Exploring the regional-scale atmospheric fate and transport of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)

Emma D'Ambro1, Havala Pye2, Chris Allen3, Kevin Talgo4, Lara REynolds5, Kathy Brehme6, Robert Gilliam7, Jesse Bash8 and Ben Murphy9

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a class of man-made compounds whose emissions to air may contribute, via transport and deposition, to concentrations in surface water, ground water, and private well water in the vicinity of sources. Air quality modeling techniques can be used to quantify air concentrations and deposition fluxes to help parse the role of exposure pathways such as direct inhalation and ingestion via contaminated water. We apply the Community Multiscale Air Quality model (CMAQ) version 5.3.2 to a case study in Eastern North Carolina to model the PFAS emissions and transport at fine scale (1 km resolution) from The Chemours Company Fayetteville-Works. The 23 PFAS with the largest emissions by mass are identified and added explicitly to CMAQ, along with an aggregate “other PFAS” species to represent the balance of the emissions. An updated deposition parameterization (Surface Tiled Aerosol and Gaseous Exchange, STAGE) is utilized along with estimated chemical properties for each species to simulate the deposition flux to specific, sub-grid land surface types. Thus, the updated model (CMAQ-PFAS) captures the dynamic phase transformations and removal processes that affect the extent of atmospheric transport of PFAS. We evaluate model performance against deposition sampling at sites within 5 km of the facility. We further demonstrate the impact of one potentially important atmospheric transformation, the hydrolysis of acyl fluorides to carboxylic acids, on the deposition of specific compounds and the total PFAS mixture. Our results are an important step in understanding the behavior of PFAS emissions from a point source and can be used to inform studies quantifying exposure and biological effects.

 

1US EPA, dambro.emma@epa.gov
2US EPA
3General Dynamics Information Technology
4General Dynamics Information Technology
5General Dynamics Information Technology
6General Dynamics Information Technology
7US EPA
8US EPA
9US EPA