Misryoum reports pilot whale data suggest newer PFAS may be avoiding remote waters, raising questions about exposure pathways.
Newer “forever chemicals” may not be where scientists expect them to be, according to a study tracking PFAS buildup in pilot whales over two decades.
In a remote part of the North Atlantic. Misryoum highlights how researchers use tissue samples from long-finned pilot whales—collected from the Faroe Islands from the early 2000s through the early 2020s—to look for traces of PFAS. a large family of persistent organofluorine compounds.. The work focuses on both an overall measure of fluorine-containing material in the tissue and a more targeted search for specific PFAS formulations. allowing the team to connect broad contamination trends with more precise chemical identification.
The key finding is striking: levels of older PFAS declined as expected, but most of the newer PFAS the researchers targeted were found to be nearly absent in the whale tissue.
That mismatch is more than a scientific curiosity. If the newest PFAS aren’t showing up where long-lived marine predators have been accumulating legacy chemicals, researchers may need to rethink how and where these replacements travel through the environment.
The study distinguishes between so-called legacy PFAS—widely used until restrictions began in the early 2000s—and “novel” PFAS that were introduced afterward.. While legacy PFAS such as PFOA and PFOS have been widely studied. novel PFAS come in enormous numbers of possible chemical structures. making it harder to monitor them comprehensively.. The challenge is both technical and conceptual: even when regulations restrict named chemicals. manufacturers can introduce new formulations. and scientists must adapt detection methods faster than the chemical landscape changes.
Misryoum notes that one interpretation of the pilot whale results is that newer PFAS may be going somewhere else rather than building up in the open ocean food web.. The whales sampled in the Faroes are often treated as “sentinels” for what the marine environment is delivering to upper trophic levels.. If most targeted novel PFAS are not present in these tissues. researchers are left with a practical question that cuts to human risk as well: where are these compounds accumulating. and who is being exposed?
Several hypotheses are now being tested from different angles.. Some researchers consider whether novel PFAS could be transported differently—perhaps moving through air and precipitation in ways that change their deposition patterns—or whether they fail to bioaccumulate to the same degree as older chemicals.. Others explore the possibility of a time lag: contamination pathways for new PFAS may require more years to fully emerge in marine ecosystems. especially if production rates ramped up later than the legacy chemicals did.
Meanwhile, the “missing” chemicals may also reflect limits in what current analytical tools can detect across the vast PFAS space.. Even when scientists know novel PFAS are being produced. they may not yet have the standards needed to identify many specific compounds reliably. and many unknown or poorly characterized PFAS may not be captured by existing methods.
Beyond the science of detection and transport. the pilot whale anomaly feeds into a broader debate about how PFAS should be regulated.. Misryoum emphasizes that many researchers argue the problem cannot be solved solely by chasing individual compounds one by one. especially when chemical substitutes continue to appear.. Instead. attention is increasingly turning toward regulation based on shared properties—such as persistence in the environment and potential to accumulate in living systems—rather than on specific molecular identities.
In the end, the whale data serve as a warning signal for scientists and policymakers alike. If newer PFAS are not disappearing but relocating, then understanding their true “terminal” sinks and real-world exposure routes becomes essential for protecting ecosystems and public health.