PFAS have earned the nickname forever chemicals because of their resistance to breaking down—both in the environment and the human body. With greater exposure, these chemicals bioaccumulate, leading to higher concentrations in our bodies, soil, and water. While there aren’t many interventions to reduce PFAS in the body, scientists in Canada may have unearthed a potential breakthrough.
Researchers chose to look at those with high cholesterol because it is well-supported that PFAS exposure can increase total and LDL (bad) cholesterol. They found that all of the participants had at least six different types of PFAS chemicals present in their blood.
The participants were split into two groups: a placebo group and one that took fiber supplements for four weeks in the form of an oat-derived beta glucan—a type of soluble fiber found in foods like oats, barley, and mushrooms—beverage taken three times a day.
At the end of four weeks, all participants had lower levels of PFAS, but researchers noticed that for those taking the fiber supplement, there were specific PFAS chemicals that were drastically reduced after the intervention.
Those chemicals (PFOA, PFNA, PFDA, PFUnDA, PFHxS, PFOS, and MeFOSSA) are considered long-chain, which are more persistent in the environment and our bodies, making it significant that a fiber intervention could reduce their concentrations.
In the recent study, researchers explain that dietary fibers could impede the absorption or reabsorption of PFAS by forming a gel that lines the gut and traps substances like bile acid—which has a similar chemical structure to PFAS. These gel-forming fibers are commonly found in foods like oats and barley.
Researchers caution that there are limitations to this study: the sample size was fairly small and the timeframe of the intervention was short at only four weeks.
“Many long-chain PFASs have half-lives on the order of 2–7 years, thus a one-month intervention may be insufficient to strongly influence serum-PFAS concentrations with ongoing exposure,” the authors wrote.
Additionally, the samples used were originally collected as part of a study meant to observe changes in cholesterol, not PFAS. “There was no information collected on potential sources of PFAS exposure prior to or during the study and no attempt to control for differences in ongoing exposures between intervention and control groups,” the researchers explained.
The study authors also pointed out that future studies need to test if higher concentrations of the fiber supplement could lead to greater reductions in PFAS levels. But despite the limitations, the authors are hopeful—eating more fiber could present a practical and feasible way to reduce the amount of forever chemicals in our bodies, and the toll that they take.
For more on chemicals and public health:
