Jon Lee Andrade, Ph.D.
June 2026
(5 Minutes)

PFAS (perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances) are everywhere. You can find them in all sorts of consumer goods–food packaging, rain jackets, cookware, cosmetics–and in nearly every location on the planet including local drinking water supplies, the blood of 98.8% of Americans, even the most remote regions of the Arctic. That’s because since the 1940s, industries have been cheaply producing these chemicals for their useful and variable properties: they’re heat resistant, water repellent, non-stick, and take incredibly long to break down, earning them the nickname ‘forever chemicals.’

It wasn’t until the late 90s that corporate defense attorney Robert Bilott uncovered that a major PFAS manufacturer had known about the potential health risks of these chemicals for 40 years and exposed the public to them anyway–check out the 2019 film Dark Waters for that story. Since then, independent studies have revealed links between PFAS levels and various health outcomes including cancer, decreased fertility, hormonal imbalance, and immune system suppression, the last of which is associated with reduced effectiveness of vaccines such as those for COVID-19.

Phasing these chemicals out, however, has taken a bit of time. Throughout the 2000s and early 2010s, some companies voluntarily stopped using specific PFAS like PFOA and PFOS which have gotten the most attention, although these were largely just replaced with other kinds of PFAS. In 2016, the EPA set guidelines on acceptable drinking water concentrations for PFOA and PFOS, but these could not be legally enforced. Only in 2024 did the US set enforceable limits on these chemicals, but companies still don’t have to comply until 2031.

In the meantime, the burden of removing PFAS has largely fallen on consumers and municipalities with things like activated carbon or reverse osmosis, which is costly and can produce waste products that are difficult to deal with. Thankfully, this hasn’t stopped researchers from tackling the problem, and according to two papers in 2019 and 2026, a promising approach may be to capture and remove PFAS from drinking water using proteins, specifically those in eggs and cannabis. Before you get excited, you probably won’t be able to detox by visiting your local dispensary followed by your local diner, but if we can figure out how to use PFAS-binding proteins at scale then we have a good chance of reducing long-term exposure risk for millions or more.

The proteins these labs focused on were specifically from egg whites and from the seeds of hemp, a low-THC variety of Cannabis sativa. These belong to a class of proteins called albumins, which are known for their ability to bind and transport a wide variety of molecules, making them great candidates for binding PFAS. In fact, human serum albumin (HSA) is the most abundant protein in blood plasma, and we’ve already known it to be able to bind PFAS–a possible reason we’re able to detect them so well in blood. Unlike HSA or other mammal-derived proteins like bovine serum albumin, egg and hemp albumin are readily and cheaply available.

According to the papers, ovalbumin, the main protein in egg whites, and hemp seed powder are able to remove up to 87% and 98% of certain PFAS out of water including some of the nastiest that we know about, which is an incredible result. The ovalbumin experiments also directly showed that there’s a range of removal efficiencies–as low as 23%–depending on the chemical structure of the PFAS. On one hand, it means that these proteins are unlikely to be a universal fix, and the authors only looked at 7 of the thousands of known PFAS, so there’s still a bit of work to understand the full power of this technique. On the other hand, it gives us a clearer picture of the actual properties that make a PFAS better or worse at being cleaned up, helping us design more targeted and intentional solutions. 

Both papers also looked to see exactly how PFAS were binding to the albumin and how different conditions affected that. For hemp, researchers detected specific kinds of chemical bonds forming between the protein and PFAS, and for ovalbumin, many computer simulations were run to help predict exactly where bonds are forming, which parts of the protein are participating, and which PFAS like to bind in these locations. The labs also found that higher salt concentrations and–for ovalbumin–higher temperatures generally increased the efficiency of PFAS cleanup. This information will be critical in finding those perfect conditions to get the most out of these proteins.

So how long until water treatment plants start using cannabis to clean municipal water? Well, probably not soon. Both of these technologies are still only at the lab-scale, and a lot of work needs to be done before they can be moved up to pilot-scale, the step before full plant-wide implementation that helps engineers figure out all the quirks of making a process bigger. It’ll be here where we can get a better idea of the pros and cons of using protein compared to other more mature technologies. In light of that uncertainty, it’s hard not to feel optimistic. Mother Nature has had billions of years to tinker and may have already engineered a solution to one of the biggest public health challenges of our era. We just need to find it.