In 2022, Carleton University biologist, Grégory Bulté arrived at Opinicon Lake for his first day of field work for the season. Bulté has been studying and tracking northern map turtles since 2003, returning every spring to the lake.
As he went to retrieve his camera from the hibernation site, he spotted a dead turtle. He paddled towards it and then noticed another. Sightings of turtles with crushed shells and missing limbs continued. In his wetsuit, he swam the shoreline to pick up the carcas
In 2022, Carleton University biologist, Grégory Bulté arrived at Opinicon Lake for his first day of field work for the season. Bulté has been studying and tracking northern map turtles since 2003, returning every spring to the lake.
As he went to retrieve his camera from the hibernation site, he spotted a dead turtle. He paddled towards it and then noticed another. Sightings of turtles with crushed shells and missing limbs continued. In his wetsuit, he swam the shoreline to pick up the carcasses, counting 142 in total —10 per cent of the total population.
This was the first time Bulté had witnessed a mass mortality like this. His research points to river otters accessing the hibernating turtles through holes in the ice.
It is uncertain how the holes in the ice formed. Climate change, human-made openings, and shifting ecosystems may be potential causes.
“We don’t have direct evidence that any cause led to this particular event. However, we thought it was important to publish this study, because what it did show, is that map turtles hibernate in such a way that it makes them vulnerable to fatality if something goes wrong,” said Bulté.
Ice protects turtles from predation. While there are no de-icing bubblers, which push bubbles into the water to stop it freezing around docks, next to the hibernation site at Opinicon Lake, Bulté has seen an increasing trend in their overall use.
“We are worried that without any regulation or knowledge of where map turtles spend their winters, we could decimate a population rapidly if these tools are put in close proximity,” said Bulté.
Since 2022, Bulté has not witnessed another mass mortality event. He is currently working alongside a statistician to analyze data from 2022 to 2026 to better understand how the population has been affected.
He believes that humans need to learn how to cohabitate better with wildlife.
“If we cannot keep them in their environment, what does that say about everything else we do to the environment?”
Ontario Nature’s Acting Conservation Science and Stewardship Director, Jenna Quinn emphasized that turtle species are at risk and cannot afford additional threats.
“It is important that we always move with nuance and understand that every action we take has a consequence,” said Quinn.
Work is being conducted to conserve the ecosystems that inhabit the turtles.
Ontario Nature’s Reptile and Amphibian Atlas (ORAA) is one tool that is currently being used to inform ongoing conservation work. It documents current knowledge of the distribution of reptiles and amphibians in the province, increasing public awareness and appreciation of these species.
Additionally, the Rideau Canal is a part of Preserving Legacies, a global organization dedicated to safeguarding heritage places and practices by advancing climate adaptation solutions that strengthen community resilience.
The canal is currently in its second phase of the project, which involves the creation of a comprehensive Risk Assessment that will be shared with the community.
Editors’ Highlights are summaries of recent papers by AGU’s journal editors.
Source: AGU Advances
The critical zone (CZ) refers to the layer of Earth extending from the bedrock up to the vegetation canopy, including interconnected systems such as river and floodplain corridors, the active soil and root zone, and the near-surface environment where plants interact with the atmosphere. The conservation of the CZ requires a detailed understanding of how it evolves under anthropogenic impacts,
The critical zone (CZ) refers to the layer of Earth extending from the bedrock up to the vegetation canopy, including interconnected systems such as river and floodplain corridors, the active soil and root zone, and the near-surface environment where plants interact with the atmosphere. The conservation of the CZ requires a detailed understanding of how it evolves under anthropogenic impacts, such as intensive agriculture.
Goodwell et al. [2026] use a data driven approach to relate shifts in the critical zone to indicators of human impact. Their findings deliver innovative knowledge on transitions, drivers, and predictability in many contexts, and support better prediction and management of the critical zone under environmental change.
In particular, the authors find evidence of abrupt shifts in the variability of key features like stream and soil chemistry, land-atmosphere interaction and so forth, which can be attributed to intensive management, for instance due to mechanized planting and harvesting. These human-impacted and naturally appearing regimes in the dynamics of critical zone have implications for understanding processes and making predictions of the status of the critical zone under environmental change.
Data-driven methods include grouping of time-series data with clustering to detect regimes, dimensionality reduction to simplify system dynamics and identify main sources of variability. Credit: Goodwell et al. [2026], Figure 1
Citation: Goodwell, A. E., Saccardi, B., Dere, A., Druhan, J., Wang, J., Welp, L. R., et al. (2026). Detecting regimes of critical zone processes, drivers and predictability with a data-driven framework. AGU Advances, 7, e2025AV002098. https://doi.org/10.1029/2025AV002098
Every year, Americans toss out about 17 million tons of textiles, and most items left in donation bins don’t find a new home. Now, more mail-in programs are stepping in to take your old clothes, keep them out of landfills, and reward you—often with store credit or cash-like rewards you can use at familiar brands.
The programs listed here include options that take any brand or condition—even socks and stained T-shirts—as well as brand-specific trade-ins that give you real money for quality items.
Every year, Americans toss out about 17 million tons of textiles, and most items left in donation bins don’t find a new home. Now, more mail-in programs are stepping in to take your old clothes, keep them out of landfills, and reward you—often with store credit or cash-like rewards you can use at familiar brands.
The programs listed here include options that take any brand or condition—even socks and stained T-shirts—as well as brand-specific trade-ins that give you real money for quality items. While none of these fully solves fashion’s waste problem, and some have fees or important details to check, each offers a more responsible choice than tossing clothes in the curbside bin. With the right program, your rewards can even cover your costs or more.
1. Trashie Take Back Bag — The Any-Brand, Any-Condition Option
Trashie ships a prepaid, prepackaged bag that holds up to 15 pounds of clothing, shoes, accessories, and home textiles from any brand, in any condition, including single socks, worn-through T-shirts, and bedsheets. A single Take Back Bag runs $20, though they are frequently on sale, and earns $5 in TrashieCash redeemable for deals at partners including Sephora, Nike, Starbucks, Allbirds, and Cozy Earth.
If you want to recycle often, Trashie Unlimited costs $68 a year and gives you unlimited bags, plus bigger rewards as you go. You get $5 for your first bag, $15 more at your fifth bag (for a total of $26), and by your tenth bag, you’ve earned back your membership with $68 in TrashieCash. After that, every bag earns you extra. Trashie reports that 95% of what they receive is repurposed, reused, or recycled, sorted into over 600 categories.
Best for: that pile of clothes you’ve been meaning to deal with for months, especially items too worn out to donate.
2. Retold Recycling — Subscription Bags With Curated Partner Rewards
Retold Recycling uses a subscription model. Their annual plan costs $99 and comes with six pre-labeled, prepaid bags—three to start, then one each quarter—each holds about five pounds of textiles. You earn Retold Rewards worth about $15 per bag, which you can use at partners like Dropps, Allyoos, Me Mother Earth, and Plaine Products. There’s also a quarterly plan for $24.75 every three months, with the same rewards per bag.
Retold accepts all textiles, including clothing, household linens, and fabric scraps, from any brand. Its recycling partners sort items by fiber content, quality, and style, with the company stating that items are kept out of landfill except when materials like leather, coated textiles, or neoprene can’t be processed. Consumer Reports said only Retold subscribers earn the rewards credits; one-time bag buyers don’t.
Best for: people who want to recycle regularly and like getting discounts at smaller sustainable brands instead of big retailers.
3. Patagonia Worn Wear — Real Trade-In Value for Well-Made Gear
Patagonia’s Worn Wear offers the best payouts if you have Patagonia items. Go to their website, take a quick quiz to check if your items qualify, print a shipping label, and send in your clean, working Patagonia jackets, fleece, pants, packs, and more. You’ll get credit as a gift card to use online or in Patagonia stores.
Trade-in values are usually about 20% of the original price. According to Patagonia’s FAQ, credits can go up to $180 for high-value items, with jackets earning between $10 and $200, and wheeled bags between $45 and $90. Sometimes, they run promotions that double your credit, so keep an eye out for those.
Keep in mind, Worn Wear only takes Patagonia-branded gear that’s still in good, usable shape. They don’t accept underwear, swimwear, or wetsuits. If your items don’t qualify, they’ll either send them back or recycle them for free.
Best for: people clearing out Patagonia gear they no longer need and who already shop at Patagonia.
4. ThredUp Clean Out Kit — Cash or Credit for What Actually Sells
ThredUp is a consignment service, not recycling: the company pays you for items it can resell, and routes the rest to donation or recycling partners. Order a Clean Out Kit, fill it with women’s or kids’ clothing in excellent or like-new condition, and ship it in. Payouts scale with listing price, from low single-digit percentages on inexpensive items to as much as 80% on premium and designer brands like Lululemon or Gucci.
You can get paid in cash or as store credit at ThredUp or partner brands like Gap, Banana Republic, Athleta, Madewell, Janie and Jack, and Reformation. If you pick store credit, you usually get a 15–20% bonus. Be aware that ThredUp takes a $14.99 processing fee from your earnings per bag, and if you want any rejected items sent back, there’s a $10.99 fee. This program isn’t for fast fashion—items from those brands or heavily worn clothes are usually rejected.
Best for: closets with name-brand, current-season women’s and kids’ clothes in good shape—not for stained T-shirts.
5. ReGirlfriend — Closed-Loop Recycling for Activewear
Girlfriend Collective, an athleisure brand, offers ReGirlfriend—a mail-in program run with SuperCircle. You can send in clean clothes from any brand and get $10 in store credit for each Girlfriend item or $5 for each non-Girlfriend item, up to 10 pieces per shipment. There’s a $15 deposit to print your shipping label, but you get it back if you make a purchase within 30 days.
You’ll get personalized discount codes for up to 30% off your next Girlfriend order. For example, a $30 credit needs at least a $100 purchase to use the full amount. Items are sorted for reuse when possible, or they’re recycled, upcycled into new yarn or fabric, or downcycled for industrial uses if they can’t be resold.
Best for: people who already shop at Girlfriend and want a mail-in option for activewear and basics from different brands.
Quick Comparison
Accepts any brand in any condition: Trashie, Retold, ReGirlfriend
Highest potential payout: Patagonia Worn Wear for premium Patagonia items; ThredUp for current-season designer women’s clothing
Get Ready for Mail-In Recycling Success
Sort your clothes before sending them. Items in good enough shape to resell or donate are worth more on ThredUp, Patagonia Worn Wear, or at a local consignment shop. Clothes that are worn out or off-brand are better suited for Trashie, Retold, or ReGirlfriend.
Consider whether a subscription makes sense for you. Trashie Unlimited is worth it if you send about 10 bags a year. Retold’s annual plan can earn you up to $90 in partner rewards. If you won’t fill several bags, it’s better to skip the subscription.
Pick store credit if you already shop at that brand. ThredUp’s 15–20% credit bonus and Patagonia’s double-credit promotions can boost your payout, but only if you were planning to spend there anyway.
Don’t mail clothes that your city already recycles. Many places offer curbside textile pickup or special drop-off bins. Use the Earth911 Recycling Search to find local options before paying to ship clothes out of state.
Check the details on fees. ThredUp charges a $14.99 processing fee, Patagonia deducts $7 for shipping, and ReGirlfriend requires a $15 refundable deposit. Make sure to consider these costs before you decide.
Try to buy less in the first place. No mail-in program can make up for the impact of owning lots of fast fashion. The best thing you can do is choose fewer, longer-lasting clothes.
Today’s quote comes from Pope John Paul II’s message for the celebration of the World Day of Peace, 1990. He wrote, “Modern society will find no solution to the ecological problem unless it takes a serious look at its lifestyle.”
Earth911 inspirations. Post them, share your desire to help people think of the planet first, every day.
The post Earth911 Inspiration: A Serious Look at Modern Lifestyle appeared first on Earth911.
Today’s quote comes from Pope John Paul II’s message for the celebration of the World Day of Peace, 1990. He wrote, “Modern society will find no solution to the ecological problem unless it takes a serious look at its lifestyle.”
Earth911 inspirations. Post them, share your desire to help people think of the planet first, every day.
Seeking Solutions to PFAS Pollution
Chemical Companies Are Churning Out New PFAS. Where in the World Are They Ending Up?
The Persistence of PFAS
A Peculiar Polymer Paired with Sunlight Could Remove PFAS
Tracing the Path of PFAS Across Antarctica
Pollution Is Rampant. We Might As Well Make Use of It.
This month, Eos is taking a long look at “forever chemicals.” Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) have been percolating through our industrial environment since the 19
This month, Eos is taking a long look at “forever chemicals.” Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) have been percolating through our industrial environment since the 1940s. They help make products nonstick, waterproof, and stain resistant. They also make their way into air, soil, and water, as well as our bodies, where they have been linked to impaired immune systems, developmental delays in children, and some cancers.
Since discovering that PFAS might be harmful to human and environmental health, researchers and industries have reformed the chemicals into novel substances. The behaviors of these novel PFAS are proving difficult to pin down, as Grace van Deelen explores in her feature “Chemical Companies Are Churning Out New PFAS. Where in the World Are They Ending Up?”
From the deep ocean to alpine glaciers, scientists are being forced to play “chemical Whac-A-Mole” to study novel PFAS, one scientist told van Deelen. Researchers are also searching for—and finding—PFAS in the isolated interior of the White Continent, as described in Rebecca Owen’s “Tracing the Path of PFAS Across Antarctica.”
Another option is to put PFAS to work. Read about how scientists are using trifluoroacetic acid, a less toxic PFAS, to gain a rough idea of how recently an aquifer has been recharged in Saima May Sidik’s “Pollution Is Rampant. We Might As Well Make Use of It.”
As PFAS permeate our environment in different ways, scientists are taking the lead in developing proactive approaches to search for, study, and maybe take the “forever” out of “forever chemicals.”
Seeking Solutions to PFAS Pollution
Chemical Companies Are Churning Out New PFAS. Where in the World Are They Ending Up?
The Persistence of PFAS
A Peculiar Polymer Paired with Sunlight Could Remove PFAS
Tracing the Path of PFAS Across Antarctica
Pollution Is Rampant. We Might As Well Make Use of It.
On a rocky archipelago in the North Atlantic Ocean, staff at the Faroese Environment Agency and the Faroe Marine Research Institute regularly sample tissues from the North At
On a rocky archipelago in the North Atlantic Ocean, staff at the Faroese Environment Agency and the Faroe Marine Research Institute regularly sample tissues from the North Atlantic long-finned pilot whales that roam the waters around the islands. The archive of these samples stretches back to the 1980s and has helped researchers determine the reach of human-made contaminants in the remote marine environment.
Jennifer Sun is one of those researchers. Sun studies PFAS—per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, commonly known as “forever chemicals”—at Harvard University and is the lead author of a recently published study that analyzed how these toxic chemicals have accumulated in pilot whale tissue over the past 2 decades.
Using samples of whale tissue collected between 2001 and 2023, Sun and her colleagues measured a parameter called bulk extractable organofluorine, which shows the overall amount of organofluorine-containing chemicals (including PFAS) in the tissue. They then used a more targeted analysis able to confirm the identity of 28 specific chemicals out of thousands of possible PFAS formulations.
The pilot whale tissue showed an expected decrease in the concentrations of older PFAS but an unexpected scarcity of newer PFAS chemicals. Credit: Jennifer Sun
The study’s results showed an expected decrease in the concentrations of older PFAS but an unexpected absence of newer PFAS chemicals. This anomaly could be indicative of an emerging question in PFAS research: Where are the newest PFAS going?
Prolific PFAS
There are two general categories of PFAS. The first includes legacy PFAS such as perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS). Chemical manufacturers produced these compounds in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s for products including nonstick cookware and food packaging and in industries such as fabric waterproofing, industrial manufacturing, and firefighting.
Legacy PFAS were phased out in the early 2000s, and novel PFAS were made to replace them. The term “novel” is independent of chemical properties and instead refers to when the chemicals’ production began, though novel PFAS typically have formulations meant to reduce their persistence in the environment. For example, many novel PFAS molecules have shorter chains of fluorinated carbons than their legacy counterparts.
Novel PFAS include possibly millions of different chemical structures, and their production and use are increasing globally.
A generic PFAS molecule includes a compound head connected to a tail of fluorinated carbons. Older PFAS generally have longer tails (seven or eight carbons) than newer ones. Credit: Mary Heinrichs/AGU, after https://bit.ly/pennstate-ext-pfas
In the United States and elsewhere, regulatory structures that limit PFAS production target specific chemicals, such that every new formulation by a company must be tested individually before restrictions are put in place. With companies continually conjuring new PFAS formulations—which environmental advocates often call “regrettable substitutions” for their sometimes harmful effects—understanding the fate and transport of novel PFAS is difficult and time-consuming. Research on the behavior of specific PFAS may be a drop in the bucket when millions of potential PFAS, with millions of potential behaviors, pose current and future risks to people and the environment.
Scientists like Sun are determined to untangle how the fate of these new chemicals differs from their predecessors. As Sun expected, the phaseout of legacy PFAS was reflected in the pilot whale tissue she tested. These results are good news; they clearly show that the bans on legacy PFAS are working.
“We’re still finding [older] compounds, but clearly, they are no longer as abundant in the environment as they used to be, which is a positive,” said Bridger Ruyle, an environmental engineer at New York University who studies PFAS and assisted Sun and her coauthors in deciding which methods to use for the new study.
But Sun and her colleagues also expected an overall increase in concentrations of novel PFAS—after all, production of these chemicals is higher than ever, and researchers finally had the analytical tools to catch them.
“The inference is, if it’s not in the whales, and it’s not in the ocean…where is it?”
That wasn’t what they found. Instead, all but two of the emerging PFAS they tested for were virtually nowhere to be seen in the whale tissue, leaving the scientists leading the study to wonder where novel PFAS were accumulating or if instrumentation was limiting their detection.
“We do know that the novel PFAS are being produced, which means they’re going somewhere. Where they are, and how exposed people and other wildlife are, is not as clear,” Sun said.
“The inference is, if it’s not in the whales, and it’s not in the ocean…where is it?” asked Elsie Sunderland, an environmental scientist at Harvard University and coauthor of the new study.
Sun and Sunderland’s question—asking where novel PFAS are going—is one scientists are probing from multiple angles. Those who study particle transport are asking how novel PFAS might travel through Earth’s water and air. Those on the chemistry side of the investigation are deducing how novel PFAS might break down. And those who monitor environments are looking for traces of novel PFAS in various corners of Earth.
The answers to their questions have direct, practical implications for human and environmental health and could indicate whether a growing proportion of harmful PFAS may be ending up in close proximity to humans—where we work and eat and breathe.
A Toxic Legacy
The chemical properties of PFAS have made the chemicals useful since the 1940s. These same properties also make them highly persistent—the most durable types may not break down in the environment for several thousand years.
PFAS are linked to certain cancers and other human health harms. Much of the available data linking PFAS to poor health come from analyses of legacy PFOA and PFOS. They show an association between increased exposure to these chemicals and altered immune and thyroid function, liver and kidney disease, reproductive system disruptions, and more.
Chemical manufacturers phased out production of legacy PFAS after scientific evidence emerged associating PFAS and human health harms, businesses began to lose money in massive lawsuits, and regulations tightened. Novel PFAS were intended to show properties similar to legacy PFAS but were meant to break down more easily in the environment (lower persistence) and accumulate less easily in living tissue (lower bioaccumulative ability), though studies have shown mixed results about whether novel PFAS are actually safer for humans or break down more easily.
Because PFAS production data are often proprietary, scientists who study PFAS, like Sun, must rely on partial inventories of PFAS production or reverse-engineer those numbers from observations in the environment.
“We call it chemical Whac-A-Mole.”
Without a clear list of the chemical structures of novel PFAS, scientists don’t always have the analytical standards necessary for routine detection. And once scientists do understand the behavior of a PFAS chemical, it may be quickly replaced by another, unknown alternative. “We call it chemical Whac-A-Mole,” Sunderland said.
Legacy PFAS tend to have a high affinity for water and typically end up in the ocean, the place scientists refer to as the chemicals’ “terminal sink.” Many legacy PFAS also entered the ocean through atmospheric transport such as rain or snow. But because of the sheer number of chemical formulas and the chemical differences between legacy and novel PFAS, the pathways that novel PFAS take through the environment are less clear.
Tracking the movement and accumulation of novel PFAS in the environment is crucial for understanding how these chemicals may affect ecological and human health.
Still, the science is inconclusive about whether novel PFAS are moving or accumulating differently than their legacy counterparts, whether they have a different terminal sink, and where that terminal sink may be.
Close to Home
One possible answer to the question of the missing novel PFAS may have to do with geography. The chemicals may not have reached pilot whales in the Faroes because something about the new chemistry has led them elsewhere in the environment. To Sun, evidence suggests “that a lot of these novel PFAS, which we know are being produced, may not be transporting out into this more remote environment either at all or as quickly.”
Novel PFAS might be accumulating closer to their sources—and closer to us. “It may simply be that some of the replacement PFAS don’t make it all the way out into the open ocean. But if they are still in the terrestrial environment and the near-coastal environment, then wildlife and people who live close to the sources can be exposed, said Frank Wania, an environmental chemist at the University of Toronto Scarborough.
For example, one study monitored PFAS in coastal beluga whales in Canada’s St. Lawrence Estuary, relatively close to human communities and PFAS manufacturing sources. The study showed increasing concentrations of unregulated novel PFAS in whale tissue from 2000 to 2017, while concentrations of legacy PFAS declined.
The suggestion that novel PFAS are accumulating close to human communities is supported by measurements of PFAS in human tissue, too. Studies show that a high proportion of detectable organofluorine chemicals in human tissue are increasingly unidentifiable, suggesting that some of the novel PFAS production “is in us,” Sunderland said.
Far and Away
Though there are some indications that novel PFAS may be retained closer to human communities, there are also reasons to think some novel PFAS chemistries have resulted in substances that can actually travel farther and more easily than their legacy counterparts.
Anna Kärrman, an environmental chemist at Örebro University in Sweden, said that some novel PFAS may be more easily transported in the environment: “The more novel chemistries are increasing the properties of being very mobile in water, very mobile in the atmosphere, and not necessarily very bioaccumulative.”
The mobility of novel PFAS was on full display in a 2020 study that Sunderland coauthored, in which researchers reported detecting hexafluoropropylene oxide-dimer acid, a novel PFAS chemical more commonly known as GenX, in the Arctic for the first time. GenX, produced by chemical manufacturer Chemours, was meant to replace the legacy compound PFOA. The 2020 study suggested GenX “has already moved quite a bit,” said Rainer Lohmann, a marine geochemist who leads the STEEP (Sources, Transport, Exposure and Effects of PFAS) Center at the University of Rhode Island.
A pulley system mounted on a red beam pulls a small envelope filled with water along a string. Credit: Thomas Soltwedel
The 2020 study also found higher concentrations of PFAS in the Arctic Ocean’s surface water, suggesting that the atmosphere was a particularly important transport pathway for chemical transport. This idea is supported by studies of High Arctic ice caps, which experience contamination only from atmospheric sources, and polar bear tissue. Atmospheric transport of novel PFAS is a subject “at the edge” of PFAS research, Sunderland said.
Wherever researchers look, they’re finding that atmospheric transport is an important pathway by which some PFAS, especially PFAS precursors—chemicals that break down in the environment and become PFAS (either novel or legacy)—move. One idea called the PAART (precursor atmospheric and reaction transport) theory was developed by Scott Mabury, an environmental chemist at the University of Toronto, and others. The PAART theory proposes that many of the harmful PFAS that end up in the most remote parts of Earth are the result of the breakdown of volatile precursor PFAS that have traveled in the atmosphere.
According to Lohmann, atmospheric transport means the ocean remains a terminal sink because many novel PFAS transported in rain or snow will ultimately be deposited in the ocean.
In this scenario, the question of why novel PFAS are not bioaccumulating in Faroese pilot whales remains a mystery. While Lohmann suggests the novel compounds simply don’t accumulate in living tissue, Sunderland isn’t sure that’s the whole story: “As apex predators, the whales are sentinels for what is available and being taken up from the ocean,” she wrote in an email. “Since we don’t see [novel PFAS], it seems unlikely there are large quantities of these chemicals present.”
Profuse PFAS
Another possible explanation for the surprising results of Sun’s whale study could be that there’s just a lag; that is, novel PFAS will end up in Faroe Island pilot whales someday but haven’t yet. Chemicals that could eventually end up in the ocean may be temporarily trapped in soils or recycled back into terrestrial ecosystems via sea spray aerosols, for example.
“The delay we are seeing in the ocean response may in fact be [PFAS] precursors being retained in source zones,” Sunderland wrote in an email. These chemicals may be “taking a really long time to be transformed into more mobile compounds.”
In their pilot whale study, Sun and her colleagues modeled the transport of PFAS to the subarctic and found a 10- to 20-year lag existed between the production of a legacy PFAS compound and its detection in whale tissue. We’re still within that range for many novel PFAS. Sun said she would have expected them to show up in pilot whale tissue by now if they behaved like their legacy counterparts, though it’s possible that it has taken time for the volume of novel PFAS production to ramp up, increasing the time it would take for the substances to be detected in tissues.
The anomaly documented in the pilot whale study has led researchers to call for more investigation (and perhaps greater regulation) of novel PFAS. Credit: Bjarni Mikkelson
Still, the number of possible novel PFAS chemistries—again, there could be several million different compounds—makes it difficult to generalize how these new substances are, as a group, moving through the environment. “Because the exact structures of all [novel] PFAS remain unknown, some compounds may simply not be captured by the methods used,” Heidi Pickard, an environmental engineer at the consulting firm Ramboll and coauthor on the new whale study, wrote in an email.
Another reason novel PFAS are harder to study is that companies release lower concentrations of more kinds of the chemicals, rather than the “monstrously high” emissions of some legacy PFAS in the 1970s–1990s, noted Mabury, who was not involved in the new pilot whale study.
A New Regulatory Approach
According to Sun and Sunderland, cataloging differences between novel and legacy PFAS misses the broader point: We simply need to produce less PFAS. We’ve known for decades that PFAS harm human health, and some scientists have even argued that humans’ continual production and release of novel chemical compounds could drive Earth beyond a “safe operating space.”
“Researchers are critical for exposing the problem. But that, to me, is not the central issue here. The central issue here is a societal issue.”
Where scientists probe next may be less urgent than how policymakers decide to tackle the PFAS problem, Sunderland said: “Researchers are critical for exposing the problem. But that, to me, is not the central issue here. The central issue here is a societal issue.”
Chemical manufacturers are actively creating novel PFAS all the time. Kärrman, for example, has noticed patent applications for PFAS compounds with chemistries that “are nothing like we have seen before” that may start entering our environment in 5 or 10 years.
To Kärrman, that’s a reason for governments to push for chemical regulation based on properties such as persistence and bioaccumulation, rather than the chemical-by-chemical formula used in most countries, including the United States.
Such an approach has gotten traction in Europe via a proposal by the European Chemicals Agency to restrict the entire class of PFAS chemicals. The proposal is still under evaluation, and a final decision is expected by the end of the year.
In the United States, PFAS regulation and remediation are a key aspect of the Trump administration’s Make America Healthy Again movement, according to the EPA, and the federal government and some states already limit the concentrations of individual PFAS in drinking water. However, the EPA also said it planned to weaken some of those limits last year.
“We’re in a cycle of picking these regrettable alternatives [to legacy PFAS] and then figuring out that it was regrettable decades later,” Sunderland said. “We’re never going to catch up using this chemical-by-chemical approach.”
Citation: van Deelen, G. (2026), Chemical companies are churning out new PFAS. Where in the world are they ending up?, Eos, 107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EO260136. Published on 30 April 2026.
Now in its fifth year, the annual conference was created to highlight the critical climate-driven health and environmental impacts affecting our shared community.
Now in its fifth year, the annual conference was created to highlight the critical climate-driven health and environmental impacts affecting our shared community.
A breathless, high‑altitude chase along the river turned into a triumphant, hard‑won encounter with Torrent Ducks, ending the day at Guango Lodge with the exhilaration of finally photographing one of the trip’s most coveted species. This blog series chronicles Jim Gain's experiences with a birding tour in Ecuador.
A breathless, high‑altitude chase along the river turned into a triumphant, hard‑won encounter with Torrent Ducks, ending the day at Guango Lodge with the exhilaration of finally photographing one of the trip’s most coveted species. This blog series chronicles Jim Gain's experiences with a birding tour in Ecuador.
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The coal industry can damage human health in myriad ways via dangerous working conditions and harmful pollution. But the income opportunities offered by the industry can also provide much-needed stability for certain communities, such as those in Appalachia’s coal country.
“Being employed is good for your health, but environm
The coal industry can damage human health in myriad ways via dangerous working conditions and harmful pollution. But the income opportunities offered by the industry can also provide much-needed stability for certain communities, such as those in Appalachia’s coal country.
“Being employed is good for your health, but environmental pollution is bad for your health, and these two things are operating at the same time in some communities,” said Mary Willis, an epidemiologist at Boston University.
The industry, though, is changing. Total coal production in the United States peaked in 2008, and the number of miners has steadily dropped since then.
Total coal production peaked in the United States in 2008, after which the number of coal miners declined, too. Credit: Thombs et al.,2026, https://doi.org/10.1111/ruso.70034, CC BY 4.0
A new study coauthored by Willis and published in Rural Sociology delves into the effects of this decline on life expectancies across the United States and in Appalachia in particular. The results show that a disappearing coal mining industry has mixed effects on health, highlighting the importance of a “just transition”—a shift away from coal mining and toward clean energy that also prioritizes decent work opportunities for those left without a job.
“How do we balance these two conflicting priorities?” Willis said.
Delving into the Decline
Coal production and consumption are linked to many human health harms, including heart disease, asthma, lung cancer, mental illness, and more. But how those health impacts intersect with the broader economic effects of mining has not been well studied.
In the new study, the research team analyzed the effects of the declining industry through the lens of the social determinants of health, or how social structures influence health outcomes.
Researchers analyzed how coal mining impacts life expectancies via three pathways: production, mining labor time, and employment. Credit: Thombs et al., 2026, https://doi.org/10.1111/ruso.70034, CC BY 4.0
To study these effects, the team compared coal mining data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration to life expectancy data from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington from 2012 to 2019. Life expectancy is a metric that can be responsive to subtle changes in the environment, Willis explained. For example, the decommissioning of a coal-fired power plant a few miles away from a community may not affect residents’ day-to-day life but probably affects the scale of life expectancy across the population.
In coal-producing counties across the United States, the average life expectancy was 1.6 years lower than that in non-coal-producing counties. But the declining coal industry had more nuanced impacts on health in Appalachian communities, the researchers found. As coal production fell and miner labor hours decreased, life expectancy increased. But as the number of jobs available decreased, life expectancy decreased, too.
The findings suggest that the employment and associated economic impacts of a waning coal industry harm health. Previous studies documented similar increases in mortality in other regions where the fossil fuel industry has declined. Such research has indicated that these increased mortality rates may be partially driven by “deaths of despair” from drug and alcohol use and suicide related to economic distress. The association of these factors with mortality rates in coal country, the authors suggest, may be an area for future study.
Understanding that coal mining is associated with some positive economic and health effects is “an important perspective for understanding the sector as a whole,” said Lucas Henneman, an environmental engineer at George Mason University who was not involved in the new study. “It’s a really interesting piece of work.”
“This is just a really complex story that hasn’t been told yet—putting health into the context of these just energy transitions,” Willis said.
The complex reality of the coal industry extends beyond Appalachia. Most of the pollution related to the coal industry consists of toxins released when coal is burned, meaning those who bear the brunt of coal’s health impacts may not be located where coal is mined, Henneman said.
In fact, a 2023 study by Henneman and others found that before 2009, a quarter of all air pollution–related deaths of people on Medicare were attributable to coal burning. From 2013 to 2020, that number dropped to 7%, alongside a drop in coal consumption. A complete picture of how the coal industry affects health should also consider how pollution travels beyond coal country—where it’s burned, how it’s transported in the air, and who ultimately breathes it in, he said.
A Just Transition
“The question is how to provide [jobs] in a way that provides the same level of stability, same kind of income benefits, and isn’t too much of a shock to [communities’] way of life or sense of identity.”
The economic activity of a mine, through direct employment as well as businesses reliant on the mine and miners, “chases away other opportunities,” making the mine the economic backbone of the area, said Jonathan Buonocore, an environmental health scientist at Boston University and a coauthor of the new study. The concept of a just transition aims to ensure that employment opportunities in the wake of the coal industry’s decline reach these communities.
“The question is how to provide [jobs] in a way that provides the same level of stability, same kind of income benefits, and isn’t too much of a shock to [communities’] way of life or sense of identity,” Buonocore said.
Citation: van Deelen, G. (2026), As the coal industry fades, life expectancies in coal country shift, Eos, 107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EO260134. Published on 30 April 2026.
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