One of the most ill-famed " forever chemicals " is perfluorooctanoic Zen or PFOA . By their very design , these substances are exceedingly hard to cheapen , which makes them very useful in industrial applications but also bad for our wellness and the environment as they tend to accumulate .

A couple of old age ago , researchers figure out out that using boron nitride – which is commercially used in cosmetics – and exposing it to ultraviolet ( UV ) radiation sickness at 254 nanometers , could put down 99 percent of PFOA in a water sample . A fantastic resultant role but one that required improvements .

“ That was not bad because PFOA is an increasingly debatable pollutant that ’s really hard to destroy , ” Michael Wong , from Rice University and corresponding author of the new research publish in theChemical Engineering Journal , allege in astatement . “ But it was also less than ideal because the boron nitride was activated by short - wave ultraviolet light , and the atmosphere strain out almost all of the brusk - waving UV from sunlight . We wanted to press as much as possible boron nitride ’s ability to get at energy from other wavelength of sunlight . ”

As reported in the new study , the solution to that setaceous problem was to employ titanium dioxide , another unwashed chemical that is used in substances like sun blocker . atomic number 22 dioxide is activate by the ultraviolet light that can penetrate the ozone level and it can bust down PFOA but very slowly compared to the very effective atomic number 5 nitride .

The team created a composite of boron nitride and titanium dioxide and discovered that they had a heart with the best of both worlds . It was actuate by the UV light in the atmosphere and it was capable of destroying PFOA very apace . In deionize water , it took less than three hr to fail down 99 percent of the PFOA intocarbon dioxide , fluorine , and minerals . In salty water supply , the process film about nine hour .

The squad will now investigate how practiced this substance is at separate down other perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl nitty-gritty ( PFAS ) – the broader social class of everlastingly chemicals . Recent recap of their chemistryhighlight just how small we know about them .