There are more than 4,700 types of chemicals in the world known as PFAS. Based solely on their tongue-twister of a name — the full spelling is "per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances" — you might think that they are rare. Yet PFAS can be found absolutely everywhere: Your non-stick cookware, your fast food wrappers, your paper packages, your furniture and carpets and rugs. Teflon is perhaps the most famous of the PFAS chemicals, but if it was the only prevalent one out there, the chances are that we would not live in a world where 99 percent of Americans have PFAS in their blood. (This is consistent with studies finding that other industrial chemicals, such as plastics, are also in our bodies.)
If the bad news is that PFAS chemicals are everywhere, the worse news is that scientists have long linked them to health problems. Now a new systematic review lends even further weight to the case that PFAS chemicals are bad news, as it reveals that these chemicals are linked to liver disease, too.
