Removing PFAS from sewage in WWTP using SAFF with Peter Murphy Epoc Enviro Australia - Episode 50 Welcome back to Talking PFAS podcast, and if you are listening for the first time, a very big welcome to you. I am a journalist, and your host Kayleen Bell, and this is a Sunrise Sound Productions podcast. Due to widespread presence of PFAS globally, wastewater treatment plants have become a sink for PFAS. That is because PFAS resist degradation by conventional wastewater treatment processes and are usually adsorbed to sewage sludge and biosolids. There have been significant concerns that land application of sewage sludge and biosolids could become a probable pathway for PFAS to enter the food chain. The widespread land application of biosolids as fertiliser may represent a risk from factors such as subsequent PFAS leaching to groundwater, uptake to crops used for food or animal feed, and resulting accumulation in terrestrial and aquatic organisms. As such PFAS in biosolids present major challenges to municipalities that are generating biosolids but are passive receivers of upstream sources of PFAS. Removing PFAS from the wastewater treatment plants remains a significant challenge. My guest today is Peter Murphy Managing Director of Australian environmental engineering company EPOC Enviro. Peter is an environmental scientist, and lawyer, who has worked for more than 35 years in the environmental clean-up and remediation space. And Peter has discussed SAFF technology and foam fractionation in detail in the podcast before. I will put a link to those episodes in the show notes. Today we will be discussing EPOC Enviro’s latest use of their SAFF technology in a current trial to remove PFAS from wastewater within a wastewater treatment plant in Australia. The location of this trial can not be revealed at this time. Show Notes: I hope you enjoyed today’s episode. As mentioned in today’s episode I will be bringing you more about this topic in future episodes of Talking PFAS. Meanwhile please see the links mentioned in today’s episode. Episode 47 Talking PFAS Podcast: Interview with Peter Murphy from EPOC Enviro 04/07/2025 discussing SAFF foam fractionation. https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/talkingpfas/id1434997639?i=1000715666985 Episode 43 Talking PFAS Podcast: Interview with Peter Murphy from EPOC Enviro 26/04/2023 https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/talkingpfas/id1434997639?i=1000610713390 EPOC Enviro https://epocenviro.com/applications/sewage/ Saliu, T.D. & Sauvé, S. (2024), A review of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances in biosolids: geographical distribution and regulations Journal: Frontiers in Environmental Chemistry Published: June 2024 DOI: 10.3389/fenvc.2024.1383185 In other PFAS News, CRC Care’s International Clean Up Conference, is being held in Adelaide shortly from the 13-17 September. As usual there are multiple PFAS sessions listed in their program and I will be attending as many of these as I can to learn what is new. I hope to interview some speakers at this conference for future episodes of Talking PFAS. If you have found value in this podcast please subscribe so you don’t miss an episode and also I would be grateful if you would share it with friends or colleagues. Talking PFAS Podcast is listened to in 81 countries currently highlighting this global issue. This is a Sunrise Sound Productions podcast produced by journalist and host Kayleen Bell. All information is copyright but feel free to share the links to the podcast episode and show notes in their entirety, with attribution. Advertising/Sponsorship contact (Terms & Conditions do apply & journalism integrity will be maintained) TalkingPFAS@gmail.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Welcome back to Talking PFAS podcast and if you are joining me for the first time a very big welcome to you. I am a journalist and your host Kayleen Bell. Last episode I brought you a discussion with Boston Attorney John Gardella from CMBG3 Law. This was a very informative chat about some PFAS developments in the US, and changes to the US EPA under Trump administration. Here is a little of what John had to say from Episode 48 where he is talking a change to the environmental justice law in the US. “Under the Biden Administration there was a large initiative for something we call environmental justice, which is essentially that when enacting environmental laws or pursuing sites to clean up that consideration should be made to historically poorer communities and socioeconomic backgrounds, communities where there has been historically a lot of concentration pollution because they have been in an industrial area for example. And the environmental justice program in the US has been eliminated under the EPA, under the new Trump Administration.” There is a lot of key information in that discussion with John Gardella and I encourage you to take a listen. I included that little portion from the last episode because in today’s discussion my guest and I will be talking about costs of cleaning up PFAS, and the need to reduce PFAS production. My guest today is Alison Ling. She is an Assistant Professor in Civil Engineering and works in the Department of Civil Engineering, at the University of St. Thomas, at St Paul in Minnesota. Today we will be discussing a couple of her papers. Here is a little preview from our discussion: “When I first ran those calculations it comes out as millions of dollars per kg of PFAS that you remove from the environment and that is millions of dollars whether it is from wastewater effluent, drinking water, wastewater biosolids, soils. It is almost across the board millions of dollars per kilogram and I was just blown away by those numbers. That was way more than I was expecting. But the thought exercise I went through for this paper is if we keep making and emitting PFAS at the rate that we are emitting them right now, which is on the order of millions of tonnes per year, how much would it cost to remove them at the same rate? And so, if you have millions of tonnes of PFAS per year and it costs millions of dollars per kilogram of PFAS to remove it, if you multiply those numbers you get a number that is similar to or greater than the global GDP.” This is estimated to be around $106 trillion dollars. I hope you enjoyed today’s discussion, I certainly did. If you have found value in the Talking PFAS podcast I would be really grateful if you would review and share the podcast so others can find it. Also please subscribe so you don’t miss an episode. I will be back with one more feature episode before the end of the year. I will also be brining you a new product Talking PFAS News which will be a shorter episode 10-15 minutes about PFAS news in Australia and globally. I am now accepting expressions of interest from sponsors for the Talking PFAS feature and news episodes. This is open to remediation companies that are cleaning up PFAS and companies that have removed PFAS chemicals from their manufacturing processes and would like the public to know. Please note terms and conditions apply to all sponsorships and I will maintain full editorial control over the content of the episodes. Thank you to Pete Murphy and EPOC Enviro in Australia for being the first Talking PFAS podcast sponsor. You can email me at TalkingPFAS@gmail.com with PFAS information or sponsorship enquiries. Thank you again for listening see you next time. LINKS mentioned in today’s episode. “Estimated Scale of Costs to Remove PFAS from the Environment at current emission rates.” Main webpage not open access/publicly available: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0048969724007861. The full "pre-print" which has the same content is available through the SSRN here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4718530 “Is Removal and destruction of perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances from wastewater effluent affordable.” This one is open access, available here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/wer.10975 https://www.lemonde.fr/en/les-decodeurs/article/2025/01/14/pfas-the-astronomical-cost-of-depolluting-europe_6737022_8.html https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jan/14/cost-clean-up-toxic-pfas-pollution-forever-chemicals “The Global Threat from the Irreversible Accumulation of Trifluoroacetic Acid (TFA) – ACS Publications” Hans Peter H. Arp, Andrea Gredelj, Juliane Gluge, Martin Scheringer, and Ian T. Cousins https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.4c06189 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Welcome back to the Talking PFAS podcast. If you are joining me for the first time a very big welcome to you. I am a journalist and your host Kayleen Bell. Last week I brought you a discussion with Peter Murphy, the Managing Director of EPOC Enviro. This Australian company recently managed to secure patents in Australia and the US for their SAFF technology. I encourage you to have a listen to that episode to learn more about the SAFF suite of products using foam fractionation to remove PFAS. And I would like to also take this opportunity to thank EPOC Enviro for sponsoring today’s episode of Talking PFAS podcast. You will hear a short announcement from Pete about midway through today’s episode. And at the end of today’s episode there will be a short announcement about how you can get involved with sponsorship for Talking PFAS podcast and you can read about it of course in the show notes. Today’s guest is a very welcome return guest to the Talking PFAS podcast. It is Environmental Lawyer, John Gardella, Boston Attorney, from CMBG3 Law in the United States. John had the honour of being the only person in the country that was recognised as the thought leader on PFAS in 2020 and 2021 by the esteemed National Law Review. He writes regularly for the National Law Review and his website on PFAS. We had a really interesting and informative discussion about litigation, and regulation updates in the US, including the current rollbacks that are currently happening under the Trump EPA. There is also some other really important information in today’s episode about PFAS and health effects including some new ones that are being acknowledged by the legal system in the US. John also talks about how companies need to remain vigilant at looking at their processes to see if PFAS is involved in them to protect themselves from PFAS litigation. In today’s episode we talk about one particular case which John is currently involved in at the moment where a company is being sued for using water that contained PFAS in their manufacturing and they didn’t know. I hope you enjoyed today’s episode and don’t forget to check out the show notes and also if you enjoy the Talking PFAS podcast please consider subscribing so that you don’t miss an episode and also sharing it with your colleagues and friends. And next episode of Talking PFAS I will be bringing you a discussion I had with Alison Ling she is from the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of St. Thomas in St Paul, Minnesota in the US. We are going to be discussing a couple of research papers that Alison Ling has been the main author on and this was from her paper about the estimated scale of costs to remove PFAS from the environment at current emission rates and that paper states that "the current costs to remove and destroy the total PFAS mass released annually into the environment would likely exceed the global GDP of $106 trillion US dollars." And she goes on to point out that "while this level of treatment is not technically or economically achievable it highlights the unaffordability of using environmental remediation alone to manage environmental PFAS stocks. Without significant reductions in productions and emissions the mass of PFAS present in the global environment will continue to rise." So I look forward to bringing you that discussion with Alison Ling. Lastly if you are a remediation company or a company that specialises in selling PFAS free products please contact me at TalkingPFAS@gmail.com to find out more about how you can get involved with limited sponsorship opportunities. Please note terms and conditions do apply and I maintain full editorial control. Also any featured remediation companies is not my endorsement. Thank you again for listening see you next time. Thank you again to EPOC Enviro who were today’s sponsor of Talking PFAS podcast. EPOC Enviro home page: https://epocenviro.com/ SAFF Family: https://epocenviro.com/saff-family/ Technical Publications: https://epocenviro.com/technical-publications/ Case Studies: https://epocenviro.com/projects/ Socials: https://www.linkedin.com/company/epoc-enviro/?viewAsMember=true Contact Details: info@epocenviro.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Welcome back to the Talking PFAS podcast. If you are joining me for the first time a very big welcome to you. I am a journalist and your host Kayleen Bell. Last episode I brought you a discussion with Adjunct Professor David Beale. He is a senior research scientist who leads the CSIRO’s Ecosurveillance Systems team in Queensland. We discussed David’s work looking at the effects of PFAS on some freshwater turtles in Queensland, following a PFAS contamination event. And I encourage you to have a listen to that episode. Today my guest and I will be discussing in depth one of many remediation methods for removing PFAS from water. Specifically we will be talking about the method of foam fractionation to remove PFAS. My guest is Peter Murphy, the Managing Director of EPOC Enviro. This Australian company has recently managed to secure patents in Australia and the US for their SAFF technology. On the 10/03/2025 EPOC Enviro announced the recent approval of its foam fractionation patent by the US Patent and Trademark Office, securing exclusive rights for SAFF technology in the territory through to December, 2040. And on the 1/04/2025 EPOC Enviro announced the approval of its foam fractionation patent by IP Australia securing exclusive rights for SAFF technology Down Under through to December 2038. EPOC Enviro first conceived of foam fractionation as a method for PFAS removal in 2015 and has since developed a fleet of PFAS remediation technologies based on this principle. The technology has now successfully treated nearly 2 billion litres (or 530,000,000+ gallons) of PFAS impacted waters across three continents. EPOC Enviro also has just released the news of the latest addition to their fleet of PFAS remediation technology being the SAFF 10 unit and you will hear more about that today from Peter. The systems have been used in Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, France, Italy, Germany, England, Australia and the US. At the moment they are going to be looking to expand into Japan and Israel. I hope you enjoyed today’s discussion. Next episode I will be bringing you a discussion I had with John Gardella an Attorney from CMBG3 Law in Boston. John is a return guest to the Talking PFAS podcast and it is always very informative to speak with him. John had the honour of being the only person in the country that was recognised as a thought leader on PFAS in 2020 and 2021 by the esteemed National Law Review. He writes regularly for the National Law Review and his website on PFAS. We had a really interesting and informative discussion about litigation, and regulation updates, including the rollbacks that are happening under the Trump EPA. There is also some other really important information in next week’s episode about the health effects of PFAS including some new ones that are being acknowledged by the legal system in the US. I highly recommend you come back and listen to this episode which is not to be missed. We also talk about how companies need to remain vigilant in protecting themselves from PFAS litigation. I also would like to announce that today’s guest EPOC Enviro have agreed to sponsor my next episode. If you are a remediation company and are interested in finding out more about sponsorship opportunities please email TalkingPFAS@gmail.com. Please note terms and conditions do apply, including being subject to the usual journalism rigour I apply to all my interviews, and the agreement that I will maintain editorial control over the discussion about your company’s technology, discussing pros and cons. I look forward to you coming back to join me again for some more great PFAS discussions. Lastly, to my valued listeners, thank you for listening! Please consider subscribing to the podcast so you don’t miss an episode and also consider posting a review and consider sharing the podcast with a colleague or friend. Thank you, it would just help more people get to hear this podcast. Thank you again for listening, see you next time. EPOC Enviro home page: https://epocenviro.com/ SAFF Family: https://epocenviro.com/saff-family/ Technical Publications: https://epocenviro.com/technical-publications/ Case Studies: https://epocenviro.com/projects/ Socials: https://www.linkedin.com/company/epoc-enviro/?viewAsMember=true Contact Details: info@epocenviro.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Welcome back to the Talking PFAS podcast. If you are joining me for the first time a very big welcome to you. I am a journalist and your host Kayleen Bell. Last episode I brought you a very interesting discussion with Dr Cheng Zhang from the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology at the University of Queensland in Australia. We spoke about many things but mainly we discussed how his team of researchers have discovered that retrieved PFAS can be used in batteries. I highly recommend you have a listen to that episode to find out more. Today’s discussion will complete the PFAS collection of interviews that I have recorded for the Queensland State Library digital PFAS collection. I will put a link to that collection in today’s show notes. Now a little about my guest today, he is Adjunct Professor David Beale, a senior research scientist who leads the CSIRO’s Ecosurveillance Systems team in Queensland. The majority of David’s research career is looking at the impact of contaminants on organisms, whether it be wildlife or humans or any biological system. He has made significant contributions in the field of environmental applications using specialised omics tools to study the effects of contaminants like PFAS on wildlife. Today we will be focusing on David’s work looking at the effects of PFAS on some freshwater turtles in Queensland. He was not able to disclose the location where these turtles are indeed being affected by PFAS contamination, but he was able to say that the PFAS event that caused the contamination, occurred in around 2017/2018 in Australia. David’s team are also doing work looking at the effects of PFAS on other wildlife such as marine turtles, some snakes and frogs, including cane toads, and water dragons around South- East Queensland. David advised me that he has received a CSIRO Julius Career Award which has allowed him to meet and collaborate with environmental regulators worldwide using omics-based tools to assess pollution impacts with a significant focus on PFAS. As part of his JCA travels, he has visited the USA Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Canadian Department of Climate Change & Environment, the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany, and many other leading academic institutions and environmental regulators across the UK, Europe, Asia and North America. David said that from their research looking at PFAS effects on freshwater turtles, their results demonstrate that there is an impact, that they are seeing now. He said it could be a generational impact where the particular species of freshwater turtle studied may not exist in the future because of PFAS. Another big message from David Beale in today’s discussion is that “there just isn’t enough focus on researching the effects of chemical contaminants on wildlife,” in Australia. Next episode I will be bringing you a discussion I had with Peter Murphy from EPOC Enviro (https://epocenviro.com/). We talk about the latest news and developments for this Aussie remediation company including discussing their US and Australian patents for their foam fractionation technology used in their SAFF suite of products. And finally a quick announcement, I am now taking expressions of interest from remediation companies to explore sponsorship opportunities for the Talking PFAS podcast. For more details (& the terms and conditions) you can email me your details including phone number at TalkingPFAS@gmail.com I look forward to you coming back to join me again for some more great PFAS discussions. Lastly, to my valued listeners, thank you for listening! Please consider subscribing to the podcast so you don’t miss an episode and consider posting a review or sharing the podcast with a colleague or friend. Copyright Notice: As always all information in today’s episode is covered by copyright law. Please feel free to share links to this episode broadly, in its entirety (no edited version allowed), to social media or via text or email. If you are a guest in the podcast you have permission to publish a link to the full episode, with attribution to Talking PFAS podcast, produced by journalist Kayleen Bell, on your own website. Contact me at TalkingPFAS@gmail.com Show Notes Links: QLD State Library PFAS oral history collection by Kayleen Bell https://onesearch.slq.qld.gov.au/discovery/fulldisplay?context=L&vid=61SLQ_INST:SLQ&search_scope=SLQ_collections&tab=All&docid=alma99183795520502061 1. Paper 1 discussed today: “Forever chemicals don’t make hero mutant ninja turtles: Elevated PFAS levels linked to unusual scute development in newly emerged freshwater turtle hatchlings (Emydura macquarii macquarii) and a reduction in turtle populations.” David Beale et al. Science of The Total Environment Volume 956, 15 December, 2024. Elsevier (open access). https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969724064696 2. Paper 2 discussed today: “Partitioning of PFAS to serum, tissues, eggs and hatchlings of an Australian freshwater turtle.” Suzanne Vardy et al (& David Beale). Journal of Hazardous Materials. Elsevier (open access). https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304389424004643?via%3Dihub 3. Current Australian Inquiry PFAS: Select Committee on PFAS: On 22 August 2024, the Senate appointed a select committee, to be known as the Select Committee on PFAS (per and polyfluoroalkyl substances), to inquire into the extent, regulation and management of PFAS, and present its final report by 5 August 2025. The committee has reopened submissions and welcomes contributions from community members impacted by PFAS, and other interested parties. The committee secretariat can also help with any inquiries and can be contacted on telephone +61 2 6277 3247 or by email to PFAS.sen@aph.gov.au. https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/PFAS_per_and_polyfluoroalkyl_substances/PFAS/Terms_of_Reference CSIRO Submission #22 https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/PFAS_per_and_polyfluoroalkyl_substances/PFAS/Submissions Thank you !!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.