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

Nextech创新专注于高效去除饮用水中的有毒PFAS“永久化学品”，具有显著的经济和健康相关后果。多氟烷基物质（PFAS）通常被称为“永久化学品”，是一组超过4，700种工业化学品，广泛用于防水和防油处理，在食品包装，消费品，服装，和灭火泡沫。PFAS中的化学键是自然界已知的最强的化学键之一，因此一些PFAS可能需要超过1,000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生物积累，对人类和野生动物有毒，导致免疫力下降，感染增加，胆固醇增加;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、甲状腺和睾酮水平变化，发育神经毒性作用，睾丸癌; PFAS在制造、使用和处置过程中进入环境，尽管没有天然来源，但在地球仪的空气、水和土壤中已记录到PFAS，污染饮用水和食物链。在环境署的监测计划下，PFAS已在90%以上的欧洲河流和所有从英国淡水、河口和沿海沃茨取样的鱼类中检测到。据信超过95%的人类血液中含有PFAS。提供饮用水的自来水公司对PFAS去除的“未解决问题”的选择有限，而且所有这些都很麻烦，成本高，效率低。它们依赖于过滤或捕获方法，所有这些方法都会产生浓缩的PFAS废物，这些废物需要进行处理或返回环境。Nextech对这一需求的响应结合了两种技术，包括低成本，高效的捕获/过滤，以提高去除率，并在污水中结合PFAS销毁技术，在组合过程中完全消除有毒化学品。需求是巨大的，全球性的，它影响到每个人，不论其经济、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.