Polyfluorinated chemicals in European surface waters, ground- and drinking waters

Polyfluorinated chemicals (PFCs), especially short chain fluorinated alkyl sulfonates and carboxylates, are ubiquitously found in the environment. This chapter aims at giving an overview of PFC concentrations found in European surface, ground- and drinking waters and their behavior during conventional water treatment steps. Main PFC sources to the aquatic environment are municipal and industrial wastewater treatment plants. Treated landfill leachates also showed to be an important source of PFCs to surface waters. Existing data suggest central and south European rivers to have higher concentrations and mass discharges of PFCs than Northern European countries. However, this conclusion might be an artifact due to differences of monitoring activities in different regions. High PFC levels in groundwater are often restricted to some contaminated areas, e.g., due to illegal waste deposition on agricultural land or in the vicinity of a fluoropolymer producing factory. Sites with former fire-fighting activities are also potential "hot spot" areas. Concentrations encountered in drinking water remain fairly low on average. Typical concentrations are in the low ng/L range with the exception of highly contaminated areas, like in the Möhne and Ruhr area in Germany. The encountered concentrations in drinking water depend on the treatment technologies used to purify the water. Drinking water prepared with activated carbon or reverse osmosis will in general contain lower concentrations in tap water than in the raw water. However, the efficiency of water treatment depends much on the local boundary conditions.