Periodic Reporting for period 1 - ZeroPM (ZeroPM: Zero pollution of Persistent, Mobile substances)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2021-10-01 al 2023-03-31
Persistent and mobile substances are those that that do not degrade in the environment and can readily be transported by groundwater or through drinking water purification treatment plants. They pose a growing threat to water quality in Europe and worldwide, particularly in regions with poor monitoring or treatment technologies available. The most widely known type of persistent and mobile (PM) substances are PFAS, which stands for per- and polyfluorinated alkyl substances (PFAS), which is nearly ubiquitous in Europe's drinking water supplies. In some areas, like the Rastatt area in Germany, this has exceeding safe drinking limits, causing residents to import water and upgrade their water treatment facility. But PFAS is just one group pf PM substances. There are many, many more, and their presences is increasing. The importance of limiting the release of PM substances is based on growing evidence that they are increasingly accumulating over time and space, entering drinking water sources and re-circulating within anthropogenic and natural water cycles. Consequently, even for PM substances where their toxic hazards have not yet been identified, there is concern that their long-term legacy potential to accumulate may lead to unexpected consequences to the general population, even over inter-generational time scales.
To protect the environment and human health from PM substances, the H2020 project ZeroPM: Zero pollution of Persistent, Mobile substances will interlink and synergize prevention, prioritization and removal approaches. ZeroPM, through its multidisciplinary team, will establish an evidence-based multilevel framework to guide policy, technological and market incentives to minimize use, emissions and pollution of entire groups of PM substances including PFAS.
To protect the environment and human health from PM substances, the H2020 project ZeroPM: Zero pollution of Persistent, Mobile substances will interlink and synergize prevention, prioritization and removal approaches. ZeroPM, through its multidisciplinary team, will establish an evidence-based multilevel framework to guide policy, technological and market incentives to minimize use, emissions and pollution of entire groups of PM substances including PFAS.
Prevention: ZeroPM has been establishing ways to identify safer and more sustainable alternatives to PFAS and PM substances. Progress on this work has with cosmetics now complete, and the project is no expanding in to other use areas of PM substances. As part of this, characterization factors for life cycle impact assessment of products and processes are being established. Work has also focused on essential use of PFAS, both the application of the concept to several case studies as well as the social aspect of essentiality. Quantitative and qualitative data have been collected from experts and non-experts related to PFAS perceptions. These surveys indicate that there are clear differences between the experts and non-experts about their knowledge of PFAS. ZeroPM has mapped the relevant policy landscape that supports the prevention of PMT/vPvM substance emissions to the environment as communicated in a project policy brief. Gaps and opportunities within the current framework are being identified. The ZeroPM regulatory watch (https://zeropm.eu/regulatory-watch/) has been launched and provides monthly updates on relevant EU legislation and policies. ZeroPM has developed and released an online "PFAS guide" (pfas.chemsec.org) which will assist companies in mapping and phasing out the use of PFAS in their products and processes.
Prioritization: To identify what substance groups of PM substances to prioritize, a digital global chemical inventory has been established, synthesizing chemical registries from around the world of chemicals on the market. Specific focus has been on understanding and assessing complex mixtures. Transformation data is an important aspect for the project and we have worked on the addition of new structures and transformation product data for PFAS and PM substances (S74 REFTPS DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.4318838 and S68 HSDBTPS DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.3827487) as well as prototype Shiny interface for curating transformation product data has been drafted. Further a database of PFAS have been made available, called the PubChem PFAS Tree which enables users to navigate the PFAS universe (https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/classification/#hid=120). To better understand the risk of substance groups in water resources, effort has focused on coding a fugacity model to look at relevant exposure scenarios. Human in vitro-in vivo extrapolation physiologically based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) model have been applied to select PFAS, triazines and triazoles. In the laboratory, the hazard tool box is being built and a screening with 36 substances has been carried out for various endpoints. Most activity was observed for triazole substances. Work is now continuing looking at developmental and immunotoxic effects in zebrafish embryos.
Removal: Pilot scale technologies are being installed at three test sites (Rastatt, Upper Rhine and Mytilene) in existing water treatment works or in a pilot plant to be installed during the project. Much testing and optimization has been done as part of establishing the pilot plant at the waterworks the Rastatt test site, which is severely contaminated by PFAS originating from the application of sludge containing paper pulp. Experimental work has identified suitable passive sampling materials that will be used in devices installed at test sites Upper Rhine and Mytilene to determine concentrations of PFAS, triazines and triazoles in water and wastewater. As part of the pilot plant being developed in Mytilene, lab scale anaerobic digestion (AD) experiments have been conducted to evaluate the role of different conductive materials and application of voltage. Hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) experiments have also been performed to check the role of temperature, pressure and pH. Results show that longer chain PFAS and larger benzotriazoles were removed to a higher extent during AD and that higher pH values favour the removal of selected PM substances.
Prioritization: To identify what substance groups of PM substances to prioritize, a digital global chemical inventory has been established, synthesizing chemical registries from around the world of chemicals on the market. Specific focus has been on understanding and assessing complex mixtures. Transformation data is an important aspect for the project and we have worked on the addition of new structures and transformation product data for PFAS and PM substances (S74 REFTPS DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.4318838 and S68 HSDBTPS DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.3827487) as well as prototype Shiny interface for curating transformation product data has been drafted. Further a database of PFAS have been made available, called the PubChem PFAS Tree which enables users to navigate the PFAS universe (https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/classification/#hid=120). To better understand the risk of substance groups in water resources, effort has focused on coding a fugacity model to look at relevant exposure scenarios. Human in vitro-in vivo extrapolation physiologically based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) model have been applied to select PFAS, triazines and triazoles. In the laboratory, the hazard tool box is being built and a screening with 36 substances has been carried out for various endpoints. Most activity was observed for triazole substances. Work is now continuing looking at developmental and immunotoxic effects in zebrafish embryos.
Removal: Pilot scale technologies are being installed at three test sites (Rastatt, Upper Rhine and Mytilene) in existing water treatment works or in a pilot plant to be installed during the project. Much testing and optimization has been done as part of establishing the pilot plant at the waterworks the Rastatt test site, which is severely contaminated by PFAS originating from the application of sludge containing paper pulp. Experimental work has identified suitable passive sampling materials that will be used in devices installed at test sites Upper Rhine and Mytilene to determine concentrations of PFAS, triazines and triazoles in water and wastewater. As part of the pilot plant being developed in Mytilene, lab scale anaerobic digestion (AD) experiments have been conducted to evaluate the role of different conductive materials and application of voltage. Hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) experiments have also been performed to check the role of temperature, pressure and pH. Results show that longer chain PFAS and larger benzotriazoles were removed to a higher extent during AD and that higher pH values favour the removal of selected PM substances.
ZeroPM will be the path finding project that enables the ambitions of the Chemicals Strategy to become an on-the-ground reality. ZeroPM will deliver political, economic, scientific and societal impacts. Policy will be improved via the identification of opportunities, sector use and substance maps and improved risk assessment methods. The economic impact will be felt as companies are able to increase their competitiveness by staying ahead of new regulation and reacting proactively, through an increase in competitiveness and business opportunities generated from alternatives assessment methods, innovation tools to support the replacement of harmful PM substances, communication that is more fitting to disseminate economic and societal benefits, and improved use and development of remediation solutions. The scientific impact will be a movement that goes beyond the state of the art for this field through the generation of new persistent and mobile substance property databases that are open access, the development of grouping approaches, the advancement of remediation solutions and the establishment of chemicals alternatives assessment methods. The societal impact will be felt as an improvement of life quality bought about by a better understanding of risk perception, more informed exposure assessments and the identification of alternatives to harmful PM substances. These efforts together will advance the EU's ambition towards Zero Pollution, by reducing the uses of persistent and mobile substance groups unless essential, as well as develop strategies for better managing and removing essential and legacy persistent and mobile substances.