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January 23, 2025

Title: Predictions of PFAS in groundwater at drinking water supply depths in the United States

Date:  January 24, 2025 at 2:00-2:30 pm Eastern/11:00 -11:30 am Pacific 

Speakers:  Kelly Smalling, Research Hydrologist, New Jersey Water Science Center

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), known colloquially as “forever chemicals,” have been associated with adverse human health effects and have contaminated drinking water supplies across the United States owing to their long-term and widespread use. People in the United States may unknowingly be drinking water that contains PFAS because of a lack of systematic analysis, particularly in domestic water supplies. We present an extreme gradient–boosting model for predicting the occurrence of PFAS in groundwater at the depths of drinking water supply for the conterminous United States. Our model results indicate that 71 million to 95 million people in the conterminous United States potentially rely on groundwater with detectable concentrations of PFAS for their drinking water supplies before any treatment.

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