SCIENCE@home

PFAS-contaminated drinking water harms infants.

Robert Baluja,Bo Guo,Wesley Howden,Ashley Langer,Derek Lemoine

Published 2025 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

ABSTRACT

There is evidence of widespread human exposure to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) but limited evidence of the human health impacts of this exposure. Using data on New Hampshire births from 2010-2019, we show that mothers receiving water that had flowed beneath a PFAS-contaminated site, as opposed to comparable mothers receiving water that had flowed toward a PFAS-contaminated site, had 191% [95% CI: 83-298%] higher first-year infant mortality (611 [268-955] additional first-year deaths per 100k births); 168% [42-294%] more births before 28 wk of gestational age (466 [116-817] additional such births per 100k births); and 180% [57-302%] more births with weight below 1,000 g (607 [192-1022] additional such births per 100k births). Extrapolating to the contiguous U.S., PFAS contamination imposes annual social costs of approximately $8 billion. These health costs are substantially larger than current outside estimates of the cost of removing PFAS from the public water supply.

PUBLICATION RECORD

CITATION MAP

EXTRACTION MAP

CLAIMS

  • No claims are published for this paper.

CONCEPTS

  • No concepts are published for this paper.

REFERENCES

Showing 1-52 of 52 references · Page 1 of 1

CITED BY

  • No citing papers are available for this paper.

Showing 0-0 of 0 citing papers · Page 1 of 1