US EPA scientists target 75 PFASs for further scrutiny

Thousands of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) are in use worldwide, and public concern about their presence in drinking water has been mounting. Little toxicology information exists for the vast majority of these compounds, hindering efforts to determine safe exposure levels and assess potential risk. A US EPA and National Toxicology Program (NTP) collaboration is seeking to rapidly plug this information gap by studying in depth a small representative sample of the PFAS chemical space. "The hundreds of untested PFASs provide a scenario in which traditional one-by-one toxicity testing would consume tremendous resources and useful toxicity information would not be available for decades," a group of scientists led by the EPA’s Grace Patlewicz say in a paper, published in Environmental Health Perspectives on 11 January.