Key ingested per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and their health effects: landscape review

Overview

The World Health Organization (WHO) commissioned a landscape review to systematically collect and assess available data sources on PFAS occurrence and associated health effects, with the objective of identifying priority PFAS and health effect categories for further in-depth assessment. Data sources on PFAS occurrence in the environment, from human biomonitoring studies and health effects were combined and evaluated, resulting in the development of comprehensive databases on PFAS occurrence and health effects (see supplementary tables). The review identified 77 PFAS from the occurrence evidence base and 66 PFAS from the health effects evidence base. The landscape review also included the development of a prioritization framework to rank PFAS and health effect categories.

This report provides a high-level overview of the landscape review. 18 PFAS and six health effect categories are recommended for further evaluation. The findings provide a foundation for subsequent, more detailed, systematic evidence reviews to support the development of health-based values for PFAS.