Per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in water matrices impacted by industrial activities: Challenges and treatment strategies
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are increasingly recognized for their adverse effects on the environment and human health. Here, we offer a comprehensive review of PFAS existing in water matrices affected by industrial activities, delving into their characterization, human exposure pathways, toxicological effects, the evolving landscape of regulatory measures, and potential treatment strategies. Current adsorption, oxidation, and membrane-based techniques exhibit critical limitations, including inadequate removal efficiency for emerging/short-chain PFAS, persistent toxic byproduct generation, and prohibitive operational costs at scale. Thus, a critical aspect of this review is the exploration of advanced treatment techniques for PFAS-laden waters affected by industrial activities and the use of commercial products. We systematically examine an array of treatment technologies, including carbon-based adsorbents, biopolymers, anion exchange resins, foam fractionation, membrane-based separation systems, and innovative on-site destructive methods, such as electrochemical oxidation, photolysis, and sonolysis. Additionally, this review covers the latest advancements in piezocatalysis and micro-/nanobubble technologies. Standalone treatment processes are usually insufficient for complex PFAS mixtures, as no single technology can sustainably and cost-effectively remove both short- and long-chain PFAS. We, therefore, highlight the increased efficiency, both technical and economic, of certain combined or integrated treatment processes in removing a broad group of PFAS. By consolidating current findings and identifying key research gaps, this review provides practical guidance for developing cost-effective, scalable, and sustainable PFAS treatment or remediation strategies. Future work should advance scalable PFAS treatment technologies, deepen mechanistic understandings of branched and ether-PFAS degradation, and address long-term monitoring and regulatory alignment for commercial implementation, alongside non-targeted analysis and ecotoxicity assessment of transformation products.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".