FLX PFAS Project: Targeted water sampling to identify sources of per‐ and polyfluoroalkyl substances(PFASs) in the Finger Lakes.
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) are a class of commercial and industrial chemicals that are detected in water resources around the world. The FLX PFAS Project was established in 2023 with goals of collecting water samples from around the Finger Lakes and quantifying the occurrence of PFASs, as well as integrating the resulting PFAS concentration data into a web-based ArcGIS project to communicate our findings to the public. Our work has revealed a number of sites within the Finger Lakes that may be impacted by PFASs (Fig. 1) and several sites that have PFAS concentrations that exceed health advisory levels. Notably, surface water samples collected near the southern end of Cayuga Lake and the Ithaca Tompkins International Airport exhibit high total concentrations of target PFASs. Many other sites throughout the Finger Lakes (all Finger Lakes have been sampled at least once) exhibit target PFAS concentrations that range from less than our limits of detection (on the order of 1 ng L-1 or parts per trillion) to high (exceeding 10 ng L-1 or parts per trillion).