A research team led by North Dakota State University has discovered that the primary protein in egg whites can bind and remove harmful forever chemicals, commonly known as PFAS, from contaminated drinking water.
NDSU professor of civil construction and environmental engineering, Achintya Bezbaruah led the study. He says these forever chemicals, first developed in the 1940s, were considered miracles – and thus were used in everything from shampoo, nail polish and cookware. But their wide usage has been tied to cancer and other problems.
Bezbarauh says human blood absorbs the chemicals very well, so they needed to find a substance that could be used to filter it. He says egg whites contain the specific compound that works best.
"The white part of the egg contains a lot of ovalbumin, so I said, why can't we use that one? So that's the whole genesis of our research and why we wanted to work with that one."
He says next, they need to figure out how to develop an actual product.
"We like to see it, from you know - its birth to the grave. We like to see it, analyze it, what are the bad impacts or good impacts it's going to have? And only then are we going to market it."
Bezbarauh says the research team has undergraduate, graduate and PhD level students working on it.
