The carbon-fluorine bonds in “forever chemicals” make them hard to destroyYurchanka Siarhei/Shutterstock
Some “forever chemicals” – so named because of how difficult they are to break down – can be destroyed using light shining through quantum dots. This method could require less energy than other techniques to destroy the contaminants.
“The major advantage of our approach is that it enables degradation using simple and versatile visible-light LEDs,” says Yoichi Kobayashi at Ritsumeikan University in Japan.

Perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a class of thousands of chemicals containing…