Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a class of synthetic compounds, and there is growing concern that exposure to PFAS can lead to adverse health outcomes. PFAS air emissions may contribute to human exposure through direct inhalation or ingestion of contaminated food and water after deposition to ecosystems.
This Environmental Protection Agency webinar will discuss air quality modeling techniques being developed to quantify the atmospheric air concentrations and deposition rates of PFAS from large fluorochemical manufacturers. Specifically, the Community Multiscale Air Quality model (CMAQ) is applied to a case study in Eastern North Carolina to model the PFAS emissions and transport at fine scale (1 km horizontal resolution). These results are an important step in understanding the behavior of significant PFAS emissions from a point source, and can be used to inform PFAS emission inventory development as well as studies quantifying exposure and biological effects.