Word.ws English Dictionary

PFOA

PFOA is the abbreviation of perfluorooctanoic acid.

Meaning of perfluorooctanoic acid

Noun

perfluorooctanoic acid (uncountable)

  1. A synthetic, stable perfluorinated carboxylic acid and fluorosurfactant with industrial applications, a toxicant and carcinogen in animals, persistent in the environment and associated with infertility.
    • Recent studies have linked fluoropolymers to increased incidences of cancer and teratogenesis for those exposed to a particular raw material, perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), used in its production, yet claims are still very controversial.2007, Mark J. Jackson, Waqar Ahmed, Surface Engineered Surgical Tools and Medical Devices, Springer Science & Business Media, →ISBN, page 296

Noun capitalized: Pfoa

Pfoa (uncountable)

  1. Alternative letter-case form of PFOA.
    • Between the 1950s and 2012, the facility emitted an estimated 49 tonnes of the carcinogenic chemical Pfoa.2026 July 10, Pippa Neill, “‘I just want to know if it has caused my cancer’: life in the shadow of Lancashire Pfas factory”, in The Guardian, →ISSN

Questions about PFOA

What is PFOA the abbreviation of?
PFOA is the abbreviation of perfluorooctanoic acid.
What part of speech is PFOA?
PFOA is a noun.

Words near PFOA in the dictionary

  1. PFM
  2. PFML
  3. PFMT
  4. PFNA
  5. PFO
  6. PFOA
  7. PFOF
  8. Pfohl
  9. Pfohls
  10. Pforzheim
  11. PFOS

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: PFOA (page history and authors); Pfoa (page history and authors); perfluorooctanoic acid (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “PFOA.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pfoa. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.