Perfluorocarboxylic acids have been widely used in industrial applications such as surfactants. The use of these compounds has steadily increased, and some of them have detected in the environment. Hence, it is desirable to develop an artificial method for decomposing these compounds to environmentally harmless species under mild conditions as a measure against stationary sources.

We developed the effective decomposition method for perfluorocarboxylic acids such as perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), using a homogeneous system consisting of the heteropolyacid photocatalyst, water, and oxygen. Most of the PFOAs are transformed into F^- and CO₂.