Human Practices

Introduction

Perfluorinated Compounds (PFCs) are everywhere. Due to their ability to make materials heat, stain, and stick resistant, PFCs are found in clothing, cookware, carpeting, and other everyday items.
The prevalence of PFC water contamination on Air Force installations and in the surrounding areas have become a significant concern of the United States Air Force.

The PFC contamination on and around Air Force installations stems from the use of fire fighting foam containing these chemicals. This fire fighting foam has caused contamination in 203 installations, including on the United States Air Force Academy Air Force Base (AFB) as well as Peterson AFB, both in Colorado Springs.
Additionally, the Air Force has already spent $357 million in clean up efforts. The military forsees spending up to $2 billion in efforts of ridding Air Force installations of PFC contamination in water.

This contamination was brought to our attention by an instructor in the department of biology here at USAFA that worked with PFCs as a bioenvironmental engineer in Air Force.

The instructor that revealed this issue to the team previously worked at Eielson AFB near Fairbanks, Alaska. We spoke with another Bioenvironmental Engineer that is currently at this Air Force base about an established method of removing PFCs from water. They use a granular activated carbon (GAC) system to filter out PFCs. Although this was effective in ridding contaminated water of the harmful chemicals, the engineers at Eielson AFB disposed of the PFCs by burning them. The impacts of burning PFCs is currently unknown. The inability to safely dispose of PFCs inspired the purpose of our degradation team.

We also met with bioenvironmental engineers at Peterson AFB here in Colorado Springs to learn more about the water testing process. From our discussions, we were able to reveal another large issue within this process that influenced another section of our project; detection. In order to test water samples for the presence of PFCs, samples have to be sent to labs across the country. They cannot be tested in-house. Because of this, detection of PFCs in local water samples is time consuming and expensive. The cost of shipping samples to labs creates is an expense that can be mitigated by the ability to test on site. More importantly, after sending samples to labs, it currently takes weeks, sometimes even months, to receive results. The fast-growing concern regarding PFC contamination makes receiving quicker results paramount.

The two major roadblocks in combating PFC contamination in the Air Force are the inability to degrade and detect PFCs in water. These two issues greatly influenced the design of our project. To make the detection process less expenive and time consuming, we decided to create a system that causes bacteria to turn pink when put into a contaminated water simple. This would allow detection results within 1 day and can be conducted on site. Additionally, we decided to investigate methods to degrade PFCs through Peroxide-catalyzed-degradation of the chemical backbone. Through both of these innovations, we will more efficiently and effectively fight PFC contamination.

At CSURF our team presented our research via poster presentation to other undergraduate researchers in the area at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. From this event, we were able to educate more people in our area about the local PFC contamination. Additionally, we spoke with students who are also researching PFCs and gained some insight into possible research from their findings.

We presented to children between the ages of 9 and 15 at the Pueblo Public Library in Colorado to begin to educate the youth about PFCs and general water contamination. During this even, we spoke to our research and explained what PFCs are and why they are a problem. Additionally, we facilitated hands-on activities, such as home-made water filtration systems and constructing Candy DNA, to give the students a basic understanding of genetics and why PFCs cannot be degraded with simple water purification techniques.

Multiple Colorado University iGEM teams, including Colorado School of Mines, the University of Colorado, Colorado State University, and the United States Air Force Academy, met to discuss the progress of their projects. This meeting functioned to network with other schools in the state in order to learn more about each others’ projects and possible ways to help facilitate each others’ growth including media outreach, sharing equipment, and brainstorming through discussing each others’ topics.

Bioenvironemental Engineers here at the Academy helped give the team an understanding of basic water testing techniques and technologies in order to have a basis of knowledge to begin our research.

Mr. Mark Favors was a previous resident of Fountain, Colorado, a town south of Peterson Air Force Base whose water supply is completely contaminated with PFCs, who has recently testified before the United States House of Representatives to advocate for oversight and reform on the military’s PFC contamination of community drinking water systems surrounding military bases. Mr. Favors and his family have been directly affected by PFC contamination as 16 of his family members living in Fountain have been diagnosed with cancer. Although it has not been confirmed that prolonged exposure to PFCs cause cancer, research on the correlation between this and cancer diagnosis is currently being pursued (Miller).

We made this team video in order to help educate people in our community learn about iGEM and our project! It functions as STEM outreach to spread the Word regarding PFC contamination and iGEM in a fun way that will resonate with the masses.

USAFA iGEM Video