Aerosolisation of “forever chemicals” from contaminated water 

Poly- and perfluoro alkyl substances (PFASs), also known as “forever chemicals”, are persistent in the environment and are challenging to eliminate. There is a growing concern over their widespread presence in the environment and potential adverse effects on human health and ecosystems. Most of the current studies on PFAS pollution are related to aqueous and soil matrices while less emphasis has been given to their relevance to air quality. Several recent studies reported presence of PFASs in atmosphere; however, their atmospheric sources, especially for restricted for more than a decade perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS), are not well understood (e.g. Kourtchev et al., 2022; Zhou et al., 2021). Wastewater treatment (WWT) plants are repositories of 1000s of pollutants including PFASs (Barisci & Suri, 2021). Aerosolisation/volatilisation during WWT processes (e.g., aeration, trickling filtration) is suggested as one of the potential sources of PFASs in the atmosphere. However, to the best of our knowledge, aerosolisation potential of PFASs was conducted on a very small number of molecules from that class and under relevant to other than WWT processes conditions e.g., seaspray. The aim of this work is to investigate, for the first time, the aerosolisation potential of the extensive number of PFASs from contaminated waters under relevant to WWT plant conditions.