ELEVATED LEVELS OF a PFAS compound were associated with more severe forms of Covid-19, according to a Danish study now undergoing peer review. The research, which involved 323 patients infected with the coronavirus, found that those who had elevated levels of a chemical called PFBA were more than twice as likely to have a severe form of the disease.
PFBA is one of a class of industrial compounds, often called “forever chemicals,” that has come to contaminate soil, water, and food around the world. It has been presented as relatively safe because it stays in human blood for much less time than some of the other compounds in the class and is a shorter molecule. Both traits are thought to be indications of its innocuousness. PFBA, which was created by 3M, is based on a four-carbon chain and is gone from human blood in a matter of days. It is still in use, while PFOA, which is based on eight carbons and stays in the human blood for years, has been phased out since 2015.
According to DEC, the SABIC plant in Selkirk, which uses the styrene to make plastic, failed to follow procedures when it stored on its property since May a loaded rail tanker car that had a frozen valve.
Officials said that is what led to the release of approximately 15,825 pounds of styrene vapor, a release could be smelled by people miles away. The gas is considered to be toxic, but it also poses a fire and explosion danger if allowed to heat up while under pressure. Although stabilizers are added to tanker cars full of styrene, those additives can wear out over time.
Once the leak was detected, state officials and local firefighters began cooling the tanker car with a steady stream of water to keep it from rupturing. Officials also closed roads near the plant.
While they were trying to find ways to clean the Passaic River Superfund site, a team of scientists discovered a new bacterium that might be able too do some of the heavy lifting on similar sites.
The bacteria was found thriving in toxic mud at the bottom of the river, where it was happily munching away on cancer-causing and otherwise dangerous toxins called dioxins, according to research published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology. By giving it a little boost, the Rutgers scientists believe they could set the bacteria to work cleaning up the Passaic River and other toxic waste sites around the world.
Picky Eater Specifically, the bacteria pluck chlorine atoms out of Tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin, regarded as the most toxic dioxin out there. Without its chlorine atoms, the dioxin, which is a byproduct of chemical manufacturing plants that operated in the area, becomes far less dangerous.
“Our results showed that although the process is quite slow, it can be enhanced and may even have the potential to remove all toxic chlorines from the compound,” Rutgers Ph.D. candidate and lead author of the new research Rachel Dean said in a press release.
Tools Of The Trade Dean and her team are now hoping to figure out what’s going on at the molecular level when the bacteria strip the dioxin of its chlorine atoms.
By identifying what enzymes are responsible, Dean and her colleagues are hoping to develop a chemical treatment that neutralizes the dioxins at other waste sites.
The effectiveness of incineration to destroy PFAS compounds and the tendency for formation of fluorinated or mixed halogenated organic byproducts is not well understood. Few experiments have been conducted under oxidative and temperature conditions representative of field-scale incineration. Limited studies on the thermal destructibility of fluorotelomer-based polymers found no detectable levels of perfluorooctanoic acid after 2 secondresidence time and 1,000oC (Yamada et al., 2005; Taylor et al., 2014). Emission studies, particularly for PICs, have been incomplete due to lack of necessary measurement methods suitable for the comprehensive characterization of fluorinated and mixed halogenated organic compounds.
The extent to which PFAS-containing waste material in the United States is incinerated is not fully documented or understood. PFAS compounds are not listed as hazardous wastes under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) nor as hazardous air pollutants under Clean Air Act regulations, so they are not subject to the tracking systems associated with these regulations.
Inside the apartment, her boys were insulated from the crossfire outside. But like thousands of others seeking shelter behind the peeling walls muffling the bubbling bass dripping from Crown Vic speakers, the poison of lead would find a way into her sons’ bodies all the same. Ryan and Ronnie, along with thousands of other poor children in New Orleans whose parents believed they could shelter their children from the violence outside, would become an entire poisoned generation.
Lead was only one of many ecological risks her family faced. The playgrounds where Ryan and Ronnie played often brimmed with pools of fetid, standing water—owing to New Orleans’s fabled and constant flooding—that were sometimes tainted with battery acid. Billieson had heard tell about the regurgitated sewage and chemical waste from Louisiana’s booming petrochemical operations that flowed back into dirt common spaces where her children learned to walk, all while they breathed in the emissions from the nearby roads and highways.