Per Erin Baker, CAPTURE Core Director, Despite decades of monitoring, PFAS can be challenging to catalog. To validate the ID, you’re supposed to check that your analyses match those of a “standard” sample of the substance that you either purchase or synthesize, says Erin Baker, an associate professor of chemistry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an author on the new study. But standard samples don’t exist for most PFAS yet, and many are too difficult or expensive to synthesize in labs. Creative techniques give researchers more power to identify the mysterious characteristics of these chemicals, Baker says.
Kaylie Kirkwood-Donelson, one of the main contributors on the paper. Kirkwood-Donelson, now a chemist at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, was a graduate student and research assistant at North Carolina State University’s Center for Environmental and Health Effects of PFAS while conducting this work. Click HERE to read the full article.