A family of toxic, indestructible chemicals have contaminated the planet over the past 80 years, risking people’s health. Engineers are now racing to find ways to scrub those chemicals from our environment.
They are estimated to be present in the blood of 99% of humans in the world but our bodies cannot get rid of them. Since their invention in the 1940s, they have spread worldwide and have been found in places as unexpected as the Antarctic ice sheet and the blood of Siberian seals. They are poly- and perfluorinated alkyl substances (PFAS), also known as ‘forever chemicals’ due to their unbreakable chemical structure. However, engineers at London-based start-up Puraffinity think they are on the verge of being able to eliminate them from our drinking water.
Puraffinity’s quest started with a university challenge in 2014, when the company’s founders were students at Imperial College London. Led by Henrik Hagemann, the students set out to develop a cheap water purification technology that...