Should You Worry About PFAS in Sparkling Water? A Food Scientist and PFAS Expert Weigh In

As a healthier alternative to soda and other sugary beverages, sparkling water couldn’t be more on brand. It’s refreshing, tastes great, and gives your H2O some oomph. But nothing is perfect: Too much sparkling water is bad for a sensitive stomach, for instance.

Recently, there’s also been some online chatter about per- and polyfluoralkyl substances (PFAS), aka forever chemicals, in several brands of sparkling water. So, are PFAS in sparkling water safe? What are they doing in your bubbly water to begin with?

Here, we explore what PFAS are, how they can be a health concern, and how prevalent they are in your favorite seltzer and sparkling water brands.

What are PFAS?

“PFAS is an acronym that stands for per- and poly-fluorinated alkyl substances, a group of thousands of different synthetic chemicals that have been produced since the 1940s and are not naturally occurring,” says Arthur Daniel Jones, PhD, professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Michigan State University, associate director of the Center for PFAS Research, and interim director of the MSU PFAS Analytical Laboratory.

There are more than 15,000 known PFAS chemicals (so far) today. Many of these chemicals are particularly resistant against natural processes that effectively break down other chemicals. Hence their nickname: “forever chemicals.”