Damian Helbling

Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Damian Helbling, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Cornell University, researches water quality as it relates to human and ecosystem health. He says limiting PFAS in drinking water is technologically feasible, will increase workforce demand and will spark further development of emerging technology.

Helbling says:

“The technology exists to meet these goals. Conventional approaches include activated carbon filtration or ion exchange processes. Hoosick Falls, N.Y. is a semi-local community that has been using activated carbon filtration at their drinking water facility to remove PFAS for several years already.

“Any new regulation like this is likely to come with a new demand for a workforce. That might have many different components: environmental engineers to develop solutions; environmental scientists and analytical chemists to do the monitoring; industrial hygienists to mitigate the problem at the source; etc.

“There certainly are a number of startups looking to commercialize new materials that are ‘better’ than the aforementioned activated carbon and ion exchange resins and also technologies to destroy PFAS (this is more for source reduction than for drinking water production).”