05/15/2025

The Most Promising Ways to Destroy ‘Forever Chemicals'

The Washington Post | Allyson Chiu | May 13, 2025

The Most Promising Ways to Destroy ‘Forever Chemicals'

Toxic “forever chemicals” that can persist in the environment for years have long troubled environmentalists and regulators. Their harmful effects on human health are well documented, but their ubiquitous use and strong bonds make it difficult to eliminate them.

Environmental Protection Agency chief Lee Zeldin recently announced somewhat vague actions to combat contamination from per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, which have been found in drinking water, food packaging and soil. The agency on Monday asked for more time to consider whether it would defend a drinking water rule introduced by the Biden administration.

In the meantime, researchers are seeking a breakthrough in technologies to tackle PFAS contamination. Some methods that appear promising involve heating and pressurizing water. Other approaches in development include experiments with ultraviolet light, plasma and sound waves.

“We’re in a good spot,” said Christopher Higgins, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the Colorado School of Mines who researches PFAS. “There’s a lot of things being tested. … Around the world, everyone is trying to work on this topic.”

Here’s what to know about the ongoing efforts to destroy forever chemicals.

Why it’s so hard to destroy PFAS

PFAS chemicals are highly durable. They consist of a string of carbon and fluorine bonds — the strongest bond in organic chemistry. While their structure made them a must-have component of nonstick pans, moisture-repellent fabrics and firefighting foam, this bond typically requires large amounts of energy to separate.

The chemicals also don’t always fully break down during attempts at destruction, which can lead to the problematic creation of smaller PFAS or other toxic by-products, said Anna Reade, a senior scientist and director of PFAS advocacy at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Reade and other experts said effective destruction technologies need to be able to handle a wide range of PFAS, a class of chemicals that includes thousands of different compounds with varying properties.

“We have so many different waste streams and products that eventually we would want to try and be more responsible about in terms of end of life,” Reade said. “So having something limited to certain types of subgroups of PFAS isn’t as useful.”

How to effectively destroy PFAS

Collecting the chemicals is a key first step, Higgins said. Treating contaminated water or soil, for instance, generally requires technology that can filter out and concentrate PFAS.

“If you’re using a destruction technology and you spend tons of your energy just heating the water or destroying things other than the PFAS in the water, that’s problematic,” Higgins said.

When PFAS are in a concentrated form, a destruction method can be deployed more efficiently, he said.

The goal should be to eradicate the chemicals as completely as possible, said Amy Dindal, a PFAS expert with Battelle, a science and technology nonprofit that has developed a PFAS destruction technology. Ideally, when the process is complete, PFAS should be at undetectable levels, and any by-products should be harmless, she said.

Dindal added that it’s important to have a testing system to confirm that the process was successful. “Being able to understand that mass balance, what comes in and what goes out” matters, she said.

Emerging solutions

PFAS destruction technologies are beginning to show potential. Some methods have been licensed by companies that are rolling out the systems in real-world settings.

“There’s been a lot of research happening over the past few years looking at advanced destruction technologies, and there’s been a lot of improvements and advancements, and we’re now starting to see some of them actually at scale,” Reade said.

An approach known as supercritical water oxidation is one of the more developed technologies, Reade and other experts said. It involves heating and pressurizing water to a specific point that creates the ideal conditions to break every carbon fluorine bond, Dindal said.

The process used in a patented technology created by Battelle produces carbon dioxide and a form of fluorine that can be quickly neutralized to become a harmless salt. “It’s a complete destruction and mineralization technology, because we’re actually breaking all of the carbon fluorine bonds,” Dindal said, adding that the technology is “PFAS agnostic.”

Revive Environmental, a spinout from Battelle, has installed the technology at its two permitted facilities in Michigan and Ohio, Dindal said.

Another promising approach using heat and pressure was developed by researchers at the Colorado School of Mines. Known as hydrothermal alkaline treatment, or HALT, it involves adding a low-cost chemical reagent such as sodium hydroxide to superheated liquid water. The technology, which the researchers have compared to a “pressure cooker on steroids,” has been licensed by a company headquartered in Tacoma, Washington.

A destruction method that harnesses ultraviolet light has also emerged as a contender.

When UV light oxidizes an electron-generating compound, it produces a powerful electron that’s very reactive and strong enough to break carbon fluorine bonds.

“It’s quite broad-spectrum in that it can attack any carbon-fluorine bond,” said Brian Teppen, a professor at Michigan State University who was part of a group of researchers that developed a technology for destroying PFAS that uses UV light. The patented technology has since been licensed by a company based in East Lansing, Michigan.

Other technologies are experimenting with the use of plasma, which can generate reactive electrons to break down PFAS, but tends to require a large amount of energy.

Researchers are also experimenting with a process that uses sound waves. High-intensity sound waves create small bubbles in a water system or liquid waste stream, Higgins said. As those bubbles collapse, they can generate the high temperatures and pressure needed to degrade PFAS.

“Getting things up to scale has a couple of things that you have to think about, one of them being energy consumption,” Reade said.

Scientists are also looking into how to destroy PFAS at lower temperatures.

One group of researchers is studying a method of destruction rooted in “basic organic chemistry” that doesn’t need a lot of heat, said William Dichtel, a chemistry professor at Northwestern University who co-wrote a 2022 peer-reviewed paper detailing the approach. The researchers found that certain types of PFAS could be destroyed at lower temperatures when exposed to sodium hydroxide, or lye.

“We’re generating this waste stream where we can destroy them using this low-temperature method as opposed to applying a ton of energy or something requiring a lot of exotic equipment and safety considerations,” Dichtel said. But he noted that the method doesn’t work for all PFAS.

Combating PFAS

There probably won’t be just one type of destruction technology, and finding ways to destroy PFAS shouldn’t be the only solution, experts said.

Tackling these forever chemicals requires a suite of technologies, including methods to capture the compounds and eliminate them efficiently and safely, Higgins said.

“You don’t carry one screwdriver in your tool belt, you carry a Phillips and a flathead because sometimes you need one or the other, and I think that’s going to be the case with these PFAS destruction technologies,” he said.

But even as these technologies are developed and deployed, experts emphasized that it’s critical to reduce the amount of PFAS being produced. Several U.S. states and other countries have banned PFAS in certain types of products, and many major companies say they have discontinued their use, but the compounds continue to show up in the water supplies of communities around the world.

“At the end of the day, not using these chemicals unless it’s absolutely necessary is the actually most effective tool in our toolbox,” Reade said.