Location: New England Plant, Soil and Water Research Laboratory
Project Number: 8030-21600-002-001-S
Project Type: Non-Assistance Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Aug 1, 2024
End Date: Jul 31, 2025
Objective:
The objectives will be to evaluate the transfers of PFAS in agricultural soils and waters in order to leverage opportunities to interrupt or optimize those processes to mitigate and remediate contamination, evaluate the uptake of PFAS by different varieties of the common crops, to evaluate if some varieties offer resilience to PFAS uptake into edible tissues. Evaluate management approaches for those crops that enhance this resilience, evaluate the uptake and metabolism (ADME) of PFAS into livestock and poultry, especially those favored by small to medium sized farms to evaluate opportunities for management or feed changes that result in less uptake and accumulation in edible tissues, evaluate the socio-economic impacts of PFAS on agricultural communities and to understand the impact of PFAS on food marketability, and to evaluate the persistence of PFAS in agricultural soils from Maine and elsewhere and implement novel amendment strategies to degrade or immobilize PFAS in those soils.
Approach:
Our nation is currently facing an emerging, holistic, environmental contaminant problem arising from a class of chemicals that are presenting human, animal, plant, and environmental health challenges. These contaminants –referred to as “forever chemicals”—are part of a large group of lab-made perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) that are very slow to break down in animals, plants, and in the environment. PFAS have been found in soils and source waters on many farms and have been shown to bioaccumulate in agricultural animals and plants. They have been linked to several negative health impacts, including cancer. Critical research on PFAS is needed to understand, interrupt and manage their fate and transport in agricultural systems and to more fully understand and counter the negative economic impacts of PFAS on agricultural communities and rural social networks.
