Innovation for removal of toxic poly-fluorinated alkyl substances (PFAS) from drinking water.

Nextech的创新专注于有效去除饮用水中的有毒PFAS“永久化学物质”，这对经济和健康都有重大影响。多氟烷基物质（PFAS）通常被称为“永远的化学品”，是一组超过4,700种工业化学品，广泛用于食品包装、消费品、服装和消防泡沫等领域的防水和防油处理。PFAS中的化学键是自然界已知的最强的化学键之一，所以一些PFAS可能需要1000多年才能降解，这意味着几乎所有的PFAS都仍然存在于我们的环境中。PFAS具有生物蓄积性，对人类和野生动物有毒，导致免疫力下降；增加感染;增加胆固醇;溃疡性结肠炎;婴儿出生体重下降，胎儿和新生儿死亡率增加，肝脏、甲状腺和睾丸激素水平改变，发育神经毒性作用，睾丸癌；肾癌。PFAS在制造、使用和处置过程中进入环境，尽管在全球的空气、水和土壤中没有记录到天然来源，但它污染了饮用水和食物链。在英国环境署的监测项目下，在欧洲90%的河流以及英国淡水、河口和沿海水域采集的所有鱼类样本中都检测到PFAS。据信超过95%的人血液中都含有PFAS。提供饮用水的自来水公司对去除PFAS的“未解决问题”的选择有限，而且都是繁琐、昂贵和低效的。它们依赖于过滤或捕获方法，所有这些方法都会产生高浓度的PFAS废物，需要处理或返回环境。针对这一需求，Nextech结合了两种技术，包括低成本、高效的捕获/过滤技术，以提高去除率，并在反冲洗废水中结合PFAS破坏技术，在联合过程中完全消除有毒化学物质。这种需求是巨大的、全球性的，影响到每个人，无论其经济、社会、环境、文化或政治地位如何。

Nextech innovation focusses on efficient removal of toxic PFAS "forever chemicals" from drinking water, with significant economic and health related consequences.Poly-fluorinated alkyl substances (PFAS) commonly known as "forever chemicals" are a group of over 4,700 industrial chemicals widely used as water and oil repellent treatments, in food packaging, consumer products, clothing, and firefighting foams.The chemical bond in PFAS is one of the strongest known to nature so it can take over 1,000 years for some PFAS to degrade meaning that almost all the PFAS ever made is still in our environment.PFAS bioaccumulate and are toxic to humans and wildlife causing reduced immunity; increased infections; increased cholesterol; ulcerative colitis; decreased infant birth weight and increased foetal and neonatal mortality, changes to the liver, thyroid and testosterone levels, developmental neurotoxic effects, testicular cancer; kidney cancer.PFAS enter the environment during manufacture, use, and disposal, and despite no natural sources have been recorded in air, water and soils across the globe, contaminating drinking water and food chains. PFAS have been detected in \>90% of European rivers, and all fish sampled from UK fresh, estuarine and coastal waters under Environment Agency's monitoring programmes. Over 95% of humans are believed to have PFAS in their blood.Water utilities providing drinking water have limited options to the "unsolved problem" of PFAS removal and all are cumbersome, costly, and inefficient. They rely on filtration or capture methods, and all create concentrated PFAS waste that needs to be disposed of or returned to the environment.Nextech response to this need combines two technologies involving low-cost, efficient capture/filtration to increase removal rate and combining a PFAS destruction technology in backwash effluent, completely eliminating the toxic chemicals in a combined process.The need is large, global, and affects everyone irrespective of economic, social, environmental, cultural or political status.