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chrisdh79 OP t1_j5jlgz5 wrote

From the article: Scientists in Australia have developed an intriguing new technique for removing toxic “forever chemicals” from water. Adding a solution to contaminated water coats the pollutants and makes them magnetic, so they can easily be attracted and isolated.

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a group of chemicals that have been in wide use around the world since the 1950s, thanks to their water- and oil-repelling properties. However, more recently PFAS chemicals have been linked to a concerning number of health problems, including increased risks of diabetes and liver cancer. Worse still, a recent study has found that their levels in rainwater almost everywhere on Earth exceed the EPA’s guidelines, and to cap it all off, these stable molecules are very hard to break down, earning them the nickname “forever chemicals.”

Now, researchers at the University of Queensland have developed a technique that could help remove PFAS chemicals from water. The team designed a solution called a magnetic fluorinated polymer sorbent which, when added to contaminated water, coats the PFAS molecules. This makes them magnetic, so then it’s a relatively simple process to use a magnet to attract the pollutants and separate them from the water.

In tests with small samples of PFAS-laden water, the team found that the technique could remove over 95% of most PFAS molecules, including over 99% of GenX – a particularly problematic chemical – within 30 seconds.

Plenty of teams have investigated ways to break down PFAS, usually involving catalysts triggered by UV light or heat. Others have made use of hydrogen or supercritical water.

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lightsails t1_j5k7gmd wrote

This is incredible. A recent study I read found extremely high levels of PFOS/PFOA in lake and river fish through out the US. Here are a few tidbits from that study: -Consuming 1 fish is the equivalent to drinking water that is 12,000x the safe limit for PFOS for a month straight -The average fish fillet was found to contain 11,800 ng/kg PFOS from the great lakes, the lifetime safe limit is 0.004 ng/kg. That's 2,950,000x the safe lifetime limit for the consumption of one fish.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0013935122024926?via%3Dihub

This is something that needs immediate attention and had me staying away from fish. One thing to note is the study did collect most samples from bass close to larger populations, but still the results are alarming.

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letmeinmannnnn t1_j5m981z wrote

Are they high in all fish in the world? Or mainly lakes in the US?

I buy farmed salmon from Scotland, I'm wondering if they're high in that

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leviathing t1_j5mlvi2 wrote

Stay away from fish farmed near military bases or airports. Otherwise you’re probably fine.

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lightsails t1_j5ndzto wrote

PFOS/PFOA has been used rigorously in so many products for 70ish years. It really is in everything. I work in environmental consulting and when we sample for it I need to make sure staff don't shower the day before as a lot of shampoos/body washes have PFOS/PFOA in it, you can't wear waterproof jackets, the list goes on. The fact is it's bioaccumulating in fish (along with many persistent pollutants) which makes sense as rivers/streams/oceans is where our waste ends up. Even though I live on the west coast of Canada, far from where the study was conducted, even if the fish here have a fraction of the amount of PFOS/PFOA that is still way past the lifetime limit according to the EPA.

But really if it's not this contaminant in fish it's something else I suppose. Depressing but is anything really clean anymore?

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letmeinmannnnn t1_j5nvrc5 wrote

Yeah I was thinking the same, we are being poisoned in one way or another and there's no avoiding pollutant, there's always something, we just have to hope our bodies are able to remove some of the burden in order to not become sick, very depressing times we live in.

And thanks for your comment, it looks like I'll be ditching my salmon I eat, sad times.

I wonder if I can find a lab that tests for this and send a sample of the salmon I buy to them, i guess any amount is too much tho so results will still mean I can't eat it

I checked and my water filter removes 99% of them so that's a start I guess

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FeloniousSausage t1_j5nx5qd wrote

I'm curious what water filter you have, as many don't remove these chemicals.

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letmeinmannnnn t1_j5o4z7j wrote

It's a Zero water filter, Zero is the brand, there's tests proving it to remove heavy metals, micro plastics and also PFOS / PFOA.

A Reverse osmosis system will remove them too if you want to go hardcore on your filtering system

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Legitimate_Bat3240 t1_j5lejno wrote

Wouldn't this make the fish great filters? Would the fish be more economical to use that the magnetic liquid?

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TheThingsWeMake t1_j5lhlav wrote

You'd have to remove the fish from the foodchain/ecosystem once they absorbed the chemicals in that case (and not eat them), which is probably not feasible or ideal.

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Ferociousfeind t1_j5lhynn wrote

Well, then what do we do with the fish? Just not sell it to customers? That'd put a big strain on the fishing industry, which may push them to cut corners and do more ecological damage to the environment to make ends meet

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Legitimate_Bat3240 t1_j5lldy4 wrote

Breed them for more filter fish then dispose of them? Idk, just a thought that I haven't put any time into

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Ferociousfeind t1_j5lsklz wrote

It's good to talk things out to help develop ideas. What if the fish become invasive, for example? It invariably happens, see all the times we accidentally introduced X species (usually rat) to non-native lands, then intentionally introduced Y species (bird or cat most often) to deal with X, and instead X and Y are both flourishing, devastating the local ecosystem.

Biological solutions are almost always dangerous and difficult to control like that, unfortunately.

Magnets don't reproduce, so generally there won't be magnet-outbreaks, you know?

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lintinmypocket t1_j5lphlp wrote

Catch the fish, process the concentrated chemicals out of them, then sell the fish.

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bitcoins t1_j5nf40e wrote

Stick magnets on the fish

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jnelsoni t1_j5nv7ht wrote

Then take the contamination from the fish that gets sucked out by a magnet and shoot it into outer space.

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Folknasty t1_j5jn2yy wrote

This is pretty awesome, especially the success rate. Sounds like it might be expensive though.

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l0gicowl t1_j5jqvi7 wrote

Everything is expensive at first, until it's scaled up enough to be relatively cheap. Well done Aussies

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Electrorocket t1_j5jqoe0 wrote

The good thing is most water treatment plants already have UV emitters, so part of the cost is already spent if they can be retrofitted to work with another system that was mentioned in the article.

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notreal088 t1_j5lpj3c wrote

I really hope that it’s easy to reproduce and cheap to produce. The number of forever chemicals in drinking water and even meat is worry some.

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The-Animus t1_j5jxnbv wrote

Does this solution coat other things in the water that could get removed along with the forever chemicals? Does some of the magnetic solution stay in the water after the process? Could either of these be problematic?

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lightsails t1_j5k6xh2 wrote

From my reading of the study the magnetic fluorinated polymer sorbent would only coat the fluorinated compounds which are not naturally occurring. Likely some of the magnetic solution would stay in the water but you'd much rather have that then PFAS/PFOA

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fashionably_l8 t1_j5lezm9 wrote

I guess a small amount would stay in the water (nothing in chemistry is ever completed to a true 100%), but as long as the sorbent is magnetized itself (as in it doesn’t rely on attaching to the PFAS to become magnetic) it should be collected by the magnet whether it manages to bond to a PFAS or not. You might be able to leave an extremely trivial amount in the water by running it through enough magnets.

Edit: I forgot why I wrote this in the context of the comment chain. Even if the sorbent bonds to the wrong thing, it should still be pulled out by the magnets (minus whatever small amount gets left behind). Assuming the sorbent comes in magnetized and does not rely on the PFAS to become magnetized.

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1CDoc t1_j5jufog wrote

Is the solution toxic also ?

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Earthling1a t1_j5ka5vb wrote

ThAt's what I'm wondering about. Although if it can be magnetically removed from the water - which property it would need to have to remove the PFAS - then that may be moot.

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squanchingonreddit t1_j5krj68 wrote

Yeah, I've not seen magnets used in freshwater treatment before, but this would be an incredibly simple solution to the problem at hand.

Magnets are fuckin cool and so is this research.

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Old_timey_brain t1_j5ktrn9 wrote

I could see this working best if they were able to channel the water through a trough which introduces the magnetic fluorinated polymer sorbent, then past a series of powerful magnets to remove all magnetic particles.

Then the water flows on.

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antiquemule t1_j5kaa5z wrote

Abstract of the article, with a nice diagram of how the process works.

Rest of the article is open access and below the linked abstract.

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Bfd83 t1_j5ljs0h wrote

That’s not the abstract, that’s the whole damn thing, don’t sell yourself short there.

Love stumbling across journal articles that are actually open access..

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thisismydayjob_ t1_j5k8b84 wrote

Does reverse osmosis take out the 'forever' stuff as well?

magnets are fun!

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Gibborim t1_j5kovvy wrote

RO filters can be just as good. They are not a solution for treating the overall water supply unless you want to spend a lot of money though. Much better if you can add another chemical processing stage to the existing infrastructure.

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squanchingonreddit t1_j5krujl wrote

It's literally just a dump and flow through a magnetic field.

So easy, I hope whoever thought of this makes the big bucks.

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thisismydayjob_ t1_j5llu9j wrote

Oh yeah, I understand. Just wondered if my little under sink RO takes these out. Our city has a giant RO system for the nitrate removal and those filters are $$$$

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creamonbretonbussy t1_j5khxif wrote

I don't see anything about the water quality post-treatment, so I'm wondering how the magnetic solution itself might taint the water.

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PsychYYZ t1_j5kshgr wrote

Not to be sassy... But once we filter them out... Then what? We put them somewhere else, from where they escape or leak back into the environment again?

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TheCrimsonSteel t1_j5ls3oe wrote

Basically.

Our general tactics of dealing with waste as it gets worse can be summed up as:

Landfill

Seal it up, then Landfill

Mix it with concrete, Seal that up, Landfill

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Tutorbin76 t1_j5mjedc wrote

Which, quite frankly, is where they all should have gone in the first place if they can't be reused or recycled.

Incredible that so much of this stuff just gets dumped into the ocean somehow.

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AIBNatUQ t1_j6gi6cs wrote

We are stoked to see our researcher's work here on Twitter. Thank you, Reddit community and u/chrisdh79 . We will now scale up testing and hope to have a commercially available product ready in the next three years. Because this method does not use electricity, it can be used in remote and off-grid communities, which is great for Australia and, eventually, overseas communities. Again, thank you all for your support. Excellent to read all the comments.

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paperhottub t1_j5ky7w3 wrote

Why magnets? If you can bind the PFAS with some solution what is the benefit of magnets over flocculation and sedimentation?

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ExpensiveAd4614 t1_j5l61eh wrote

Now if could just inject the solution into our bodies and magnetize our kidneys. Or something along those lines..

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DavidMatos91 t1_j5ln8h4 wrote

So, shall we rename them to "for-a-while chemicals"?

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Real_Slutty_Toddler t1_j5npf8m wrote

Say now, David; that's some dangerous thinking,. You probably get back to digging these calcium mines here with me, leave the hard thinking to the Einsteins, V. snares , Kendrick Lamar's n Rick Sanchezs' out side the mines we were born in all our lives, buddy ;)

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ca_fighterace t1_j5m3ct3 wrote

That escalated from “forever” to “in seconds” like super fast. Good job scientists.

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wi_voter t1_j5m5sb9 wrote

Wow. We need this in Wisconsin ASAP

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DecentFart t1_j5jwf34 wrote

Magnetic water cleaning is generally snake oil. I have heard stories about manufacturing plants or hospitals that have been tricked into buying very expensive magnetic boiler feed water cleaning systems and they discontinue using the more expensive treatment chemicals. In a few months they ruin their steam boilers and other equipment and the magnetic water cleaning salesman are nowhere to be found. Happened at lot at VA hospitals for their hot water plants.

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antiquemule t1_j5ka11i wrote

That's completely different. This system uses magnetic particles that having PFAS-loving coats to remove them from the water.

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velifer t1_j5kuxxx wrote

This is flocculation and sedimentation, which has been done in drinking water treatment plants for decades (centuries if your definition is loose enough) except now with magnets instead of gravity.

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DecentFart t1_j5kz72j wrote

Gotcha. I didn't ream into it. I just jump to snake oil when I hear about using magnets to clean water because of my experience. I've worked in waster water for manufacturing facilities as well, but not an expert. I know clarifiers at paper mills stink.

Edit: I'll read some to save others explaining.

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slickhedstrong t1_j5kyld4 wrote

gated and sealed and never invested in scaling unfortunately

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fighttodie t1_j5l51bv wrote

We did it folks it's over! Break out the plasticware no dishes tonight!

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chaosgoblyn t1_j5ldqth wrote

Just throw it in the ocean when you're done. It's tradition in some regions.

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esotericenema t1_j5kr33h wrote

Great. Now figure out how to get them out of all of our bloodstreams, where they already are. There's no evidence the body EVER removes these chemicals from itself.

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velifer t1_j5kv9d8 wrote

>There's no evidence the body EVER removes these chemicals from itself.

You're right, well, except for everything you said.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29913568/

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esotericenema t1_j5lc7og wrote

Tone aside, thank you for the correction. This indeed contradicts something else I thought I read elsewhere. And I am glad to hear it.

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BrewCrewBall t1_j5n3dcm wrote

You can also reduce your levels by regularly giving blood. Since I’m an in demand blood type and I enjoy eating fish in the Midwest USA, I give whenever I’m eligible

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