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Talk:Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Dominic Mayers (talk | contribs) at 08:17, 12 July 2022 (→Discussion for RfC about PFAS vs PFASs: Just to have a consistent layout. If the purpose of the second item was to reply in the form of a bullet point to my comment, which I don't think is the case, please undo.). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Revision as of 08:17, 12 July 2022 by Dominic Mayers (talk | contribs) (→Discussion for RfC about PFAS vs PFASs: Just to have a consistent layout. If the purpose of the second item was to reply in the form of a bullet point to my comment, which I don't think is the case, please undo.)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)
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Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 8 September 2020 and 15 December 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): GNielsen1.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 06:23, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Missing usage info

This article seems to lack info on how these chemicals are used and what for. I feel it would help improve the article if this info was added, however due to the heavy focus most information has on the negative effects of PFAS on the human body it's hard to find any usage info. ShadowLeopardBeetleweightGuy (talk) 16:40, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

Be bold and add some information. The recent publication An overview of the uses of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) would be a good source. --Leyo 21:37, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

Biased Source

Echoing the previous comment, the page provides a Table titled "Probable links to health issues as identified by the C8 Science Panel." The Table lists position papers that did not meet the quality standards for publication in a reputable peer-reviewed scientific journal, and thus were self-published by C8SciencePanel.org. C8SciencePanel.org is registered anonymously, but appears to be owned by a plaintiff's law firm with a financial interest in PFAS litigation. Misplaced Pages's editorial standards say that content "must be verifiable." The C8SciencePanel.org position papers are not verifiable. That Table should be deleted.

Map of PFAS contamination probes by EWG

Is it more worth a weblink or a quotable source? PFAS contamination by EWG. Also John Oliver talked about it in Last Week tonight as of last week. See e.g. his youtube video. (which would be just a recitable source. Any ideas what should be included. -- 143.164.1.12 (talk) 17:18, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

I added the link to the map as weblink. I do not know if there is anything new to add to the article from the Last Week Tonight episode. -- Nuretok (talk) 06:45, 10 October 2021 (UTC)
Probably worth noting the recent John Oliver piece itself in the article, since it is a notable public media presentation of the topic. Would suggest noting it in the "Human health concerns..." section, in the paragraph that mentions the 2021 Brockovich article. -- SteveChervitzTrutane (talk) 08:05, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

PFAS vs. PFASs

The article currently uses PFASs to denote multiple PFAS chemicals. As the "S" in PFAS stands for "substances", the word is already plural. I believe it is best practice (and the format used by the U.S. EPA) to not use the second S. -- 67.61.157.87 (talk) 17:43, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

With the same argument, the acronym of e.g. polychlorinated biphenyls would be PCB, not PCBs.
In all relevant publications of the terminology of PFASs, the acronym with the plural-s is used:
--Leyo 23:28, 8 April 2022 (UTC)
Respectfully, that isn't "all relevant publications". That is two documents for which Robert Buck is a significant contributor which uses that notation, and one article referencing one of those two publications.
Several organizations, such as the US EPA, CDC, ITRC explicitly state that PFAS is the preferred format, while the cited OECD publication states in the notes that "It is noted that there is a notion of using “PFAS” as the acronym for both the singular and
plural forms. This report does not make any recommendation to address this notion..." (note 2). Scholarly publications use PFAS vs. PFASs at about 3:1 based on an admittedly very rudimentary Google Scholar search.
Further, PFAS is a distinct case from PCBs. The plural-s for PCBs is to distinguish the class (PCBs) from polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) the compound. There is no compound with the abbreviation PFAS that must be distinguished from the class.
67.61.157.87 (talk) 18:55, 10 April 2022 (UTC)
Multinational organizations are more relevant than national ones.
Also in the case of PFASs, there is a singular referring to one substance. Moreover, there are substances that contain both a perfloroalkyl and a polyfluoroalkyl moiety. --Leyo 22:07, 10 April 2022 (UTC)
Okay, the European Commission, European Environment Agency, and European Environmental Bureau seem to prefer PFAS. The European Chemicals Agency and European Food Safety Authority use the two interchangeably. Australia and Canada use PFAS. The Stockholm Convention uses PFAS. The only organization I can find that consistently uses 'PFASs' is OECD.
I'm not sure what the relevance of a compound containing both a per- and polyfluorinated moiety is.
The extra -s is less common and grammatically incorrect, and it seems odd for the Misplaced Pages page to use it. 67.61.157.87 (talk) 23:12, 10 April 2022 (UTC)
Wow, you found one page of the Stockholm Convention, where PFAS is use as a plural once. See here and here for the latest risk profile and risk management evaluation documents on a PFAS, namely PFHxS. These documents were both adopted by the POPs Review Committee.
It is silly to call the version PFASs gramatically incorrect, when a use without the plural-s is against practice in chemistry as shown above. --Leyo 12:49, 11 April 2022 (UTC)
"Against practice in chemistry" is a bit of a stretch, don't you think? Reviewing other Stockholm submissions, they use a mix of PFAS and PFASs, so I'm happy to consider them as one of the "groups that use the two interchangeably". I have been unable to find any organization publishing guidance advising that PFASs is the preferred format. The governments of the top four English-speaking countries all prefer PFAS. 67.61.157.87 (talk) 14:30, 11 April 2022 (UTC)
Submissions by e.g. individual member countries can't be compared to documents adopted by the POPs Review Committee. All these countries are OECD members and representatives have contributed to the recent terminology publication. --Leyo 16:47, 11 April 2022 (UTC)
The documents you cite explicitly state they have not been formally edited. None of the formal publications I can find from them use the term PFAS at all, instead referring to each relevant chemical by name. Perhaps they should not be the defining source for this.
Do you know of any organizations that have documented a preference fore "PFASs" over "PFAS"? 67.61.157.87 (talk) 19:02, 11 April 2022 (UTC)
The statement saying that a document has not been formally edited just means that is contains the text as agreed by the POPs Review Committee, including the use of acronyms. --Leyo 08:16, 24 June 2022 (UTC)
  • @Leyo, 67.61.157.87, and IP: Obviously this quest has not produced a stable result. And tbh, I could not conclude from these posts for myself easily too. So to prevent some unpleasant editwarring, and to reach a wellbased, acceptable conclusion, I propose to restart this question wider, eg through an WP:RFC. Will write one shortly. -DePiep (talk) 10:24, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

RfC about PFAS vs PFASs

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Should Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances be shortened to PFAS or PFASs when using the acronym as a plural? 71.11.5.2 (talk) 19:50, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

Discussion for RfC about PFAS vs PFASs

  • I was summoned by a bot to comment this RfC. This is not a case that requires that we do as in the sources. If we add a "s", we are not changing the information that is found in the sources and only the actual information needs to be verifiable, not the syntax or the grammar. It seems that there is a good logic for both options. However, the most flexible option is to add a "s" for the plural, because there is a problem if we need the singular and PFAS is plural. For example, the web page "Perfluoroalkyl and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS)". uses FSAS to mean the plural and thus has a problem with its sentence:

    Time-sensitive studies such as PFAS exposures in residents near Colorado Springs whose water was contaminated with the PFAS known as perfluorohexane sulfonate (PFHxS), and contamination of the Cape Fear River in North Carolina by GenX.

    For this kind of things, there is no requirement that we do as in this source or other sources. Dominic Mayers (talk) 21:07, 7 July 2022 (UTC)
  • Use PFASs for plural: scholarly and government sources intermix usages enough that we can choose any convention that's common and clear. Using PFAS for singular and PFASs for plural is consistent with WP usage in many other classes of compounds such as PCBs, PAHs, CFCs, POPs and VOCs. A source of confusion: this article title is plural for unclear reasons, counter to WP:CHEMGROUP and unlike singular titles for PCBs, PAHs, etc. –MadeOfAtoms (talk) 07:00, 12 July 2022 (UTC)

Recent Article of Interest

Recent article of interest which may be worth referencing? Assembly and Curation of Lists of Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) to Support Environmental Science Research (from the EPA) https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fenvs.2022.850019/full

How to Define PFAS from C&E News: https://cen.acs.org/policy/chemical-regulation/define-PFAS/100/i24 --ChemConnector (talk) 03:22, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

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