PFAs and their impact on the environment

 


Visiting the beach is one of my favorite things despite living in a desert, making such opportunities a luxury. Out of all marine animals, sharks fascinated me, making them one of my favorite animals, particularly hammerheads. This fascination ignited my interest in marine life, and after watching The Meg, I never looked back.

This initial captivation evolved into exploring environmental science. Driven by this desire to understand the connections between marine ecosystems and the environmental impact of human activities, I started looking into documentaries about marine life. During this research, I came across The Blue Planet II, in which David Attenborough depicts humanity's deleterious influence on the world's oceans through global pollution. Through this, I learned about environmental issues, including overfishing, pollution, and climate change.

I started doing more digging and came across a not-so-well-known issue: PFAs. They occur in everyday household items like nonstick pans or fast food packaging. PFAs, due to their carbon-fluorine bond, do not degrade. They pose a threat not only to the environment but to human health. PFAs are linked to many health issues, such as hormonal disruptions and increased risk of cancer. Unfortunately, I have more of a connection to this than I’d prefer. Recently, my uncle, an East Coast resident, got diagnosed with stage-3 colorectal cancer. Other factors contributed to his cancer, but PFAs contributed more. Not only does he eat out often, he uses nonstick pans. On the East Coast, the water and marine animals have been contaminated with these forever chemicals. Due to PFAs leeching in waterways, bioaccumulation in organisms causes long-lasting environmental damage, affecting soil fertility and disrupting food chains, having a direct and lasting impact.
PFAs represent a colossal blunder of modern chemistry; most are oblivious to it; ignorance is indeed not bliss. The public needs to know more about PFAs and their impact. These chemicals' ability to insidiously and incrementally accumulate in the human body over time adds to the potential long-term health risks associated with exposure.

While visiting the beach still holds a special place in my heart, I know that behind the beauty, there lies danger, and that danger comes not from sharks but from us. We have manufactured our jump scares in movies about sharks; whereas nature has been only natural, our artificiality has poisoned our everyday lives for temporary conveniences. We should see beauty in the shark but also the monster in ourselves. 

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