How can Colorado attack “forever chemicals” tainting military soil? School of Mines is leading the way to find out.
Barrels of soil tainted with toxic PFAS “forever chemicals” sit at Schriever Space Force Base outside Colorado Springs, the tip of a literal and metaphorical mountain of contamination sprawling across nearly 200 military bases nationally.
The Colorado School of Mines now offers a slight glimmer of hope for the bottomless pile of bad news about PFAS.
Early next year, chemists and engineers led by the Golden university will start attacking those barrels with nine different potential methods for removing the contamination, in search of solutions for hundreds of tainted sites across the country. Even the environmental watchdogs cataloging the depressing toll of “forever chemicals” throughout the food chain say they are encouraged by the School of Mines test.
“A methodology for effectively cleaning up contaminated soil is urgently needed due to the incredible extent of PFAS contamination across the country and the world,” said David Andrews, senior scientist for the Environmental Working Group, a leading nonprofit on PFAS issues. “These techniques all show promise.”
Mines is using a $3.5 million Department of Defense grant to manage side-by-side experiments on the Schriever base, proposed by five private companies and the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Clarkson University will manage another set of experiments for a total of nine different potential methods.
The goal, Mines engineering professor and lead investigator Christopher Higgins said, is to find ways to break down and eliminate toxic chemicals that can last thousands of years while slowly leaking into surface and groundwater leading to neighboring communities across America.
“It could be centuries before all of these chemicals completely leach out of the soils and sediments into the groundwater and migrate down or further away,” Higgins said.