I found a very old article, portion below I did not retype but added the reference at the top, which mentioned briefly what I think is perfluorodecyl iodide (1-iodoperfluorodecane). I read this to mean that it is crystalline in nature and that the molecule has dimensions which might indicated that it has dimerized.  If I knew what a “unit cell” was I might be able to relate it to the size (which is given here in Angstrom units) of 15.5 to 16,  I might be able to figure out whether the periodicity found at the long ends of the IPFD crystals in vivo  (within lysosomal structures) and the round organization seen in some images have relevance to that dimension.

I found a more current article which seems to rehash some of what this early article by Rondesvedt mentioned in 1969. I like that he mentions that iodoperfluoroalkanes are bio-persistent, and that fits with the “mouse emulsion infusion” data that I see.  That second publication is here.  But there is no way without learning chemistry I can figure it out.

And in terms of environmental impact of PFC, in particular PFOS and PFOA and other perfluorochemicals in wide-spread usage, this is a nice article to read.

from which is a nice quote “Since the first reports revealing the widespread global occurrence of PFOS in wildlife (Giesy and Kannan 2001) and the frequent detection of PFASs in human blood (Hansen et al. 2001) were published a decade ago, the scientific literature on the environmental and toxicological aspects of PFASs has burgeoned rapidly, and the rate of publication currently exceeds 400 articles per year. In the existing body of literature, including governmental reports, authors have created terminology, names, and acronyms to describe these substances. Unfortunately, inconsistencies have inevitably arisen between various groups of authors. In the absence of any concerted effort between scientists to agree on a common terminology to designate the substances, a given compound has often been denoted by a variety of different names and acronyms, or a given acronym has been used to represent different substances. In addition, names to describe broad groups of substances have proliferated that in some instances mistakenly portray substances that are very different from one another as being the same. As a result, the scientific literature for these substances has at times become confusing. There is a need for harmonized terminology, names, and acronyms that clearly and specifically describe PFASs.” showing how difficult it is to read the literature on these chemicals.

I had to look up the words “unit cell” not being a chemist I had no clue what that meant… so here is a definition — A unit cell is the most basic and least volume consuming repeating structure of any solid. It is used to visually simplify the crystalline patterns solids arrange themselves in. When the unit cell repeats itself, the network is called a lattice.