatment options for their effectiveness at removing the chemicals from drinking water.
Jane Hoppin, an environmental epidemiologist, will lead the N.C. State-based Center’s thyroid research. Hoppin also headed the GenX Exposure study, which found that Wilmington residents’ blood and urine contained six kinds of PFAS chemicals that were not found in other samples.
The aquatic food web study will include N.C. State’s Scott Belcher, David Buchwalter and Antonio Planchart. Belcher’s research has included the revelation that alligators and striped bass around Wilmington have higher PFAS concentrations than their counterparts elsewhere in the state, as well as a study showing the Cape Fear striped bass had increased liver and immune system activity.
Wednesday’s release also noted a trio of East Carolina University researchers, including Jamie DeWitt, a toxicologist who has long studied PFAS chemicals’ health impacts. Along with Knappe, DeWitt sits on the Secretaries’ Science Advisory Board, which is in the process of recommending groundwater standards for PFOA and PFOS, a pair of chemicals that have been in use and in the environment for decades.
DeWitt will be one of the scientists working to see how the chemicals operate in the immune system.
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