Statewide Surveillance and Mapping of PFAS in Florida Surface Water

Florida’s water bodies are vital for drinking,
agriculture,
recreation, tourism, and climate resilience. The monitoring of water
quality is critical for the state, with consequences for both human
health and the economy. This work describes our statewide monitoring
of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) within a myriad of water
bodies in Florida to establish a PFAS baseline and determine hotspots.
Surface water samples were obtained between April 2020 and December
2021, from 2323 sites, via crowdsourcing from all 67 counties in Florida
and were subsequently analyzed for 50 PFAS via high-performance liquid
chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. The mean concentration of
∑PFAS across Florida was 29 ng/L, with a maximum ∑PFAS
concentration of 3048 ng/L. Moreover, 23 counties reported perfluorooctanoic
acid and perfluorooctanesulfonic acid levels over the EPA’s
maximum contaminant level of 4 ng/L, with 915 and 920 sites over the
limit across the state, respectively. Data was organized by site coordinates,
and predictive heat maps highlighting regions of concern were created.
First attempts were made to identify possible PFAS pollution sources
by overlaying suspect entities (airports, military installations,
and wastewater treatment plants), in addition to relating data to
historical pollution spill notifications (e.g., wastewater influent,
effluent, and sludge).