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Meeting with North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality : Characterizing the Atmospheric Transport and Deposition of PFAS Emissions from a Manufacturer near Fayetteville, NC
Citation:
D'Ambro, E., H. Pye, J. Bash, R. Gilliam, L. Reynolds, C. Allen, J. Bowyer, C. Efstathiou, AND K. Talgo. Meeting with North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality : Characterizing the Atmospheric Transport and Deposition of PFAS Emissions from a Manufacturer near Fayetteville, NC. Meeting with North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, February 04, 2021.
Impact/Purpose:
The results will be used to better understand the full scope of historical air emissions of PFAS from the Chemours, NC facility. The model developed for this product may be further developed with the specific chemistry of PFAS compounds emitted by other facilities in the U.S. and be applied to those contexts. Eventually, we will analyze the regional-scale emissions, fate and transport of PFAS throughout the continental U.S.
Description:
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) have been released into the environment for decades, yet contributions of air emissions to total human exposure, from inhalation and drinking water contamination via deposition, are poorly constrained. The atmospheric transport and fate of a PFAS mixture from a fluoropolymer manufacturing facility in North Carolina was investigated with the Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model applied at high resolution (1 km) and extending ~150 km from the facility. Twenty-six explicit PFAS compounds, including GenX, were added to CMAQ using current best estimates of air emissions and relevant physicochemical properties. The new model, CMAQ-PFAS, predicts 5% by mass of total emitted PFAS and 2.5% of total GenX are deposited within ~150 km of the facility, with the remainder transported out. Modeled air concentrations of total GenX and total PFAS around the facility can reach 24.6 ng m-3 and 8,500 ng m-3 but decrease to ~0.1 ng m-3 and ~10 ng m-3 at 35 km downwind, respectively. We find that compounds with acid functionality have higher deposition due to enhanced water solubility and pH-driven partitioning to aqueous media. To our knowledge, this is the first modeling study of the fate of a comprehensive, chemically resolved suite of PFAS air emissions from a major manufacturing source.