Bioremediation of Soils Contaminated with PFAS: An Update on Available Techniques, Pilot Studies, Challenges, and Future Directions

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) have emerged as a significant class of pollutants due to their broad environmental and health implications. PFAS have been used in a range of industrial and consumer applications since the 1940s, leading to their widespread presence in the environment, including among others, water sources, soil, and even the human body. As a result, these man-made chemicals have gained substantial attention in recent years due to their persistence, bioaccumulative nature, and adverse effects on both ecosystems and human health. Increasing scientific and regulatory attention is being paid to the occurrence and fate of PFAS in drinking water, wastewater, and the environment in general. Particularly, PFAS-contaminated soil has become increasingly reported in many parts of the world, and is now being recognized as a serious environmental hazard. When these chemicals are present in soil, they can infiltrate the groundwater, potentially leading to drinking water and food contamination. Consequently, there is a pressing need to develop, optimize, and implement remediation technologies specifically tailored to PFAS-contaminated soils. This chapter aims to address the problem of PFAS pollution, with a specific focus on their occurrence in soils and the current state of the most effective remediation approaches employed today.