Perfluoroalkyl acids have been widely used during the last fifty years in a myriad of industrial and consumer applications, and are a paradigm of persistent “forever chemicals”. Earlier studies suggested a limited occurrence in the Southern Ocean as a consequence of the Antarctic circumpolar current preventing their oceanic transport southwards. Here we show perfluoroalkyl acids in the Bransfield Strait and Bellingshausen Sea (west of Antarctic Peninsula) at concentrations of comparable magnitude to those measured in the North Atlantic, a region impacted by historical sources. Atmospheric wet deposition of perfluoroalkyl acids previously aerosolized by sea-spray arises as the perfluoroalkyl acids source to Antarctica. The prevailing marine and atmospheric circulation in the region encapsulate these chemicals in the Antarctic region once these have crossed the Antarctic divergence. This work underscores the importance of persistence driving chemical’s environmental risk, and raises concern on the impact of the larger pool of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances.

This work has been funded by the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities of the Spanish Government with project ANTOM (PGC2018-096612-B-I00) and PANTOC (PID2021-127769NB-I00). N.T.P. and J.I. have been funded with predoctoral FPI and FPU fellowships, respectively. We thank the UTM-CSIC and the crew from R/V Sarmiento de Gamboa and R/V Hespérides for technical support.

With funding form the Spanish government through the "Severa Ochoa Centre of Excellence" accreditation (CEX2019-000928-S).

Peer reviewed