Sustainable Development Goals

How We Worked Towards Some of the UN's SDG's.

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Table of Contents

Overview

Goal 3

Goal 6

Goal 14

Conclusion

SDG Stake-Holders

Citations

Overview

Our project focuses on removing highly toxic “forever chemicals” from our water, which is why we would be making progress towards the UN sustainable development goals three, six, and fourteen: good health and well being, clean water for all, and life below water.

Goal 3 - Good Health and Well Being

Sustainable development goal number 3, good health and well being, relates strongly to the degradation of PFAS. The UN highlights how the costs of healthcare can drive 381 million people into extreme poverty. PFAS can cause cancer, one of the leading causes of death globally. Treatment for cancer and other health issues caused by PFAS is expensive. Chemotherapy costs an average $48,000 yearly without insurance, even with insurance it can cost an average of around $5,000. Another point that the UN covers in this goal is having good health and well being, but at any age. PFAS can affect everyone since it is found in most water systems. Even before someone is born PFAS can cause birth defects in utero when pregnant women come into contact with the chemical. But even after the child is born, infants can still come into contact with PFAS through their mother’s breastmilk. This is because their mothers are exposed to PFAS throughout their lifetime, then PFAS gets into their mothers’ milk supply, resulting in infants as young as breastfeeding-age being exposed to the highly toxic chemical. Our PFAS degrader may help lower the levels of PFAS, reducing the mother’s environment exposure and thus reducing the amount of PFAS in their milk supply. When considering a PFAS degrader, we could consider it as a preventive measure. This is because our degrader reduces the amount of PFAS in the water, which could overall reduce these health issues. In reducing the environmental accumulation of PFAS, we can help contribute to a more healthy world for everyone.

Goal 6 - Clean Water for All

Sustainable development goal number six is clean water for all, overall this goal is the closest to our project’s mission. Water is essential to life, so why are we polluting it with harmful chemicals? One of the main ways PFAS can enter our body is water. With water being such a vital resource, having it contaminated with a harmful chemical does not ensure a clean or safe water source. This goal also details that clean water must be “for all”, which is difficult to ensure when technologies that exist to filter out PFAS cost money and are not always available to the average consumer. So even with current filter technologies, people who cannot purchase them are forced to drink contaminated water. Looking into destruction technologies, the only widespread technology in the water treatment industry is incineration. Incineration is mainly used after filtration to get rid of the filtered-out PFAS. But incineration creates harmful by-products and is extremely energy-intensive. So with both the current methods for filtration and degradation being either hard to scale or directly harmful, our enzymes could help. Our project’s enzymes could be used with a large-scale water treatment facility and can reduce the amount of PFAS in someone’s drinking water. At large, enzyme production may be cheaper than current destruction methods for PFAS, and if implemented at large, could reduce the amount of PFAS in someone's drinking water.

Goal 14 - Life Below Water

Looking at the issue of PFAS, it is easy to immediately only think of the human response to the chemical. But what about the earth’s marine life? Since PFAS is known to contaminate our water systems, and is a general endocrine disruptor, marine life is vulnerable to its effects. There have been recent studies to show that PFAS can and has been affecting marine life. One study from environmental international considered the effect PFAS had on fish, specifically the red striped bass. (Found in North Carolina) They found that once the fish had been in contact with PFAS from the water they inhabited, the fish had experienced negative immune responses and decreased liver function. This case links PFAS to health conditions in fish and shows that our usages of PFAS not only affect us, but our marine life. Another point to make is that when people eat any PFAS contaminated fish, they in turn also come into contact with PFAS. This can lead back to goal #3, good health and well being.

SDG Stake-Holders

Please refer to our Human Practices for our stakeholders for the SDGs, mainly comprised of experts on PFAS.

Conclusion

We believe that we have made progress towards each of these sustainable development goals, and think that progress towards the SDG’s is beneficial to the global community!

Citations