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Reviews of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology Volume 208 pp 161–177Cite as

Biodegradation of Fluorinated Alkyl Substances

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Part of the book series: Reviews of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology ((RECT,volume 208))

Abstract

The interest in the fate of fluorinated chemicals in the environment emerged in the 1980s–1990s, when chlorofluorocarbons were banned due to their extreme potential for destroying the ozone layer (Molina and Rowland 1974; Rowland 2002). More recent concerns connected with fluorinated chemicals have arisen within the last decade when the perfluorinated carboxylic acids (PFCAs) and perfluorinated alkane sulfonates (PFASs) were found to be environmentally ubiquitous (Giesy and Kannan 2001; Hansen et al. 2001). Indeed, the presence of these chemicals in human blood serum had been surmised in the 1960s (Taves 1968), but at that time, analytical methods were not yet capable of identifying these compounds.

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Acknowledgments

Tobias Frömel wishes to thank the German Water Chemical Society for the gracious donation of a grant to support his research.

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  1. Institute for Analytic Research, Hochschule Fresenius, 65510, Idstein, Germany

    Tobias Frömel & Thomas P. Knepper

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  1. Tobias Frömel
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Correspondence to Thomas P. Knepper .

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  1. , Environmental Chemistry and Toxicology, University of Amsterdam, Nieuwe Achtergracht 166, Amsterdam, 1018, Netherlands

    Pim De Voogt

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Frömel, T., Knepper, T.P. (2010). Biodegradation of Fluorinated Alkyl Substances. In: De Voogt, P. (eds) Reviews of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology Volume 208. Reviews of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology, vol 208. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-6880-7_3

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