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Observations on Environmental Distribution & Fate of Chloro-perfluoro-polyether Carboxylates
Citation:
Davis, Mary J. AND M. Evich. Observations on Environmental Distribution & Fate of Chloro-perfluoro-polyether Carboxylates. A&WMA: Science of PFAS: Chemistry, Health, and Multimedia Measurements, Virtual, September 15 - 17, 2020.
Impact/Purpose:
Next-generation PFAS were detected in New Jersey soils and vegetation; here, we examine their environmental partitioning and degradation.
Description:
The rapid development and employment of new per- and polyfluoroalkyl substance (PFAS) chemistries in industrial processes and commercial products has made properly identifying and classifying these compounds an increasingly difficult challenge. A new class of PFAS, named chloro-perfluoro-polyether carboxylates (ClPFPECAs), has recently been discovered in surface soils in New Jersey, USA. Here, we describe the distribution of these new-generation compounds in surface soils and determine their presence and relative abundance in corresponding vegetation and soil-core samples. Non-targeted analysis of samples was conducted using liquid chromatography coupled to high-resolution mass spectrometry (LC-HRMS) to tentatively identify ClPFPECAs in vegetation and soil cores. Conventional LC-MS was used to semi-quantitate ClPFPECAs as well as quantitate legacy compounds (i.e. perfluorooctanoic acid; PFOA). Analyzing the abundance of both new generation and legacy compounds in these matrices relative to corresponding surface soils enables elucidation of the partitioning of these compounds in the environment with respect to chemistry and fluorinated-carbon chain length. Notably, ClPFPECAs were found to partition more strongly in vegetation than legacy perfluoro carboxylates, with a similar dependence on fluorinated-carbon chain length. Furthermore, using these same techniques, soil and vegetation extracts were probed for degradation products predicted by the Chemical Transformation Simulator (CTS), which has recently been expanded to include reaction libraries for the transformation of PFAS in environmental and biological systems. Expanding the study of PFAS-matrix partitioning to these new-generation compounds and their transformation products will help to broaden the understanding of their environmental mobility and fate.
