New partnership with tech institution leads to trailblazing research on the impact of “forever chemicals” in Brazil

The term “forever chemicals” is growing increasingly familiar to Americans. As more and more research is published about these harmful substances found in daily products—from food packaging to household products, even drinking water—people are realizing just how many risks they pose to both our health and the environment.

While Daniele Miranda, assistant research professor in the department of biological sciences, is no stranger to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), the technical name for these forever chemicals, she can’t say the same for many of the people in her home country of Brazil. “There's no legislation about PFAS in Brazil. No guidelines, nothing yet. So there’s this movement that we need to be more informed, we need to know more.”

With this in mind, she and Marcio Bahia, teaching professor and associate director of undergraduate studies in Portuguese and Brazilian Studies, championed a partnership with SENAI CIMATEC University Center to develop and implement a program for PFAS analysis and awareness in Brazil. As a prestigious high-tech institution, SENAI CIMATEC had faculty and students who were highly interested in contributing to PFAS research.

The partnership, funded by Notre Dame Global and the 100,000 Strong in the Americas Innovation Fund, has a number of objectives, but at the heart of it is forming scientists who take a holistic approach to studying and understanding the impact of PFAS. To accomplish this, Miranda and Bahia, together with professors Lilian Guariero and Madson Nascimento from SENAI CIMATEC, organized a four-week program for students—four from Notre Dame (all from the Transformational Leaders Program) and four from SENAI—that would give them experience collecting and analyzing water samples in Brazil to measure for PFAS.

To launch this program, the Notre Dame and SENAI CIMATEC teams organized a screening of a documentary about PFAS, followed by a panel discussion and reception. With the added support of Notre Dame São Paulo Director Thaïs Burmeister de Campos Pires and team, the kickoff event marked a successful start to the partnership. Vice President and Associate Provost for Internationalization Michael Pippenger also visited SENAI CIMATEC to tour the facilities and demonstrate the University's commitment to this area of research.

It’s safe to say the documentary proved the perfect start to the program—students, faculty, and others in attendance were shocked by the information shared in the film and left the event motivated to start doing the work. The intensive four-week program involved going out in the field and taking samples, which for this project, involved two different bodies of water in Salvador: the Atlantic Ocean and the All Saints Bay. The Atlantic Ocean was chosen because it’s influenced by urban wastewater residues from Salvador, and the bay was selected because it housed an industry potentially releasing PFAS pollutants into the water body. After collecting water samples, they took their samples to a lab, went through the extensive protocol to analyze them (“It’s a lot of work,” says Miranda), and produced data. Students learned how to run the software and produce the figures themselves, adding to their research toolkit. Finally, they compared the values they found with legislation that we have in the US.

“The academic outcomes were outstanding,” Bahia emphasizes. “What the students were able to do in four weeks was nothing short of amazing. What’s notable about this program is that students weren’t just studying numbers, they were discussing the real impact of PFAS levels on local communities, making them aware of the connections between what they’re studying and the social reality of the world today."

And their research didn’t end with their poster presentations. Because SENAI CIMATEC is funded by industry partnerships in Brazil, an important part of their mission is finding solutions for problems caused by industry. Not only does this produce motivated researchers, it also means they’re able to take their findings directly to the industry producing contaminants that run off into the bodies of water they sampled from. From there, Miranda explains that “they can partner with them and say, ‘I can show you how to not do that, how to change that, use another type of firefighting extinguisher, how to clean your waste in a better way to remove those compounds before the waste goes to the ocean.’” In other words, in just four short weeks, students were able to initiate real change with their findings.

Thanks to this “pilot program,” more collaborations with SENAI CIMATEC are already underway. Not only are some of the Brazilian students considering pursuing a Ph.D. at Notre Dame, but it’s led to faculty partnerships as well. “Getting to know other professors on the institutional level from SENAI CIMATEC was very good because we are now already talking about other projects and applying for grants together,” Miranda notes.

With a promise of more research to come, it’s safe to say the partnership is off to a strong start. Most importantly, the word is spreading about the dangers of PFAS, and what we can do to slow the societal and environmental threat they pose. “It’s pioneering work in Brazil, nobody has done this,” Bahia shares. “So it’s very exciting for the students and for Notre Dame and SENAI CIMATEC to be part of it.”

Originally published by Jessie Carson at saopaulo.nd.edu on August 20, 2025.