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> I presume it is possible for these industrial uses to cause significant pollution, but you mean that it is not difficult to prevent pollution from these proce
by kortex 4y ago
> I presume it is possible for these industrial uses to cause significant pollution, but you mean that it is not difficult to prevent pollution from these processes because they happen in controlled locations?
Fluoropolymers don't really leach in significant quantities on commercial timescales. That would sort of defeat their purpose of being inert. So there is a huge difference between "these teflon o-rings in this chemical plant leach 0.1 ppb of small molecule PFAS per day" and "millions of teflon pans go into the landfill each year". And further still to "we produce railcars worth of volatile fluoropolymer monomers for producing teflon and viton".
> I believe a lot of PFAS contamination comes from the production process itself.
This exactly. Low-molecular-weight PFAS are much more mobile than high weight, thus more polluting. Once "bound" in a polymer, the leaching is minimal. The problem is the production process, where you have primarily the small molecules, which inevitably get into the environment.