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Hello! My name is Johan Dellbring; I am 19 years old and live in Umeå, located in the northern part of Sweden. I am currently a senior at Umeå Elitidrottsgymnasium where I have been studying Natural Sciences since August 2021. Apart from this I am a swimmer and very interested in fashion design. Together with Victoria Niska, we have the project “PFOA: Threat to vegetation?”.
Tell us what the water concern in your country is!As presented by our project, PFAS-usage can lead to several consequences for human health. In the south of Sweden, there are high levels of PFAS-contaminated drinking water, which is a major health hazard. Moreover it also affects plant life and therefore we have investigated PFOA's impact on plants growth.
This is what I think is one of the solutions for a sustainable future:If we focus on PFAS-usage, we researchers need to find cheaper cleaning methods that make emissions from the textile industries significantly cleaner. This leads to areas around these industries becoming habitable for humans and reduces poisons from being let out in nature.
PFOA: Threat to vegetation?
PFAS and their impact on plants and animals is a hot debate. Southeast Asia being the world’s largest textile producer, contributes greatly in water pollution through hazardous waste. PFAS are a group of persistent chemical compounds with destructive properties that affect our ecosystems. Studies show high concentrations of PFOA, a type of PFAS, coming from Bangladesh’s textile industry of which measured values exceed Europe’s limits. The purpose of the project was to investigate how cress growth is affected by PFOA. This was achieved through cultivating cress plants on agarose gels prepared with different concentrations of the chemical. During analysis, it was observed that cress had a delayed germination and grew significantly worse at high levels of PFOA in dependent cultivations.
