{"id":204423,"date":"2025-01-24T03:48:45","date_gmt":"2025-01-24T09:48:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/01\/bacteria-found-to-eat-forever-chemicals-and-even-some-of-their-toxic-byproducts"},"modified":"2025-01-24T03:48:45","modified_gmt":"2025-01-24T09:48:45","slug":"bacteria-found-to-eat-forever-chemicals-and-even-some-of-their-toxic-byproducts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/01\/bacteria-found-to-eat-forever-chemicals-and-even-some-of-their-toxic-byproducts","title":{"rendered":"Bacteria found to eat forever chemicals, and even some of their toxic byproducts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/bacteria-found-to-eat-forever-chemicals-and-even-some-of-their-toxic-byproducts2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>In the quest to take the \u201cforever\u201d out of \u201cforever chemicals,\u201d bacteria might be our ally. Most remediation of per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) involves adsorbing and trapping them, but certain microbes can actually break apart the strong chemical bonds that allow these chemicals to persist for so long in the environment.<\/p>\n<p>Now, a University at Buffalo-led team has identified a strain of bacteria that can break down and transform at least three types of PFAS, and perhaps even more crucially, some of the toxic byproducts of the bond-breaking process.<\/p>\n<p>Published in this month\u2019s issue of <i>Science of the Total Environment<\/i>, <a href=\"https:\/\/linkinghub.elsevier.com\/retrieve\/pii\/S0048969724085061\" target=\"_blank\">the team\u2019s study<\/a> found that Labrys portucalensis F11 (F11) metabolized over 90% of perfluorooctane <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/sulfonic+acid\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">sulfonic acid<\/a> (PFOS) following an exposure period of 100 days. PFOS is one of the most frequently detected and persistent types of PFAS and was designated hazardous by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency last year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the quest to take the \u201cforever\u201d out of \u201cforever chemicals,\u201d bacteria might be our ally. Most remediation of per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) involves adsorbing and trapping them, but certain microbes can actually break apart the strong chemical bonds that allow these chemicals to persist for so long in the environment. Now, a University at [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,19,1506],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-204423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biological","category-chemistry","category-food"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204423\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}