The Beauty and Danger of Perfect Molecules 🧪 - Fionn's Green Journey
Hey 🌍 Nature lovers and 🧭outdoor explorers,
Welcome back to Fionn’s Green Journey, where chemistry meets the real world (and occasionally, a bit of mountain air).
I need to admit something.
Part of me still finds PFAS… a little bit beautiful. 🧪
Not in the way we usually talk about them…. pollution, risk, headlines, but in that quiet, chemist way.
The way water beads perfectly off a surface.
The way nothing sticks.
The way a molecule does exactly what you designed it to do.
It feels like control. Like success.
And that’s exactly where the problem started.
PFAS
A few decades ago, we turned to fluorine, the most electronegative element on the periodic table, and built molecules where carbon sat deep inside a fluorine shell. The carbon–fluorine bond has one of the highest dissociation energies in organic chemistry, and a tight C–F cage gives PFAS a kind of “molecular armor.” They don’t burn easily, they don’t react easily, and they repel water and oil simultaneously.
Nature, unsurprisingly, never figured out how to cut through that armor… No common enzymes attack the backbone effectively, so once PFAS escape into water, soil, and dust, they persist, often for decades or much longer.
What’s Actually Changing Right Now
Today, PFAS are in most bottled‑water samples tested globally and a huge fraction of tap‑water supplies, including at least 45% of U.S. tap water. They’re in firefighting foams, waterproof clothing, non‑stick pans, and food packaging, and they’re now detectable in nearly everyone’s blood. The policy shift is real and relatively new.
The EU is evaluating a class‑based restriction on over 10,000 PFAS at once, with a final opinion expected by the end of 2026. France has already banned PFAS in cosmetics, ski wax, clothing textiles, and waterproofing agents from 2026, extending to all textiles by 2030. Denmark and other countries are following with targeted bans on consumer textiles, packaging, and apparel.
For the first time, regulators are treating PFAS not as individual curiosities but as a design problem at the category level.
The Chemistry Trying to Fix Chemistry
The real question I keep coming back to is:
Can we actually undo this?
- Plasma technologies use non‑thermal electrical discharges to create highly reactive species that attack PFAS at the plasma interface. Field tests have achieved >99% destruction of long‑chain PFAS in hours.
- Electrochemical oxidation applies current across electrodes to strip electrons from PFAS, breaking the backbone stepwise.
- Catalytic “weakening” is the most chemically elegant idea right now. In 2026, researchers reported a bismuth–titanium catalyst that can effectively loosen the C–F bond in PFOA, making it much easier to break under milder conditions than brute‑force incineration.
All of these methods are still energy‑intensive, but they’re starting to move us from “just burn it” to “cleverly dismantle it.”
What I have been up to…
Deep in my PhD project, with a few breakthroughs I can’t quite share yet… but enough to keep me excited at 3 a.m.
celebrating Hive’s 20‑year anniversary in Zürich with friends who feel like family.
Skiing everywhere I could: Zermatt, Andermatt, Engelberg, Arosa, and more, chasing light and snow.
Climbing with my crew… Maria, Felix, Sarah, and Richard, laughing more than we sent
Exploring Mallorca like there was no tomorrow, I don’t think I have ever eaten so good, thanks for the wonderful generous stay 💚
There’s also a new kind of quiet joy creeping into the routine, sunset pizza, photo walks and a warm feeling.
🌱 Random things I’m Loving
🧄 It’s bearlauch season – if you don’t know this garlicky green forest treasure, just go smell the woods near you and thank me later → bearlauch basics
🎧 Body Moving – Umaedo.. this track sneaked into my life this month and now lives on repeat while I’m coding, cooking, and “taking care of myself”
🧗♂️ Climbing technique for efficiency – I’m deep in the “how do I move less and climb better?” phase; if you have a tip, a drill, or a “oh my god, try this,” please hit reply… I’m taking all comers.
📖 Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi – a quiet, time‑travel café in Tokyo that’s somehow making my brain go slower in the nicest way.
🏔️ Mountains, mountains, mountains… every time I look at them, I feel like the universe quietly reminding me that very little else matters. Thanks Max for the amazing day trip into the winderness!
That’s it for this edition of FGJ. Please do share this with someone you think would like to join the journey.
Chemistry didn’t fail here.
It did exactly what we asked.
Maybe the most important question in sustainable chemistry going forward isn’t
“How do we make things stronger?”
But
“Can we design molecules that perform beautifully… and then know when to let go?”
This edition of Fionn’s Green Journey is fully carbon offset, thanks to the amazing support from Atlas Project! Each tree emoji below represents a verified tree planted to offset our digital footprint.👣
🌟 This Month: A new Avocado has taken root! 🥑 Looking forward to all those avotoasts soon.
Fionn’s Green Journey Forest
🌲 🌳 🌴 🌿 🥑🌴🌿🌳🌲🌳🥭🌴🌴🌺🥭🌲🥑
🌲 = White Fir, 🌳 = Black Ironwood, 🌴 = Indian Cedar, 🌿 = Red Mangrove, 🌺 = Pomegranate, 🍋 = Lemon, 🥑 = Avocado, 🥭 = Mango
Watch the forest grow with every edition. Feel free to request exact coordinates 🥾✨