Eternal chemicals in drinking water harm newborns – warn US scientists

PFAS, chemicals commonly known as eternal chemicals, pose a serious threat to pregnant women and their newborn children. A new study conducted in New Hampshire shows that drinking water with elevated PFAS levels increases newborn mortality and may cause perinatal complications.

Eternal chemicals in drinking water

The growing risks associated with the presence of PFAS in the environment have been discussed for a long time. So far, however, there has been a lack of reliable and indisputable evidence of their harmful impact on human health. To deepen knowledge about this invisible threat, scientists from the University of Arizona decided to examine how contamination of drinking water with eternal chemicals affects the health of the most vulnerable organisms, newborns.

The study, whose results were published on December 8 in the journal PNAS, was carried out in the US state of New Hampshire and covered 11,000 cases. The researchers compared information on newborn health with the locations of 41 wells contaminated with PFOS and PFOA, the most widespread eternal chemicals. The findings, as acknowledged by Derek Lemoine, one of the study’s authors, were a major surprise.

Risky exposure to tap water

Women who drank water from PFAS-contaminated wells during pregnancy unknowingly exposed their children to extreme danger. Newborn mortality in this group was 191 percent higher than in the rest of the population. Also concerning is a 20 percent increase in premature births and a 43 percent higher risk of low birth weight. Additionally, extreme prematurity was diagnosed 168 percent more often than usual, and very low birth weight 180 percent more often.

These findings confirm earlier research from 2023 suggesting a link between prenatal PFAS exposure and low birth weight. Eternal chemicals have been detected in umbilical cord tissue and in the blood of newborns, clearly indicating their ability to cross the placental barrier.

Cleaning is cheaper than treatment

Researchers from Arizona extrapolated the New Hampshire results to the national scale and calculated that across the United States, the costs of treating the effects of PFAS in human bodies could reach 8 billion dollars. This sum includes healthcare expenses and lost productivity among parents due to their infants’ poor health.

Independent studies show, meanwhile, that removing PFAS from US drinking water sources to bring them within legal limits would cost about 3.8 billion dollars. That is less than half of the projected costs linked to their presence – costs that still do not account for the full range of potential risks. Eternal chemicals are suspected of being linked to serious conditions such as cancers, kidney and liver diseases, and immune system disorders.

A federal study commissioned in 2024 suggests that more than 80 million people across the United States regularly use groundwater sources contaminated with PFAS. In Europe, the same issue may affect as many as 12.5 million people – data from 2023 indicate that drinking water contamination in the EU concerns around 23,000 locations.

A map published by the European Environment Agency (EEA) suggests that eternal chemicals in water sources are primarily a problem in Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Italy, and Denmark. In Poland, exceedances have been recorded in places such as Libiąż near Oświęcim, Kolbudy near Gdańsk, and Krzyżanowice near Racibórz. The true scale of the threat may be even greater.

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Source:

R. Baluja,B. Guo,W. Howden,A. Langer, & D. Lemoine, PFAS-contaminated drinking water harms infants, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 122 (50) e2509801122, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2509801122 (2025)