A forever chemical that could pose a risk to human fertility has been found in rivers across Britain.
Known as trifluoroacetic acid (TFA), the chemical is found in pharmaceuticals, pesticides, refrigerating and air conditioning fluids and industrial materials.
A study of 54 sites in 32 rivers across Britain found them in 31 rivers and 98 per cent of sites – indicating that they could be found in almost every river in the country, researchers said.
This is the first research looking at TFA levels in British rivers. TFA is part of a group of chemicals known as PFAS, or forever chemicals – so named because they are thought to take hundreds of years to break down.
Research into other kinds of forever chemicals has also found them to be widespread in the country.
Little is known about the risk forever chemicals pose to wildlife and human health as research is at an early stage.
However, scientists are typically concerned about anything which takes so long to break down and so can accumulate in human and wildlife systems.
And, in the case of TFA, it has been linked to birth defects in rabbits while similar PFAS chemicals have been shown to have effects on freshwater organisms.
The German Federal Environment Agency (UBA) has applied to the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) for TFA to be classified as toxic for reproduction.
“We looked at only 32 rivers and found it in 31 of these,” Professor Alistair Boxall, of York University, told The i Paper. “Given the many sources of TFA, it is likely to be almost everywhere,”
He said that the Netherlands have proposed “safe” concentrations for TFA in drinking water.
“While most levels we found were lower than this value, some of the concentrations we saw in rivers did exceed it,” Professor Boxall added.
“So given a lot of drinking water is taken from rivers and we know that the treatment processes aren’t very good at removing this chemical, it is certainly a concern.”
Nor is TFA confined to rivers.
“TFA appears to be everywhere. It has even been detected in cereals, beer and wine,” Jun Li, also of York University, told The i Paper.
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“While some countries have proposed ‘safe’ values, we still don’t really understand what the risk of this chemical is to human health.
“Given it is so widespread and so persistent, we should take a precautionary approach and try and keep the levels of human exposure to a minimum.”
For the study, scientists took samples from five rivers in Wales, three in Northern Ireland, 13 in Scotland and 11 in the north of England.
They found 98 per cent contained traces of TFA, with the highest concentration recorded on the River Kelvin in Glasgow.
This concentration – 78,464ng (nanograms – a billionth of a gram) per litre – is the second highest TFA river contamination ever recorded globally.
The only river not to contain traces of the chemical was the River Ness, which flows from Loch Ness to the Moray Firth.
The highest concentration of TFAs was found in Germany, where a sample from the Neckar River contained 140,000ng per litre in 2016.
The researchers say the average concentrations of TFA in the UK are at the “higher end” of the global scale compared with the results obtained from other studies.
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