Perfluorinated compounds have been accumulating at alarming rates in the human body over the past 50 years. - GreenMedInfo Summary

Serum samples collected from California women at different time periods: 1960s (n=40), 1980s (n=30), and 2009 (n=35) were examined for the presence of 12 perfluorinated compounds (PFCs) using an on-line SPE-HPLC-MS/MS method. At each time period, perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) was present at the highest concentration, followed by perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA). We found the highest levels of PFOS (median = 42.1 ng/mL) and perfluorohexane sulfonate (PFHxS, median = 1.56 ng/mL) in the 1960s samples, possibly reflecting widespread use of precursor PFCs. Both PFOS and PFHxS showed a statistically significant drop from the 1960s to the 1980s (28.8 ng/mL and 1.0g ng/mL, respectively) and to 2009 (9.0 ng/mL and 0.9 ng/mL, respectively), the latter being in agreement with national data. For PFOA, there was an approximately 10-fold increase in median concentrations from the 1960s (0.27 ng/mL) to the1980s (2.71 ng/mL), and a slight drop in the 2009 samples (2.08 ng/mL). For longer chain perfluorocarboxylic acids (PFCAs), there was a continuous build-up in serum from the 1960s to 2009. To our knowledge this is the first study to investigate temporal changes of PFCs over the past 50 years.