Many soft contact lenses in US made up of PFAS, research suggests

Testing of 18 popular kinds of contact lenses found extremely high levels of organic fluorine, a marker of ‘forever chemicals.

Betsy Reed – The Guardian

Many soft contact lenses in the US are largely made up of compounds called fluoropolymers that are by definition PFAS “forever chemicals”, new research suggests.

Testing of 18 popular kinds of contact lenses found extremely high levels of organic fluorine, a marker of PFAS, in each.

“You could consider [the lenses] almost pure PFAS,” said Scott Belcher, a North Carolina State University researcher and scientific adviser on the contact lens testing.

PFAS are a class of about 14,000 chemicals typically used to make thousands of consumer products resist water, stains and heat. They are called “forever chemicals” because they do not naturally break down, and they are linked to cancer, fetal complications, liver disease, kidney disease, autoimmune disorders and other serious health issues.

The testing, commissioned by the Mamavation and Environmental Health News public health blogs and conducted at an Environmental Protection Agency-certified lab, looked for organic fluorine in lenses made by Acuvue, Alcon and Coopervision. It found the chemical at levels between 105 parts per million (ppm) to 20,700ppm.

The chemistry is complex and there may be some other ingredients in the lenses, but the readings suggest fluoropolymers. Fluoropolymer PFAS in this form are essentially a soft plastic material and are used for disposable, soft lenses because “they have the properties that your eyes want”, Belcher said.

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