51st Annual A&WMA Critical Review: PFOA and Cancer

Thursday, June 17, 2021

9:00am – 11:30am US EDT

Panelist(s)

Scott M. Bartell

Professor, Environmental and Occupational Health
University of California, Irvine

Slides

Primary Author (Principal Researcher)(s)

Verónica M. Vieira

Professor, Environmental and Occupational Health
University of California, Irvine

Panelist(s)

Xuelian Bai

Assistant Research Professor, Division of Hydrologic Sciences
Desert Research Institute
Las Vegas, Nevada

Slides
Mike A. Abraczinskas

Director
NC Department of Environmental Quality - Division of Air Quality
Raleigh, NC

Slides
Virginia T. Guidry

Branch Head, Occupational and Environmental Epidemiology
North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services

Slides
Morton Barlaz

Professor and Department Head, Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering
North Carolina State University

Slides
Alex Lan

Senior Interdisciplinary Scientist, Office of Groundwater and Drinking Water, Standards and Risk Management Division
US Environmental Protection Agency

Slides

Platform Chair(s)

Michael T. Kleinman, PhD

Professor
University of California, irvine
Irvine, California

Slides

In the 51st Annual A&WMA Critical Review, Drs. Bartell and Vieira will examine the topic of Perfluorooctanoate and its association with cancer in humans and animals. PFOA is one of the most widely used and best studied per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), a complex class of emerging contaminants with varying chemical properties, and rapidly changing production and use. Despite being phased out of production by major industries, PFOA is persistent in the environment, bioaccumulative in humans, and has been associated with adverse health effects, including adenomas or carcinomas in some animal experiments and human studies. The carcinogenicity of PFOA has been reviewed previously by several different regulatory agencies and researchers, with contradictory conclusions. This critical review summarizes peer-reviewed epidemiologic studies on PFOA and cancer of the kidneys and testes, converts exposures to a common scale based on time-averaged serum concentrations, and derives meta-analytic cancer risk estimates. The authors expect that application of formal statistical methods to the overall body of evidence will provide insight into the carcinogenicity of PFOA.

Following the review presentation, a panel of invited experts will critique the presentation and offer their own views on the topic. Comments also will be solicited from the floor during a live question-and-answer sequence to end the session.

The full-length paper will appear in the June 2021 issue of the Journal of the Air & Waste Management Association (JA&WMA) and its conclusions will be presented live as part of the 2021 A&WMA Virtual Annual Conference & Exhibition. To complete the review process, the Critical Review Committee Chair will synthesize all of the discussion points into a single Discussion Paper that will be published in the October 2021 issue of JA&WMA.