Statewide Surveillance\nand Mapping\nof PFAS in Florida Surface Water

Florida’s water bodies are vital for drinking,\nagriculture,\nrecreation, tourism, and climate resilience. The monitoring of water\nquality is critical for the state, with consequences for both human\nhealth and the economy. This work describes our statewide monitoring\nof per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) within a myriad of water\nbodies in Florida to establish a PFAS baseline and determine hotspots.\nSurface water samples were obtained between April 2020 and December\n2021, from 2323 sites, via crowdsourcing from all 67 counties in Florida\nand were subsequently analyzed for 50 PFAS via high-performance liquid\nchromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. The mean concentration of\n∑PFAS across Florida was 29 ng/L, with a maximum ∑PFAS\nconcentration of 3048 ng/L. Moreover, 23 counties reported perfluorooctanoic\nacid and perfluorooctanesulfonic acid levels over the EPA’s\nmaximum contaminant level of 4 ng/L, with 915 and 920 sites over the\nlimit across the state, respectively. Data was organized by site coordinates,\nand predictive heat maps highlighting regions of concern were created.\nFirst attempts were made to identify possible PFAS pollution sources\nby overlaying suspect entities (airports, military installations,\nand wastewater treatment plants), in addition to relating data to\nhistorical pollution spill notifications (e.g., wastewater influent,\neffluent, and sludge).