ONE-DIMENSIONAL SOLUTE TRANSPORT MODELLING REVISITED: AN EFFECTIVE WAY TO BROADLY CHARACTERIZE PFAS TRANSPORT THROUGH SOILS TO THE WATER-TABLE

Atmospheric emissions of per and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) from industrial discharge stacks have contaminated soils and groundwater downwind at plants where Teflon™ coated products were manufactured or used. Governmental regulatory bodies need to know how long it took PFAS to initially reach the water table beneath contaminated soils once contamination began. We show using data from the well-documented Dupont Washington Works PFAS contamination in West Virginia/Ohio that the Rao et al. (1985)¹ one dimensional estimation calculation originally developed for pesticides can effectively be used to estimate whether it is more likely than not for atmospherically deposited PFAS to reach the water table within days, weeks, months, years, or tens of years for major soil classes. The Rao approach coupled to analytical solutions for the differential equations governing dilution from precipitation also serves as a first approximation estimate of PFAS concentrations in ground water with reasonable certainty during and following PFAS emissions

¹Rao, P.S.C., Hornsby, A.G. and Jesup, R.E., 1985. Indices for ranking the potential for pesticide contamination of groundwater. In Proceedings Soil and Crop Science Society of Florida.p.1-8.