What is it about?
PFAS, so-called “forever chemicals”, are pollutants of increasing concern. However, there is not yet firm evidence that the types of PFAS exposure occurring in daily life cause human health impacts. We show that New Hampshire mothers whose drinking water wells were downstream of PFAS releases had more extremely low-weight births, more extremely preterm births, and higher infant mortality than did mothers whose wells were upstream of PFAS releases. Because the location of wells is generally not known, both groups of mothers have comparable demographic and health characteristics other than PFAS exposure. Extrapolating to the rest of the U.S., PFAS impose billions of dollars of costs on U.S. residents each year by worsening infant health.
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Why is it important?
This study takes a step beyond correlations and lab rat studies towards establishing the causal link from PFAS to infant health. It also monetizes the health damages and finds that they are much larger than outside estimates of the costs of cleaning up PFAS.
Perspectives
We study "long-chain" PFAS that are present throughout soils. They will be entering groundwater for decades to come. However, they can be filtered, both at the utility level and within households. Our work shows that the benefits of filtering out long-chain PFAS can be high, especially for households with pregnant women. It would be nice to know more about short-run vs long-run exposure and also about the effects of newer forms of PFAS.
Derek Lemoine
University of Arizona
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: PFAS-contaminated drinking water harms infants, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, December 2025, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2509801122.
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