How To Change Brita Filter Cartridge

SOUTHEASTERN N.C. — A small Illinois company that'southward teamed upward with government environmental researchers in Durham has launched a $45 filter that tin rid of PFAS and is uniform with countertop pitchers, like the Brita. The Purefast cartridge lasts effectually three months and comes with a return label to ship it back to the company once used, where they safely dispose of the "forever chemicals" without reintroducing them to the environment.

It was starting time revealed in 2017 that these toxic substances were floating in the Cape Fear River, southeastern Northward Carolina'southward drinking source, largely owing to the dumping of upstream chemical company Chemours. Considered a global health run a risk, the extent of their adverse health impacts is still not fully understood.

Public water utilities are spending millions to upgrade their systems in wake of the new knowledge, but those projects take years. Residents are left to fund costly at-home reverse osmosis systems, buy gallons at the shop or travel to free water sources at parks.

CylocoPure'due south Purefast is the offset countertop filter designed to remove PFAS from tap water, co-ordinate to the company's CEO Frank Cassou. The standard Brita filter will clear drinking water of abnormal odors or tastes and remove some particulates. However, it'south no match for "forever chemicals."

1 Purefast filter can supply up to 65 gallons of PFAS-gratis h2o. That's enough to replace 700 single-use water bottles, serving a family of 4 for nearly three months.

The company made its first sale from North Carolina this calendar week, a customer from Leland, Cassou said.

"Nosotros completely remove GenX," he added. "We've washed a lot of tests of water effectually the state with our water exam kits and pretty much Due north Carolina'due south one of the sectional places we see GenX come upwardly."

The Purefast product incorporates the company's DEXSORB+ technology, made of cup-shaped cyclodextrins purchased from a 3rd-party supplier. Derived from corn, the cyclodextrins' molecular size — less than a nanometer across — makes information technology very selective to PFAS, Cassou said.

"These are actually, really good absorbents," Cassou explained. "People have used them for years. They're used in Febreeze to remove olfactory property from the air, but previously they were not bachelor for use in water handling. That was our science was to make them insoluble and then that they could be used in the h2o. We took something that was naturally highly absorbent and really good at modest molecules and so made information technology work in water handling."

The Durham-headquartered National Establish of Environmental Health Sciences helped backing the development of the technology with $1.fifteen-million in grants since fiscal yr 2018.

"The purpose of the [Superfund Research Program] small business grant plan is to create tools that will improve people's health," SRP wellness scientist administrator Heather Henry, the program leader, said in NIEHS' newsletter. "CycloPure is doing just that. It is a remarkable achievement that only four years afterward their grant started, they have launched a product that tin can help communities reduce their exposure to PFAS."

In a lab, CycloPure detected nothing PFAS for 65 gallons of filtered h2o. The company conducted testing for all 40 chemicals identified in the Ecology Protection Bureau's PFAS Roadmap. With the results, it obtained certification from the National Sanitation Foundation International in March, approving its commercial use.

Each Purefast filter arrives in the mail with a prepaid return label and directions to send it back to CycloPure's lab once used. The contaminants are and then converted into salts and disposed of.

"We have technology here at CycloPure where we can recover any PFAS that are in the filter, and so we completely destroy it here," Cassou said. "So there's no kind of recontamination or reintroduction of information technology into the environment."

CycloPure'due south DEXSORB is deployed in other embodiments besides, such as filter papers within its $80 at-home water quality test kits. It is also used in refrigerator cartridges, nether the sink and in larger treatment implementations. In two states, the company is trialing a signal-of-entry system to treat all water coming into a house.

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