Student Profile

Senior Project Profile: Nicole Nishizawa

Modeling PFAS Exposure to Toddlers from the Indoor Environment”

Nicole Nishizawa, S.B. ’19, environmental science and engineering

Advisor: Elsie Sunderland, Gordon McKay Professor of Environmental Chemistry

The chemicals perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), which are commonly found in products like carpets and waterproof fabrics, have been linked to many adverse health effects, such as immune dysfunction and cancer. Toddlers are especially vulnerable to PFOS and PFOA exposure from dust in indoor environments and carpet. Nishizawa produced a new model to estimate toddlers’ daily exposure to PFOS and PFOA, using data that links the chemicals to blood serum levels. Building off work done by the Green Science Policy Institute, where Nishizawa interned last summer, she created a model that determines the optimal exposure parameters for toddlers and calculates the risk of toxicity from different chemical concentrations in dust and carpet.

“The greatest challenge of this modeling project was reasonably constraining my model estimates, as not enough is known about toddler exposure to PFAS through dust,” she said. “Throughout this project, I grew as an engineer, as I was continually challenged by the process of designing, building, measuring, and analyzing. “