Legacy pollutants from the USS Yorktown impact wildlife in the Wando River and beyond. At the Mount Pleasant Pier, a saltwater fish ruler and crab hoop net are ready for use by daily visitors. Photo by Hailey Murphy, S.C. Sea Grant Consortium.
Forever Chemicals
In 2022, South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster stood on the lawn before the USS Yorktown with a warning: the aircraft carrier on Charleston Harbor was a ‘ticking environmental time bomb.’
The muggy summer morning was overcast as some of the state’s highest-ranking political and environmental figures listened from beneath a white tent.
Behind Governor McMaster rose the hulking flight deck of the Yorktown, a shade somewhere between the gray-green of the harbor and the hazy blue of the sky. After serving in three wars over three decades, the Yorktown had retired to the subtropical Lowcountry in 1972. Here, she became a museum honoring the nation’s naval history and sharing its stories with a new generation.
One of those stories—unknown to most—was about to receive a new ending. Some thirty feet below waters where manatees play, anglers target sheepshead, and container ships cruise, the Yorktown’s aging hull threatened one of South Carolina’s most important waterways.
“When the USS Yorktown arrived in Charleston Harbor, the ship contained significant hazardous contaminants that were not removed by the U.S. Navy,” Governor McMaster said.
High tide on the Wando River floods salt marshes surrounding the USS Yorktown, where “forever chemicals” persist in sediment and water samples. Photo by Hailey Murphy, S.C. Sea Grant Consortium.
Over 1.5 million gallons of petroleum and waters contaminated by ‘legacy’ pollutants, such as asbestos, remained in the vessel’s ballast and storage tanks. Legacy pollutants linger in the environment long after they’re produced. Now banned, they nevertheless remain a threat to humans, wildlife, and waterways.
The press conference marked a unique moment of state leadership, both hailing a hazard decades in the making and heralding its solution. A grant through the federal American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 would enable a multiyear, multimillion-dollar cleanup to render the Yorktown clear of legacy pollutants, forestalling potentially disastrous impacts to the city’s environment and economy.
For onlookers facing the harbor that day, the Yorktown was a visible emblem of a familiar story of chemistry, industry, and cleanup. This one would have a conclusive, positive ending.
But beneath the waves, another story is still unfolding—one that many experts believe could eclipse legacy pollutants in scale and impact. The players and problems are much the same, but these contaminants of emerging concern are even more entangled with modern life.
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, are a class of human-made chemicals that have entered local vocabulary in recent years as water pollutants that increase the risk of numerous health conditions. They came to prominence after World War II, and until recently, could be found in everything from microwave popcorn bags to nonstick pans to carpets.
Now, they’re found in minute amounts across Earth’s water, soil, and air. They’re in the dolphins that swim in Charleston Harbor, the sand on its seafloor, and the oysters on its shorelines. They’re found in the blood of an estimated 98% of U.S. residents. What they’re doing there has been less clear. Unlike legacy pollutants such as asbestos or mercury, the effects of PFAS are more complex and systemic; at high concentrations, they’ve been linked to liver damage, reduced vaccine effectiveness, and increased risk for certain cancers.
“The challenges related to PFAS are not limited to one state, or even one nation,” says Ray Holberger, M.S., a risk specialist with the S.C. Department of Environmental Services.
One thing that’s clear is the role coastal South Carolina has to play in this issue. It’s a place where scientists pioneered early PFAS research and where some of the country’s highest PFAS concentrations have been recorded.
And with continued investment in scientific advancement and collaboration, it’s also a place where solutions like PFAS alternatives are being tested.
A PFAS Primer
To someone without a chemistry degree, the world of emerging contaminants makes as much sense as a bowl of alphabet soup. There are EDCs and POPs, PBDEs and NDMA. ENPs, VOCs, and BPA (endocrine-disrupting chemicals, persistent organic pollutants, polybrominated diphenyl ethers, N-nitrosodimethylamine, engineered nanoparticles, volatile organic compounds, and bisphenol A.)
PFAS are one group among many contaminants of emerging concern. The term encompasses thousands of different types of chemicals, some of which are recognizable in their own right: perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS), and GenX.
This article will forgo specifics in favor of a single umbrella term—but to make sense of the PFAS acronym, a callback to middle-school chemistry is needed.
Picture the periodic table of elements: Hydrogen and carbon occupy atomic slots number one and six, respectively. They’re among the most abundant chemicals in the universe, and together they form a bond that’s fundamental to life itself, providing stable, strong scaffolding for molecules and complex reactions.
Skip down to atomic number nine, which is fluorine: The lightest of the halogen gases, pale yellow in its elemental form. Fluorine is a strange beast, rarely found on the surface of planet Earth. And it is fluorine that makes PFAS possible.
PFAS are formed when the familiar, ubiquitous carbon-hydrogen bond is replaced by the carbon-fluorine bond, a process known as ‘fluorination.’ That fluorinated bond is key to understanding both how PFAS became so widespread and why they pose threats to human- and environmental-health today.
Unlike carbon-hydrogen bonds, the carbon-fluorine bond is nearly impossible to break. It gives rise to compounds that cannot be destroyed by heat, water, oil, or other chemicals. Those remarkable qualities made the discovery and eventual use of PFAS a revelation to twentieth-century scientists and industry.
French chemists synthesized the first and simplest PFAS in 1926. Scientists continued to isolate and patent new fluorinated chemicals through the 1930s and 1940s. One of those patented compounds became significant in the Manhattan Project; the indestructible bonds allowed it to withstand the extreme conditions of uranium enrichment. But not until the post-war, industrial explosion of the 1950s were the chemicals found in products ranging from floor polish to guitar strings to pizza boxes.
It’s difficult to overestimate just how widespread certain PFAS use has been in industrial, commercial, and household markets over the past seventy years. On windshields and eyeglasses, a film of PFAS can prevent fogging in humid weather. On dental floss, the slick addition can help remove plaque. Inside electronics, PFAS-based coatings help repel oil and moisture that might corrode sensitive circuits. Anywhere heat-, water-, and grease-proofing might be useful, companies explored the use of PFAS.
Today, the PFAS universe is vast. An astounding volume of chemicals can be synthesized through fluorination. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) maintains a list of nearly 15,000 PFAS, while PubChem, the National Institutes of Health’s open-access chemical database, contains over seven million potential compounds.
This doesn’t mean millions of different fluorinated chemicals are circulating the globe. Experts estimate a few hundred are most commonly used—and that’s proven challenging enough. While some longer-chain PFAS (e.g., PFOA, PFOS) have been largely phased out of production in the U.S. due to health risks and persistence in the environment, a great number of slight variations exist to take their place.
“We only have viable toxicological data on and analytical methods for less than 100 of them,” says Holberger.
The traits that make PFAS so useful are the very same that ensure they don’t break down in the environment or living things. Resistance to heat, water, and oil means resistance to the normal rules of decay in the landscape and in human bodies.
Hence the nickname: “forever chemicals.”
Researchers at the PFAS Preparatory Laboratory at GEL Laboratories, LLC, in Charleston, S.C., identify contaminant levels in samples sent by private and public clients, including the U.S. military. Photo by Hailey Murphy, S.C. Sea Grant Consortium.
Of Fire and Foam
One of the most significant sources of PFAS pollution has surprising roots in a wartime disaster off the coast of Vietnam.
The year was 1967; American ground troops had been battling North Vietnamese forces for two grueling years. On the USS Forrestal, the world’s largest aircraft carrier at the time, an electrical misfire caused a rocket to explode on a jet fighter aboard the carrier. The rocket set off a catastrophic chain of explosions and fire that ultimately killed 134 sailors.
Among the dead was nearly the entire specialized firefighting team, whose loss early in the disaster contributed to its severity. At the time, the navy relied on small but highly trained crews rather than training all sailors in firefighting.
The Forrestal fire “…resulted in significant changes in the U.S. Navy in training,” wrote naval historian Samuel Cox in “H-008-6: USS Forrestal Disaster”.
Those changes ultimately meant emergency firefighting training for service members at nearly every military base across the country.
And that meant tremendous quantities of firefighting foam.
It was a Russian scientist at the Baku oil fields who first discovered that the air-filled bubbles in certain foams are uniquely suited to putting out oil-based fires. Because the foam is lighter than liquid fuel, it floats on top of the fire like a blanket, starving flames of oxygen and preventing the fuel from reigniting.
The U.S. Navy recognized the lifesaving potential of such foams. Beginning in the 1960s, the 3M Company became the navy’s sole provider of a highly effective firefighting foam called aqueous film-forming foam (often abbreviated as AFFF). The recipe was largely composed of PFAS.
The U.S. military became the top consumer of this foam. For decades, bases and airports across the country used it to extinguish fires in airplane hangars, on ships, and in emergency training practices. With little to no containment effort, the lightweight, PFAS-laden foams often made their way into local soils and waters.
South Carolina’s military bases were no exception. The twentieth century saw numerous installations established across the coast, from Myrtle Beach Air Force Base to Parris Island Marine Corps Recruit Depot. The Charleston area became home to multiple naval and air force bases, two of which survive today as Joint Base Charleston. All used firefighting foams containing PFAS. Staff primarily used the foam for training exercises; occasionally it was used to extinguish emergency fires.
AFFFs undoubtedly saved lives over the decades. But by 2010, a growing body of research and lawsuits made clear that the foam also played a significant role in contaminating U.S. waterways with chemicals capable of causing significant harm.
An adult Atlantic mud crab (Panopeus herbstii) found in the salt marsh surrounding Sullivan’s Island, S.C. Salt marsh provides critical habitat for commercially important species such as oysters, shrimp, and blue crab. Photo by Hailey Murphy, S.C. Sea Grant Consortium.
The scope of the problem across the nation was vast. Individual bases began investigating in 2014, and eventually the U.S. Department of Defense established a national task force and a formal cleanup program in 2019.
In 2018, experts investigated five Joint Base Charleston-Air Base locations where PFAS-containing firefighting foam was known or suspected to have been used since as early as 1979. The Charleston Air Force Base is right next to Charleston International Airport, an area that drains into three local tributaries of both the Ashley and Cooper rivers. The goal was to measure levels of three particular PFAS chemicals in the soil and water near contaminated areas—and to identify if they presented any immediate threats to drinking water.
The report gives some idea of just how many avenues for contamination existed on a typical military base. The foam washed off the equipment into drainage ditches, flowed from spray testing into stormwater ponds, and was flushed through the municipal sewer system.
The good news was the team found no immediate risks to drinking water, as drinking water for the base and much of Charleston comes from upriver.
The surface and groundwater at the sites tested told a different tale. PFAS concentrations in the majority of these samples exceeded the regional screening limit set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA), beyond which further testing is recommended. And some groundwater samples showed staggeringly high levels of PFOS and PFOA.
An immature semipalmated plover (Charadrius semipalmatus) hunting for crustaceans or marine worms along the intertidal zone in Mount Pleasant, S.C. Bird eggs with higher PFAS levels are less likely to hatch. Photo by Morgan Treon, S.C. Sea Grant Consortium.
The most contaminated site on Joint Base Charleston served as a fire training location in the 1980s. It has been inactive since 1989, yet a groundwater sample from the area contained 1,150 micrograms of PFAS per liter. The USEPA’s regional screening limit at the time was 0.07 micrograms of two primary PFAS chemicals per liter of water. That’s over 16,000 times higher than the recommended regional screening limit.
This matters because groundwater doesn’t stay put. Although not a contributor to drinking water in this location, groundwater feeds streams, rivers, and lakes. In the U.S., it supplies 37% of the country’s total drinking water and 90% of drinking water for rural Americans.
The military is just starting to address PFAS contamination across the country. After years of extensions, a formal ban on PFAS-containing firefighting foams is set to take effect in October 2026. In the last decade, $65 million has gone into research and development of PFAS-free firefighting alternatives.
“Although the Department has made significant progress, it needs additional time to ensure a methodical and safe transition of over 1,000 facilities and over 6,000 mobile assets,” the U.S. Department of Defense wrote in its request for an extension on a ban in 2025.
Military bases are far from the only sources of PFAS in Charleston, S.C., but researchers and environmental organizations such as Charleston Waterkeeper have had difficulty pinpointing others.
“PFAS found in the environment often can’t be chemically traced back to one particular source,” Holberger, the SCDES risk specialist, says.
In 2015, a team that found PFAS hotspots in Charleston-area riverbeds suggested that container ships and industrial discharge were two likely sources, in addition to military bases past and present. Ultimately, they too concluded that “It is difficult to pinpoint specific sources because PFAS are widely used and have not been well regulated or inventoried.”
Another major source? Us.
Wastewater treatment plants are often cited as major sources of PFAS, but that’s a little misleading—treatment plants are just pass-throughs for the real sources: sewer water and run-off. The technologies currently used in most wastewater facilities are no match for the PFAS in human waste and industrial wastewater. A recent review of 259 wastewater treatment plants across the globe found the same quantities of PFAS exiting the treatment plants as entering them.
“The technology to destroy PFAS at the scales necessary is not always practical, and in the case of drinking water, the high cost of even capturing would most likely be passed on to consumers,” says Holberger.
More recently, scientists have also raised concerns about the dangers of landfills as one of the biggest “environmental reservoirs” of PFAS. The types of consumer goods manufactured with PFAS—things like contact lenses, toothpaste, fishing line, and fast-food packaging—are often the same disposable products sent to landfills.
When water percolates through a landfill, it dissolves and picks up many kinds of contaminants. That ‘leachate’ threatens waterways if it’s not safely captured.
Whatever the source, water is the conduit for most PFAS exposure—and the way it all ends up downstream.
An Early Research Hub
In the early 2000s, mounting research suggested that bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) were ‘sentinels’ of the coast, reflecting the health of the waterways they inhabit. In 2003, a team of researchers led by Patricia Fair, Ph.D., of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) launched a project to assess dolphin health in Charleston, S.C., and Indian River Lagoon, Fla., to see what dolphins could teach them.
It was these dolphins that put Charleston on the map for PFAS research in wildlife, where it’s remained ever since, thanks to researchers at the Hollings Marine Laboratory on James Island, which hosts state, federal, and academic researchers.
“This Charleston-based team is one of the few nationally that has focused on PFAS impacts on coastal organisms and habitats in the United States,” says Ed Wirth, Ph.D., who retired in April 2025 after nearly three decades with NOAA.
The safe capture and release of dolphins requires the logistical equivalent of staging the Olympics—months of preparation, a large team of support staff, and an element of luck for mere minutes of primetime. After being corralled into a net in shallow waters, each animal is lifted on a stretcher into a specialized vessel, where staff work quickly and efficiently to collect over a dozen different metrics and samples before returning the animal to the water.
Magali Houde, Ph.D., was a member of that team during the initial two-year project that successfully caught 194 dolphins between Charleston and Indian River Lagoon. Today, Houde is an ecotoxicologist in Quebec, but in 2002, she was a graduate student fishing around for a Ph.D. project. She knew she wanted to look at contaminants in marine mammals. One of her supervisors knew of “this new chemical group of PFAS,” she says. Another connected her with Fair in Charleston.
The live captures led by Fair’s team “Gave me access to a variety of blood, milk, and urine samples that enabled me to look at different aspects of PFAS,” Houde says. Over the next decade, Houde and members of Fair’s lab would go on to publish seventeen papers about PFAS in bottlenose dolphins.
“The dolphin study was a prime example of applying the ‘One Health’ approach to the environment that we all share, especially for PFAS, an important environmental public health hazard,” says Fair, referencing the idea that human, animal, and environmental health are all closely connected. “Highly exposed wildlife can provide valuable insight into potential health impacts for humans.”
Research on PFAS concentrations—and potential health impacts—in humans had been growing through the 1990s. But PFAS had only just been reported for the first time in wildlife in 2001. That study, a brief four pages, found PFAS levels in 2,000 samples of a remarkable array of global wildlife: ringed seals from the Norwegian Arctic; Ganges river dolphins from India; and bluefin tuna from the Mediterranean. The discovery of PFAS were wildlife all over the globe launched a wave of research to confirm and advance the new field of study.
The results of the Charleston dolphin studies, among the first to be published, were surprising. The researchers learned several critical things in these early years of research:
- PFAS build up in animals over time.
- PFAS grow more concentrated and more toxic as they move up the food chain.
- PFAS can be passed from mother to offspring.
- PFAS levels among dolphins in Charleston were among the highest recorded in marine mammals at the time.*
* Higher concentrations of PFAS have since been measured in other marine mammals across the globe, but the concentrations in Charleston dolphins remain among the highest recorded in the U.S.
The findings received interest at scientific conferences—and pushback. Houde got a lot of questions from industry members, in particular. But any skepticism didn’t last long; soon, studies in other locations and other species were confirming their findings.
“Everyone quickly realized with the new papers being published on these compounds that this contamination was not a local issue,” Houde wrote by email.
Contamination was not just a local issue, but concentration clearly was. The exceedingly high PFAS levels in Charleston dolphins led Fair’s lab to look at sediment samples in 2012 from thirty-six locations in the Ashley and Cooper rivers and Charleston Harbor.
The findings “…revealed higher levels than those reported in any other U.S. urban areas,” first author Natasha White, Ph.D., wrote; Charleston’s urban sediment levels still rank among the highest in the nation.
But what do high PFAS levels actually mean for animals? Researchers set out to determine this next. In dolphins, analysis by Fair and colleagues found the first evidence that chronic, high levels of PFAS in dolphins impacted their immune system. PFAS can cause a “state of chronic immune activation,” increasing vulnerability to disease. In birds, eggs with higher PFAS levels are less likely to hatch and survive. Oysters exposed to PFAS show cell damage. Studies in rats have shown long-term PFAS exposure can cause liver damage and tumors. Most of these impacts are what scientists call sublethal effects—not enough to kill, but enough to build up and cause a multitude of problems over time.
NOAA scientist Marie DeLorenzo, Ph.D., and members of her ecotoxicology team, also based at the Hollings Marine Laboratory, have been studying PFAS impacts on a cellular scale. Minnows, mud snails, grass shrimp, and oysters form the base of the coastal food chain, but scientists knew little about how they take up, tolerate, and pass on PFAS chemicals. DeLorenzo’s team worked to identify what levels of different PFAS chemicals are toxic to these organisms and under what conditions.
DeLorenzo’s lab is also looking at the environmental impacts of the PFAS-free firefighting foams being developed—and finding that some of these alternatives may be even more toxic to marine life than what they’re replacing. However, they don’t last as long in the environment, which means they should have less potential to accumulate in animal tissues and concentrate up the food chain, DeLorenzo says.
Other researchers in Charleston have found PFAS in over a dozen other marine species, including sea turtles, American alligators, diamondback terrapins, brown pelicans, and, of course, fish. A 2019 study by Fair and Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) researchers looked at PFAS levels in six common saltwater fish: Atlantic croaker, spotted seatrout, spot, Southern flounder, striped mullet, and red drum. The study found overall concentrations of PFAS were on par with those seen in fish elsewhere in the country. The biologists did find PFAS levels were significantly higher in whole fish versus fillets and much higher in the Ashley River compared to the Cooper River or Charleston Harbor.
Lowcountry researchers have also investigated concentrations of PFAS in Gullah/Geechee patients, for whom fish and seafood are diet staples. A research team led by MUSC rheumatologist Diane Kamen, Ph.D., looked at how PFAS levels changed in sixty-seven Gullah/Geechee patients between 2003 and 2013.
The patients participating in the study had higher-than-average PFAS levels in their blood serum, but, on average, patients also showed a 9% drop in PFAS levels each year of the study. These findings were consistent with what researchers the world over were beginning to see in other populations at risk of high exposure, suggesting that the phase-out of some longer-chain PFAS compounds may be having a positive effect. Although forever chemicals don’t break down, they do leave the human body over time, mostly through urine.
An aerial landscape of salt marsh and forested hummocks in the Ashepoo, Combahee, Edisto (ACE) Basin National Estuarine Research Reserve, S.C., where scientists regularly monitor water quality. Photo by Noah Stillman, S.C. Sea Grant Consortium.
Lessons From Asbestos
Why did it take so long to determine the dangers of PFAS?
Part of the challenge was technological. Even today, PFAS compounds remain difficult to detect at low levels. Studying the chemicals requires expensive, sensitive, and highly specialized equipment and methods such as liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry, which weren’t widely available until the mid-1990s.
For decades, conventional belief also held that PFAS chemicals are biologically inactive, like the metals used for knee implants. The chemicals are bound up in plasticky polymers in products such as fast food wrappers, making them less likely to interact with living cells and tissues.
But as history has repeatedly shown, materials don’t have to be chemically or biologically active to be damaging.
Consider asbestos. Today, the once-common building material is synonymous with deadly health hazards like mesothelioma, but asbestos is a naturally occurring, chemically inert mineral mined all over the world. Its strong, stable, and heat-resistant qualities were ideal for insulation; however, it’s also crumbly, dusty, and easily inhaled. Once lodged in lungs and organs, the long, sharp crystals of asbestos will never break down. Over time, the asbestos fibers persistently stab, irritate, and scar living tissue, eventually causing cancer and other diseases without ever chemically reacting with our bodies.
The use of asbestos has greatly declined since the 1980s, but the USEPA finalized a full ban only two years ago. In the meantime, asbestos litigation evolved into an enormous industry as victims of workplace exposure have sought compensation. An estimated 40,000 people in the U.S. still die of asbestos-related illnesses annually—a number that has grown since the 1990s due to the delayed onset of disease.
Asbestos was also the subject of a decades-long industry campaign to conceal its dangers to workers. Information gleaned from recent lawsuits suggests the same has been true for the two largest manufacturers of PFAS chemicals, the 3M Company and DuPont Chemical.
The health impacts of asbestos are far more directly known and understood than those of PFAS. But insurers and legal experts are watching closely to see if there will be parallels in the way PFAS exposure is treated in the courtroom.
Turning Off the Faucet
In many ways, PFAS contamination, exposure, and cleanup in Charleston, S.C., have mirrored what’s happening all over the country. In other key ways, coastal South Carolina has stood apart—as a center for scholarship and high PFAS contamination.
But one of the ways in which South Carolina may shape the future of PFAS in the U.S. happened almost arbitrarily.
In 1999, Tennant v. DuPont marked the first major PFAS lawsuit—filed by a West Virginia farmer with an ill family and dying cattle against the chemical giant dumping PFAS waste in a nearby landfill. The landmark case, which DuPont settled with the farmer, has since been immortalized in books and films. It also spawned thousands of new cases, including, eventually, lawsuits against the manufacturers of PFAS-containing firefighting foam.
None of the original firefighting foam cases were set in South Carolina. But in 2018, a special body within the U.S. federal courts system consolidated and transferred the cases to Judge Richard Gergel of South Carolina, writing that the state’s sole federal district court had the “…capacity and resources to successfully guide this litigation.”
The first of the personal injury cases is set to head for trial or settlement sometime in 2026.
Meanwhile, the federal government has been lumbering toward a resolution on PFAS as well.
Until 2024, “There were not any enforceable federal regulations regarding PFAS in the environment,” wrote Amy Kraitchman for the National Sea Grant Law Center. That was the year when the USEPA finalized a rule designating PFOA and PFOS as hazardous substances under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, also known as the Superfund Law.
In the absence of federal regulations, most state legislators and drinking water providers have adopted a wait-and-see approach. North Carolina and Florida are the only states in the region to pass any PFAS groundwater regulations.
In South Carolina, legislation to place stricter limits on PFAS has repeatedly failed to pass. But legislators have awarded funds to the S.C. Department of Environmental Services (SCDES) to help test for PFAS.
“We’re using it to sample private wells, as well as for our quarterly ambient surface water sampling program at 40 locations across the state,” says SCDES’ Holberger. “We have sampled over 1,600 private wells since 2023. About 20% of wells sampled have PFOS/PFOA concentrations above 4 parts per billion, which is the EPA Maximum Contaminant Limit.”
If drinking water comes from a private well that causes concern, a person can apply for testing and remediation with SCDES. If drinking water is from a municipal water system, such as Charleston Water System or Beaufort-Jasper Water and Sewer Authority, they’re likely already testing for certain PFAS compounds, and results can be found in their annual reporting documents.
Water samples are labelled in preparation for analysis at the College of Charleston, where researchers and students study the impacts of PFAS on wildlife. Photo by Hailey Murphy, S.C. Sea Grant Consortium.
A Path Forward
In 2022, Congaree Riverkeeper Bill Stangler discovered an unsettling mystery about the river system his organization worked to protect: it had high levels of a particular type of PFAS, and he wasn’t positive as to why.
The story of how he and others untangled and responded to this question, recounted in The Post & Courier in February 2026, offers a promising model for proactively reducing PFAS contaminant release, he says.
Unbeknownst to Stangler, industrial engineers at Shaw Industries’ carpet fiber plant on the Saluda River had independently been trying to answer the same question. Although the plant stopped using PFAS chemicals in 2019, wastewater leaving the plant still showed higher PFAS concentrations than water entering the plant.
Engineers eventually determined that more than sixty materials used in the plant were the culprit—but it was what the company did next that was unusual.
Instead of facing a drawn-out legal battle, Shaw Industries opted to install a granular activated carbon-filtration system at the Saluda River plant. The team is currently awaiting results to see how effective the system has been at filtering out PFAS.
PFAS pollution is a multifaceted issue, requiring this kind of collaborative approach to address—from reducing PFAS contaminant releases to treating existing sources to understanding and addressing human and environmental health issues. In South Carolina, as across the country, scientists, lawmakers, manufacturers, and consumers are only beginning to grapple with the scale of the problem.
The litigation unfolding in South Carolina’s federal district court may help reshape how chemical companies and manufacturers approach PFAS. Lawmakers are also starting to pass regulations that put protections in place to address both existing pollution and the chemicals still entering the market.
The future of PFAS will not just be determined in courtrooms and legislatures alone, though; consumers play a role as well.
“While there are more and more products being made and marketed as PFAS-free—ceramic pots and pans instead of nonstick—consumer demand for products like disposable diapers and cosmetics is unlikely to diminish,” says Holberger, the SCDES risk specialist. Convenience is a powerful incentive, and consumers interested in PFAS-free alternatives will have to demand change.
One path forward, experts say, involves distinguishing between essential and nonessential uses of PFAS. In medicine, for instance, the chemicals perform functions for which substitutes don’t yet exist. But in the case of products such as stain-resistant fabrics or certain cosmetics, use may prove easier to phase out.
At home, one of the most effective ways to limit PFAS exposure is also one of the most accessible—water filters ranging from cheap pitchers to pricier home-filtration systems can reduce or even eliminate PFAS in drinking water.
There are plenty of reasons for optimism. Researchers continue to find, as in the 2015 study of Gullah/Geechee patients, that the human body can reduce its PFAS load over time. Biologists have just begun to document what may be a similar phenomenon in wildlife. Earlier this year, a Harvard-based team published findings which revealed PFAS-based chemicals in North Atlantic subarctic pilot whales (Globicephala spp.) peaked in 2011 and dropped by over 60% by 2023.
There’s also much to be proud of in South Carolina. Researchers at Hollings Marine Laboratory and beyond continue to make strides in understanding PFAS and its alternative replacements in the coastal environment. A team from the University of South Carolina is currently fine tuning more immediate methods to detect PFAS ‘hotspots’ in waterways.
One point on which nearly everyone agrees is that phasing out PFAS will take time, and contaminants already in the environment are not going away anytime soon. The chemicals that have entered waterways and soil will persist for generations. The challenge now, in addition to reducing pollution and impacts, will be learning from and adapting to the legacy of the fluorine-based chemicals that transformed twentieth-century life.