Review on plant uptake of PFOS and PFOA for environmental cleanup: potential and implications

Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) have gained increasing concern due to their persistent characteristics, wide distribution, biotoxicity, and bioaccumulative properties. The current remediation technologies for PFOA and PFOS are primarily focused on physical and chemical techniques. Phytoremediation has provided promising alternatives to traditional cleanup technologies due to their low operational costs, low maintenance requirements, end-use value, and aesthetic nature. In this review, uptake, translocation, and toxic effects of PFOS and PFOA are summarized and discussed. Several potential hyperaccumulators of PFOS and PFOA are provided according to the existing data. Biomass, chlorophyll, soluble protein, enzyme activities, oxidative stress, and other variables are assessed for potential indicator of PFOS/PFOA biotoxicity. The various studies on multiple scales are compared for identifying the threshold values. Several important implications and recommendations for future research are proposed at the end. This review provides an overview of current studies on plant uptake of PFOS and PFOA from the perspective of phytoremediation.