What is the Environmental Health Matters Initiative (EHMI)?
The National Academies has recently launched the Environmental Health Matters Initiative (EHMI) as a trans-disciplinary, cross-sector approach to advance solutions to challenging environmental health challenges. Through a series of meetings and workshops, the environmental health community will engage leaders from various sectors and disciplines to identify important environmental health problems, explore their complexity, and advance solutions needed to address them. Exploring the complexity of issues with a cross-sector and trans-disciplinary lens will uncover important scientific questions that must be answered to make progress; interventions that need to be developed; barriers to implementing interventions; opportunities for innovation; and actors who can contribute to progress. The primary product for each meeting will be an “opportunity landscape” that maps actions and leadership opportunities to various sectors.
PFAS Workshop
The first workshop to be held under the EHMI will focus on poly- and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) exposure, prevention, and treatment, and center around the goals stated below. The workshop is scheduled for September 26-27, 2019, and will generate content that will articulate actions and provide motivation for moving forward on these actions.
Instructions
Thank you for agreeing to share your input on PFAS exposure, treatment, and prevention. In this questionnaire, you will be asked to provide your input on needed actions, barriers to taking those actions, and actors who can overcome those barriers and move the needle on understanding the extent of exposure to PFAS, developing treatment options, and preventing future exposure.
The questionnaire will go through each of the three main goals: first exposure, then treatment, then prevention. You may provide input on one goal, two goals, or all three goals. You will be asked about actions and their corresponding barriers and actors for each goal. You will have the option to provide up to three actions to address each goal. If you do not wish to provide input on a goal, or you would only like to provide one or two actions for a goal, simply click "no" when asked and you will proceed to the next set of questions.
The attached information request serves to gather input from the broad Environmental Health Matters Initiative community. The information you provide may be made public by the National Academies at the PFAS workshop from September 26-27, 2019, and by responding to this request, you agree that your input may be used and cited (with proper attribution to you) by the National Academies in the final opportunity landscape product.
Goals of the PFAS Workshop
- Identify possible knowledge gaps in our understanding of the current extent of human exposure to PFAS on the basis of PFAS production, use, and human exposure data.
- Explore options for controlling PFAS exposures, such as treatment or remediation methods for various media, and to identify potential implications of various methods when the entire system is considered (for example, a treatment method that removes PFAS from water but generates a contaminated sludge that needs to be disposed).
- Consider innovative upstream options to prevent PFAS exposures, for example, by using concepts from the field of alternatives assessment.
- Articulate actions that can be taken by various sectors to advance our understanding of human exposure to PFAS, to implement or develop treatment or prevention approaches to reduce PFAS exposure, and to reduce barriers to taking such actions.
Overview
Poly- and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are manmade chemicals widely used in fire-fighting foam and in consumer goods to endow water/oil repellence and a nonstick surface. PFAS are formed by strings of strong C-F bonds and do not degrade by natural metabolic processes. They are highly mobile and extremely persistent, moving through water and air and depositing in soil and aquifers.