{"id":225655,"date":"2025-11-22T09:03:55","date_gmt":"2025-11-22T15:03:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/11\/researchers-uncover-the-source-of-widespread-forever-chemical-contamination-in-north-carolina"},"modified":"2025-11-22T09:03:55","modified_gmt":"2025-11-22T15:03:55","slug":"researchers-uncover-the-source-of-widespread-forever-chemical-contamination-in-north-carolina","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/11\/researchers-uncover-the-source-of-widespread-forever-chemical-contamination-in-north-carolina","title":{"rendered":"Researchers uncover the source of widespread \u2018forever chemical\u2019 contamination in North Carolina"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/researchers-uncover-the-source-of-widespread-forever-chemical-contamination-in-north-carolina2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>An environmental chemistry laboratory at Duke University has solved a longstanding mystery of the origin of high levels of PFAS\u2014so-called \u201cforever chemicals\u201d\u2014contaminating water sources in the Piedmont region of North Carolina.<\/p>\n<p>By sampling and analyzing sewage in and around Burlington, NC, the researchers traced the chemicals to a local textile manufacturing plant. The source remained hidden for years because the facility was not releasing chemical forms of PFAS that are regulated and monitored. The culprit was instead solid nanoparticle PFAS \u201cprecursors\u201d that degrade into the chemicals that current tests are designed to detect.<\/p>\n<p>Incredibly, these precursors were being released into the sewer system at concentrations up to 12 million parts-per-trillion\u2014approximately 3 million times greater than the Environmental Protection Agency\u2019s recently-enacted drinking water regulatory limit for certain types of PFAS.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An environmental chemistry laboratory at Duke University has solved a longstanding mystery of the origin of high levels of PFAS\u2014so-called \u201cforever chemicals\u201d\u2014contaminating water sources in the Piedmont region of North Carolina. By sampling and analyzing sewage in and around Burlington, NC, the researchers traced the chemicals to a local textile manufacturing plant. The source remained [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":732,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,4,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-225655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chemistry","category-nanotechnology","category-sustainability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225655","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\/732"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225655"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225655\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}