What Are PFAS and Why You Should Care?

PFAS have gone from an obscure chemistry term to a genuine household name over the last few years — and for good reason. If you've seen headlines about "forever chemicals" showing up in tap water and wondered what that actually means for your family, here's the plain-language version.

What PFAS Actually Are

PFAS stands for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances — a large family of thousands of manufactured chemicals that have been used since the 1940s to repel oil, grease, and water, and to resist heat. That's exactly why they ended up everywhere: nonstick cookware, stain-resistant carpets and fabrics, food packaging, firefighting foam, cosmetics, and more.

Why They're Called "Forever Chemicals"

PFAS earned that nickname because the same chemical bonds that make them so useful also make them extremely resistant to breaking down — in the environment, it can take thousands of years. Once inside the human body, they don't metabolize away easily either; some PFAS compounds remain in blood, liver, and kidney tissue for months or years, building up over time rather than passing through.

What the Science Actually Shows

Research on PFAS exposure has been building for decades, and reviews of that research point to real health concerns: increased risk of certain cancers (including kidney and testicular cancer), liver damage, thyroid disease, elevated cholesterol, hormone disruption, reduced vaccine response, and developmental effects in infants exposed during pregnancy. No safe exposure level has been identified for some of the most studied PFAS compounds.

Where the Regulations Stand Right Now

In 2024, the EPA issued the first-ever federal drinking water standard for PFAS, setting strict limits for six specific compounds. More recently, in May 2026, the EPA announced plans to roll back or delay some of those protections — a reminder that PFAS regulation is still very much a moving target, and relying solely on "it's regulated so it must be handled" isn't a safe assumption right now. Some states, including New Jersey, Minnesota, and Connecticut, have moved ahead with their own stricter standards independent of federal rules.

How PFAS Actually Get Into Water Supplies

PFAS don't need an industrial spill to end up in your water — they enter groundwater and surface water through a range of everyday and industrial sources: firefighting foam used at airports and military bases, wastewater treatment plants that weren't designed to filter them out, landfills leaching runoff over decades, and manufacturing facilities that used PFAS-containing materials before their risks were well understood. Because they don't break down, contamination from decades ago can still show up in testing today, often far from the original source as groundwater slowly carries it through an aquifer.

This is part of why PFAS contamination is so widespread rather than isolated to a handful of obvious industrial sites — the EPA's own national testing has found PFAS in water supplies serving both large cities and small rural systems alike, across nearly every state.

What You Can Actually Do About It

The first step is knowing what's actually in your water. Our homepage includes a free lookup tool powered by the Environmental Working Group's tap water database — enter your zip code to see what's been detected in your area, PFAS included.

From there, not every filter removes PFAS — it depends on the technology. Our Alka75™ under-sink system is built specifically to target PFAS along with lead and chlorine through its 22-stage filtration process, while still restoring the minerals that give water a clean taste.