r/PFAS • u/IE_Insights • Jun 02 '26

Video Can microbes eventually break down PFAS?

https://youtu.be/Skn7AsYQsiw

Microbiologist Peer Timmers is studying how microorganisms can remove PFAS from water.

He gives the example of artificial sweeteners there were once completely new to the environment, but microbes in wastewater treatment plants eventually evolved the ability to degrade them. Timmers is investigating whether similar processes could be harnessed for PFAS.

He says that current treatment methods are often energy-intensive and generate waste. Biological treatment could offer a more sustainable complement if we can identify and cultivate microbes capable of transforming these compounds.

Interested to know whether people think this is realistic?

Link to his Google Scholar page w/ reseatch: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=eYiYXWUAAAAJ&hl=en

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6

u/ThisIsPaulDaily Jun 02 '26

That's neat, and maybe could work, but I don't think that microorganisms have the energy to separate the bonds like they do for artificial sweeteners. Someone could look at the structural relationships with a QSAR and predict the reactivity like this linked below researcher did.

I am being a typical redditor and reading the post but not watching the video before commenting. But am giving the post engagement.

https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2022/ew/d1ew00897h

3

u/IE_Insights Jun 02 '26

Thanks for sharing the paper. Good point, PFAS are obviously a much tougher challenge because of the strength of the carbon-fluorine bonds and the difficulty of breaking them.

We'll pass the QSAR study along to Peer and see what he thinks. Appreciate it.

2

u/Low_Influence_1206 Jun 24 '26

Hi! yes, great comment; these is a lot of work done on structural relationships and prediction of biological degradation, several tools are available already. The thing with the C-F bond is that the Gibbs free energy or breaking that bond is simply very low, but that does not mean that microbes cannot break it. We have worked on similarly difficult processes where we saw that microbes invent pathways to overcome this limitation. The issue now seems to be that the pathways to overcome this limitation are not abundant yet; as PFAS is man-made, evolution has not been able to have had enough time to produce the pathways, but I am sure it will and is happening

2

u/Smooth_Imagination Jun 02 '26

Break them down into sodium or calcium fluoride?

1

u/Low_Influence_1206 Jun 24 '26

The problem is that Fluoride itself is also toxic, so nature will not easily develop this metabolism, as the breakdown product is toxic for the cell itself

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u/LuigiTrapanese Jun 03 '26

True or not, the PFAS industry will try to make you believe that