FLUORO ALKYL SUBSTANCES FROM LARGE RIVERS TO THE COASTLINE – FLUOREAL

Poly- and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) cause severe environmental and health issues from decades: stratospheric ozone depletion, global warming and endocrine disruption leading to, e.g., autoimmune diseases and hormonal disorders. This has led to international regulations for some specific legacy PFAS, up to the very recent call for a ban directed to the European Chemical Agency (ECHA). This call adopts the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) PFAS definition formulated in 2021, and thus targets no longer few individual substances but PFAS as a group of compounds unlimited in number.
While most PFAS literature focuses on a dozen of legacy substances mostly in Europe, China and North America; many world regions are extremely under documented (e.g., 4 studies in Vietnam, 1 in Brazil), and emerging or unknown PFAS are still poorly understood in terms of geocycling, global budgets and health/ecosystem effects. These regions are otherwise where most of the 9 million annual pollution-related deaths are concentrated. The efforts on eco-dynamics in large rivers are essential because they drain large catchment areas that host large populations, and they are the main sources of contamination for the oceans, that provide food safety for half of humanity. Analytically, several strategies have emerged: the Total Oxidizable Precursors and PerfluoroAlkyl Substances (TOPFAS) method allows a synoptic screening of both legacy and emerging PFAS, more in line with the recent retargeting of PFAS as a group of compounds; the targeted approach allows global intercomparison of the results; and the non-targeted approach provides an accurate picture of PFAS patterns.
FLUOREAL links environmental chemistry with physical modeling and ecology to provide interdisciplinary answers on PFAS geocycling, aquatic ecosystem and human exposure in 2 understudied regions (Vietnam, Brazil) heavily impacted by anthropogenic pollution (i.e., megacity, waste import, agriculture, breeding, forestry, mining).
The objectives of FLUOREAL are i) to measure PFAS in water and sediment of Red and Amazon rivers to evaluate and model the inputs to the adjacent Gulf of Tonkin or Tropical Atlantic, ii) to evaluate the role of natural buffer zones (mangroves, floodplains) in the PFAS fate, and iii) to investigate the PFAS transfer to aquatic species in the Red River plume flagship aquaculture species and in a comprehensive biota sample-set acquired in the Amazon plume.
FLUOREAL primary hypotheses (HYP) are i) it is hardly possible to account for the everchanging variety of PFAS and TOPA is advantageous to account for unidentified PFAS, ii) PFAS are overlooked in low-/middle-income countries (e.g., Vietnam, Brazil) where the pollution is considerable, and iii) large rivers are the main route for PFAS from inland to the coast. FLUOREAL proposes to confirm or not these HYP through 6 Tasks: T0 devoted to the project management, T1 dedicated to exploring the benefits and limitations of TOPA (HYP 1), and T2 to 5 dealing with the Red and Amazon rivers PFAS loads in water, sediment and biota (HYP 2 and 3).
Besides the scientific coordinator analytical chemistry skills, FLUOREAL aggregates physical modeling and ecology expertise from six French, Vietnamese or Brasilian laboratories, with a key point being the transfer of expertise and the results dissemination to Vietnam and Brazil. In addition to scientific skills, international partners provide FLUOREAL priceless sample sets already acquired and operational relay for organizing FLUOREAL sampling campaigns.
FLUOREAL fits the “One health” concept and “Axe H2 Contaminants, écosystèmes et santé”, since it relies on the quality status of the water resource, exposure of marine species of economic interest, and potential human exposure to PFAS.