PCBs: Toxic Cleanup Nightmare of the 1970s.
I've seen this before: Fifty years ago, the electrical power industry realized that a popular nonflammable dielectric fluid had a huge problem - it wouldn't degrade in the environment. Not biodegradable, it remained hundreds of years before it would break down. These dielectric fluids were a group of chemicals called PCBs that had been marketed for decades as safe, nonflammable coolants for transformers and capacitors. The nascent environmental movement recognized that PCBs persist in the environment and were starting to leak from old equipment, contaminating food chains and drinking water. As evidence of PCBs' lack of biodegradation mounted, world governments passed laws requiring the phaseout and destruction of PCB-containing equipment and expensive cleanup of landfills that contained PCB fluids. Billions of dollars were spent in the 1970s and 1980s in EPA "Superfund" sites to remove PCB contaminated equipment and soil.
It's Happening Again in Electronics Cooling.
Environmental Persistence
As with PCB compounds, fluorinated compounds do not break down easily in the environment, and can persist for hundreds of years. As with PCBs, PFAs are contaminating water sources and are accumulating in the environment. And, like PCBs, PFAs are linked to a host of endocrine and metabolic problems in humans. According to European scientists, these are the affects of PFAs on the human body: (1)