PFAS Tracking in Surface Water and Fish Tissue Following Multiple AFFF Releases to a River: A Case Study

A release of AFFF occurred to a New England river via a waste/stormwater conveyance system, resulting in visible foam on the river at and near the point of river discharge. Following immediate response actions to curtail the release, a river assessment was undertaken to characterize PFAS concentrations in surface water, sediment, and fish. Further complicating matters, a second, separate AFFF release to the same reach of river occurred during the river assessment, presenting challenges in understanding whether PFAS levels from the initial release were declining. This presentation focuses on temporal trends observed in PFAS distribution and concentration in river media and discusses challenges associated with evaluating PFAS in a riverine system with multiple alternate PFAS sources. While PFOS was the primary contaminant associated with the AFFF releases, analysis for a suite of PFAS analytes in various media revealed important information about other PFAS contributions to the river and preferential uptake of PFAS in different trophic level fish.Ope