PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), often called “forever chemicals,” are found in everyday products and persist in water, wastewater, soil, and the environment, posing serious public health risks including increased cholesterol, liver damage, thyroid disease, and changes in the immune system. There's also evidence suggesting a link between PFAS and decreased fertility, high blood pressure in pregnancy, lower birth weight, and increased risk of certain cancers. The gravity of PFAS contamination has evolved to a critical regional challenge in the State of New Jersey with several counties having serious issues with water quality. With over 12,000 PFAS chemicals pervasive in products, water systems, and the environment, their long-term health impacts and resistance to breakdown have made remediation especially complex. The PFAS crises is escalated at the national and global levels that can only be tackled through collaborative research and innovation partnerships.
PFAS contamination in New Jersey's water systems is a significant public health concern, with 63% of community water systems tested showing detections. This impacts 84% of the state's population that receives water from those systems. In addition, PFAS contaminants are also detected in homeowner wells that are not connected to a public community water system. In 2018, New Jersey became the first state in the nation to propose an enforceable drinking water standard for PFAS requiring municipalities to start monitoring for PFAS in their water supply. New Jersey has taken steps to regulate PFAS in drinking water, including setting maximum contaminant levels (MCLs) for certain PFAS chemicals but the PFAS contamination problem continues to escalate to a critical societal concern and challenge for providing clean water. The Environmental Business International indicates that the estimated remediation costs for PFAS exceed $138 billion in the U.S., with a site count exceeding 44,000 (EBI report).
This strategic New Jersey Partnership Innovation Consortium on PFAS (NJ PIC-PFAS) for Remediation, Decontamination, and Management proposal is based on the visionary discussions with more than 200 industry, university, government and community leaders at the NJIT Center for Translational Research Workshop on Translational Research and Technology Innovations for PFAS Decontaminations on April 24, 2025. The CTR PFAS workshop was enthusiastically attended by NJ legislators including Senator Paul Sarlo, Assemblywoman Lisa Swain, NJDEP Chief Strategy Officer Kati Angarone, executives from more than 35 companies including Veolia, AECOM, Revive, Allonia, American Water, Arcadis,Carollo, Resin Tech, Mott McDonald, T&M, Colliers, and others, academic researchers and innovation leaders from Princeton, Rutgers, Stevens, Rowan, and NJIT, and executives from utilities companies including Passaic Valley Water Commission, Ridgewood Water, Middlesex Water Company, Atlantic County Utilities Authority, Brick Utilities, City of Newark, City of Boonton, and others. They clearly identified the critical need to establish a strategic partnerships-based university-industry-government-community ecosystem in the form of an innovation center in New Jersey to address the growing challenge of detection, monitoring, remediation, decontamination and management of PFAS in water, soil, and environment to help NJ utility companies, cities and communities strive for a healthier society. The CTR Workshop program booklet, video recording and summary of discussion at the workshop are available at here.
At the CTR Workshop, Senator Paul Sarlo emphasized the critical need to develop a blueprint addressingPFAS contamination in NJ through innovation translation with researchers, industry partners, utility providers and regulatory agencies who best understand the ground-level realities. Assemblywoman Lisa Swain also brought both urgency and empathy in her remarks, framing PFAS as not just an environmental issue but also a deeply personal and public health crisis. Swain outlined her legislative efforts to address the crisis, including sponsoring bills to ban PFAS in personal care products, improve public notification systems, and increase funding for infrastructure upgrades. She emphasized the importance of cross-sector partnerships to translate research into effective legislation and reiterated that solving the PFAS crisis would require not only science and policy but public trust and education.
New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) and NJIT Center for Translational Research cohosted NJDEP 2025 PFAS Summit (https://dep.nj.gov/pfas-summit/) on October 9-10, 2025. The summit was attended by about 400 experts, leaders, and stakeholders from industry, academia, government, community, utilities and consulting companies. The PFAS Summit featured in-depth discussion, collaboration, and innovation focused on PFAS - examining their impact, exploring solutions, and advancing efforts to protect public health and the environment.
The NJDEP 2025 PFAS Summit was opened by Commissioner Shawn LaTourette and Deputy Commissioner Kati Angarone who shared their vision and led the discussions on PFAS contamination challenges and growing concerns in the society. With their leadership and NJDEP strategic initiatives, New Jersey has emerged as a national leader in PFAS monitoring and regulatory compliance specifically in drinking water and the environment. The Summit with 12 keynote and panel sessions addressed data collection, monitoring and assessment, standards and regulations and remediation and destruction technologies linked with multi-media contaminations of PFAS chemicals and compounds in drinking water, wastewater, soil, air, food, packaging and consumer products impacting public health and environment.
The Summit echoed on the importance of further development of industry-university-government-community partnerships based ecosystems to implement innovative solutions to address this critical societal need for monitoring, remediation and removal of PFAS chemicals and compounds to make our society healthier and environment sustainable.