Now there’s a cheap way to make sure drinking water is 99 per cent BPA-free Getty

What’s in your water? If it’s pollutant BPA, there might soon be a quick fix for that. Bisphenol A, or BPA, is found in everything from DVDs to credit card receipts to dental fillings, and has been linked to a range of health problems in humans, including cardiovascular disease and liver enzyme abnormalities. A new technique claims to be able to remove 99 per cent of the BPA from water in just 30 minutes.

BPA is a micropollutant, a type of everyday chemical that can affect people even in low doses. Most of our exposure comes from canned food and plastic food and drink containers. Studies have also shown that the chemical is found in soil, sediments, sewage sludge, air – and drinking water.

Terrence Collins at Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania and his colleagues set out to find a cheap way to remove BPA from water. After 15 years of work, the team came up with a solution: first, they add a group of catalysts called TAML activators to contaminated water, next they add hydrogen peroxide.


The TAML activators work much like the enzymes in our bodies do, speeding up chemical reactions. In combination with the hydrogen peroxide, the TAML activators cause the BPA in pH-neutral water – the typical pH of wastewater – to assemble into larger clumps called oligomers within 30 minutes. These clumps aren’t harmful, and can be easily filtered out of the water.

“We’ve solved a billion-dollar research problem,” says Collins. “This treatment can be done by anyone, anywhere, on any quantity of water.”

Over the last 60 years, human consumption of BPA has increased steadily. Despite previous arguments over its safety, BPA has been shown to be dangerous. It mimics oestrogen, a hormone involved in maintaining pregnancies, and affects the body’s endocrine system. Studies involving fish, mammals and humans have shown it negatively affects the reproductive system, and embryo growth as well.

It is now being phased out in the European Union and the US – but its replacements, like fluorene-9-bisphenol, might be just as harmful. Collins says BPA replacements haven’t been adequately tested.

Collins and his team grew yeast and zebrafish embryos in their TAML activator-treated water – they found none of the abnormalities typically associated with BPA exposure. This gives him hope that they have found a means of efficiently destroying what he thinks is one of the toughest pollutants on the planet.

“You can treat tens of thousands of tonnes of water with 1 kilogram of the catalyst,” Collins says.

Bryan Brooks at Baylor University in Texas thinks interdisciplinary efforts like Collins’ – involving chemists, toxicologists and engineers – are imperative in solving the problems associated with urbanisation. “If you think about what’s happening around the world, we’re concentrating people, resources, and the use of chemicals more than any other time in human history,” he says. “Trying to develop sustainable ways to treat water supplies is very important.”

Journal reference: Green Chemistry, DOI: 10.1039/c7gc01415e

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