PFAS chemicals, which contaminate water forever, can be broken down after all.
Synthetic compounds known as"forever chemicals" because they never break down in the environment can actually be destroyed — by beheading.
Chemists at the University of California, Los Angeles and Northwestern University took a simpler approach — targeting the molecules' heads with a chemical guillotine. Charged oxygen molecules are reactive with other chemicals, so Northwestern University chemist William Dichtel and doctoral student Brittany Trang decided to go after this weak spot.
"That triggered all these reactions, and it started spitting out fluorine atoms from these compounds to form fluoride, which is the safest form of fluorine," Dichtel said in a statement ."Although carbon-fluorine bonds are super-strong, that charged head group is the Achilles' heel."
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