Discovery, Fate, and Disposition of Polyfluorinated Chemicals & Design of Benign Materials

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Our group explores the human and environmental implications of fluorinated chemical pollution and endeavours to understand the fundamental mechanisms at play so that we can advise as to corrective measures. We have made a number of discoveries that have positively influenced industry and government regulators to remove impurities in consumer products and alter the basic chemical architecture thereby helping reduce contamination of both humans and the environment. Our work seeks to better understand how the natural world works chemically by using chemical pollutants as experimental probes. Knowledge learned to data is being incorporated into the design of a new set of fluorinated surfactants that will have chemical architecture matched to take advantage of the capacity of the natural world to cleanse itself. Our objective is to design fluorinated chemical architectures that work well for their intended uses but are readily degraded and therefore benign to humans and the environment.