{"id":80367,"date":"2025-08-19T16:50:20","date_gmt":"2025-08-19T16:50:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/80367\/"},"modified":"2025-08-19T16:50:20","modified_gmt":"2025-08-19T16:50:20","slug":"new-forever-chemicals-found-in-killer-whale-blubber","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/80367\/","title":{"rendered":"New &#8216;forever chemicals&#8217; found in killer whale blubber"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"#debrief\"><img loading=\"lazy\" data-lazyloaded=\"1\" data-placeholder-resp=\"800x166\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"800\" height=\"166\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-83283\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/DDNL_bannerfornewsstories-800x166.png\" alt=\"\"  data-\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>In the same week that global discussions to develop a legally-binding multilateral Plastics Treaty to tackle the plastic pollution, microplastics, and their associated harmful chemicals crisis collapsed, scientists identified a class of PFAS in the blubber of killer whales that had previously gone undocumented.<\/p>\n<p>The new study \u2013 published in <a href=\"https:\/\/pubs.acs.org\/doi\/10.1021\/acs.estlett.5c00516\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Environmental Science and Technology Letters<\/a> \u2013 details the presence of five fluorotelomer sulfones (highly fluorinated, fat-loving chemicals) never before reported in wildlife. And it would appear that whales and other marine mammals could be particularly vulnerable to their exposure.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s because, unlike well-studied PFAS, which typically accumulate in protein-rich tissues such as liver and blood, these new substances accumulate in fat-rich blubber.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is the first time that highly fluorinated PFAS have been shown to preferentially accumulate in fat,\u201d said lead author, M\u00e9lanie Lauria, formerly a doctoral student at the Department of Environmental Science at Stockholm University and currently at the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt challenges the long-held assumption that PFAS primarily bind to proteins and accumulate in the liver of blood. Research has so far focused on a subgroup of PFAS that is \u2018charged\u2019 or \u2018polar\u2019, and therefore interact mainly with proteins.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe results of this study show that we have overlooked PFAS that are neutral and can interact and accumulate in neutral fats such as blubber.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Researchers were able to analyse tissue samples from killer whales in Greenland and Sweden. The newly identified compounds accounted for up to 75% of fluorine-containing substances in blubber, but were undetectable in liver tissue \u2013 evidence of their \u2018fat-loving\u2019 nature.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the same week that global discussions to develop a legally-binding multilateral Plastics Treaty to tackle the plastic&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":80368,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[64,63,128,338],"class_list":{"0":"post-80367","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80367"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80367\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}