Certain kinds of 'forever chemicals' can be dismantled using bacteria found in wastewater. This points to a possible way of making more of these compounds biodegradable
at the University of California, Riverside. But fluorine bonds are rare in nature, and microbes that can break the bonds also appear to be rare.In search of such microbes, Men and her colleagues collected sludge from a nearby municipal wastewater treatment plant. They then spiked samples of the sludge with three types of chlorinated PFAS that had a low, medium and high number of carbon-chlorine bonds, which are more vulnerable to biodegradation than fluorine bonds are.
The researchers isolated the bacteria responsible for breaking down the molecules in anaerobic conditions. Their genomes were most similar to, bacterial species commonly found in water environments. “They are not unique,” says Men. Similar microbes could already be breaking down chlorinated PFAS contamination, she says.
The bacteria don’t break the tough carbon-fluorine bond directly, says Men. Instead, they cleave the weaker bonds between carbon and chlorine. They then replace the chlorine with an oxygen and hydrogen group, which destabilises the molecule and makes it more likely for the fluorine bond to break. Breaking down chlorinated PFAS wouldn’t do anything to address the contamination from many other types of PFAS that don’t contain chlorine. “We’re not going to solve every problem with one magic bacterium,” saysBut understanding how these molecules break down could help researchers design alternatives to PFAS that biodegrade more readily by incorporating more of these chlorine “weak points”, he says. However, those molecules would also have to be tested to make sure they aren’t also toxic.
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