Formatted Title
The PFAS Waste Maze (Interactive Poster)
Background/Objectives
Defining and characterizing fate and transport routes of past, present and future PFAS chemistries moving through the waste management network is an enormous challenge for professionals seeking to protect the environment and human health. Limited understanding of PFAS dispersion, transformation and risk currently exists in most solid waste settings, including the creation of secondary waste such as effluent, leachate, sludge, biosolids and air emissions when discharged/disposed untreated to the environment.
Approach/Activities
We present a new 'PFAS Waste Maze' graphic in the form of an interactive poster linked to an online survey (accessible via QR-Code) to consult Battelle 2024 delegates and share the survey results. The poster format allows for an enlarged infographic to describe the detailed and complex PFAS waste pathways, including annotated facts/figures from recent publications by Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA)/ Barr Eng. (2023), Tolaymat (Sep. 2023) and Masoner (2020) reporting on PFAS inventories and knowledge gaps at a cohort of representative US landfills during 2018-2022.
Results/Lessons Learned
The lessons learned will occur during the conference poster session when delegates respond to the interactive PFAS Waste Maze poster by answering real-time survey questions including, but not limited to: (1) why is the waste sector not regulated by guidelines similar to contaminated sites; (2) which part of the waste management network is best suited to treat/destroy PFAS; (3) what type of funding models are needed to contain/treat PFAS so that it is not released/disposed untreated to the environment; (4) do regulators, conceptual site modelling (CSM) practitioners and human health and environmental risk assessors (HHERA) apply appropriate risk appreciation/calculations to secondary waste outputs and emissions arising from the solid waste network?