30 June | 11:00 - 12:00
Benoît Van Aken (George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, USA) will give this seminar, organized by the ELI-M department.
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are persistent, mobile contaminants of concern in aquatic and terrestrial environments, with implications for ecosystem exposure and long-distance transport. This seminar will present three connected lines of research on PFAS occurrence and monitoring across different environmental settings.
First, PFAS determination in Antarctic penguin feathers will be presented as a biological archive of exposure in a remote polar ecosystem.
Second, PFAS bioaccumulation in native aquatic plants from the Chesapeake Bay will be introduced, with emphasis on seasonal patterns and the role of macrophytes in PFAS cycling in a large impacted estuary.
Third, recent progress in the development of equilibrium passive samplers for PFAS monitoring in surface water will be presented, including their performance under varying water chemistry conditions relevant to field deployment.
Together, these studies highlight the diversity of PFAS behavior across compartments and the need for robust analytical approaches to assess exposure, partitioning, and transport.
The presentation will conclude by discussing how unique physical and chemical properties of PFAS molecules determine their environmental behavior and challenge their analysis in impacted ecosystems.
Benoit Van Aken is Professor of Chemistry & Biochemistry, at George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, USA.
He earned an Engineer degree in Chemistry and Biotechnology and a Ph.D. in Biological Engineering from the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium. After faculty appointments at West Virginia University, Morgantown (2004–2009), and Temple University, Philadelphia (2009–2018), he joined the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, in 2018.
He has served as PI or co-PI on numerous funded projects supported by NIH, NSF, SERDP, USDA, and NASA. He is the author of more than 60 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters, which have been cited over 4,000 times.
His research has focused for many years on legacy and persistent environmental contaminants, including explosives, PCBs, pharmaceuticals, and PFAS, with particular attention to their interactions with biological systems, including plants, animals, and bacteria.