Testing for PFAS in my blood

I did a home test for PFAS in my blood. Here are the general steps:

1. Open and organize the kit contents and label your sample containers with your info and contact info. This required a bit of patience and time.
2. Warm up your hand, clean your finger, and stab yourself with a tiny knife called a lancet (I didn’t know this was called that. . . ). I found stabbing myself effectively to be a lot harder than expected. Or maybe I’m just a wimp. They do provide a second lancet just in case.
3. Squeeze enough blood out of your finger to saturate four huge cotton swabs. This took me like half an hour given how poorly the stabbing went (see above).
4. Pack the stuff up, per kit instructions and ship it out to the lab. This went smoothly, and I got results back in about a month.

Stuff about me that’s relevant to PFAS levels in my blood:
🚰 My home water is reported as below detection limit for PFAS measured, except for PFBA (which is most places).
🛒 I try to not buy stuff with PFAS and eat organic food but it’s more like an 80/20 thing. Or 60/40.
🏠 I live in a house built in the 1980s – pretty sure my carpet and house building materials have PFAS in them.
🥗 I mostly cook with and eat whole foods, eating packaged meals or restaurant meals maybe 1-2x per week
🩸 I give blood about twice a year and don’t menstruate.

How much PFAS is in my blood serum (or was last July) as compared to the U.S. 2017-2018 average (from NHANES dataset) – current averages are very likely lower as blood levels of these have been going down steadily
– PFOA: 0.74 ng/mL (1.42 national mean)
– PFOS: 1.18 ng/mL (4.25 national mean)
– PFHxS: 0.48 ng/mL (1.08 national mean)
– PFOSA: 0.22 ng/mL (not reported in NHANES)
– Other PFAS tested (36) below reporting limits of 0.1 to 0.5
– Note this list doesn’t include short-chain PFBA (which has been measured in my water) or ultra-short-chain TFA (which is very probably in my water, but is more challenging to measure).

I thought people might find it interesting to understand how in-home blood testing for PFAS works. I recognize that I come from a privileged place here with regards to my drinking water and ability to decrease PFAS exposures.

(Note: Eurofins provided this service to me free of charge, no strings attached. Here’s info about their kit: https://lnkd.in/gW_7QMAU – it costs about $400 for the kit and analysis).