The “forever chemical” met something older.
PFAS — per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances — are the most stubborn pollutants humans have invented. They don’t break down in sunlight, water, soil, or human bodies. They accumulate in blood, in liver tissue, in groundwater, and they stay there for decades. Maine’s farm soils were contaminated by sludge spreading, firefighting foam, and industrial discharge. The state had thousands of acres where PFAS levels exceeded safety thresholds, and conventional remediation was a joke. You can’t filter what doesn’t degrade. You can’t dig up what has already spread through the soil profile.
Maine’s Department of Environmental Protection funded a project using wood-rot fungi mycelium to biologically break down PFAS. The mechanism is enzymatic. White-rot fungi — species like Phanerochaete chrysosporium — evolved to decompose lignin, one of the most complex and resistant organic polymers on Earth. Their enzymes, called laccases and peroxidases, cleave carbon-fluorine bonds that other organisms can’t touch. The mycelium in this photo, spreading through mulch in a contaminated Aroostook County field, is literally digesting PFAS molecules and converting them into harmless byproducts.
The turkey in the background, foraging in the mist, is the proof. Before the mycelium treatment, this soil was too contaminated for agricultural use. Wildlife avoided it. The fungi broke down the PFAS over 18 months of managed treatment, and the soil now tests below detection thresholds for the most common PFAS variants. The turkey doesn’t know about enzymatic degradation. It just knows the ground is safe to scratch again.
The second-order effect is agricultural. Maine’s dairy industry was devastated by PFAS contamination in feed crops grown on sludge-amended soils. Farmers faced bankruptcy, herd culling, and permanent land loss. The mycelium treatment offers a path to recovery. It’s not fast — it takes one to two growing seasons — but it’s permanent. The fungi don’t just bind PFAS. They destroy it. And the byproduct is improved soil structure, increased organic matter, and restored microbial diversity.
Other states are watching because Maine proved that the oldest technology on Earth — fungal decomposition — might be the only one capable of undoing our newest mistake.
