PFAS “forever” chemicals found in hundreds more everyday products
theintercept.com
theintercept.com
Maybe I need to get better at cleaning my strings, I have to admit I do miss the twang of Ernie Balls.
PTFE is a polymer, often referred to by its most well-known brand name Teflon. Over decades of use, there is zero evidence of any health effects whatsoever from PTFE, the only exception being when it's heated to around 500 deg F. In everyday use it is completely inert and harmless.
PFAS is a generic term describing a family of fluorinated chemicals. Evidence is piling up that many of these have serious and long-lasting health effects. Some PFAS chemicals are used as the monomers for making PTFE, but once the PTFE is made, the constituent monomers cannot be released except by extreme heat.
All that to say, your coated guitar strings are completely safe. Certainly safer than the teflon-coated pans I cook on every day.
For acidic foods I use an enameled cast iron Dutch oven, or a SS sauce pot.
In the Netherlands all earth movement was temporarily prohibited last year when it was found that many sites had too high concentrations of PFAS. So nearly all soils were considered hazardous material. Of course this was "solved" by changing the threshold of allowed PFAS to something much higher...
The EU is a tradeblock, the rest is facade. Case in point : the COVID response.
Worth reading.
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/nov-7-fast-radio-bursts-in-o...
I threw out all Teflon pans years ago. When the dishwasher finishes I do an extra 15 minute water-only run, same with laundry. Im torn between thinking it might make things a little bit better for my health, and feeling like a sad clown in need for a tinfoil hat. Assuming a lot of soil is already contaminated and thus food that I eat, what I do is probably irrelevant.
Also
> President-elect Biden has promised fast action. But he also placed Michael McCabe, who oversaw DuPont’s successful effort to dodge regulation of PFOA and introduce a similarly toxic replacement PFAS compound, on his EPA transition team.
Really disappointing. I guess for the people, Biden is still the better outcome than Trump, but the Democrats would have deserved another slap in the face.
I don't know that you can conclude this. Both diseases predate the use of PFAS by at least decades, and the ancient Greeks documented Alzheimers'-like symptoms.
PFAS is just one of the many things where evidence is finally piling up that it's bad for you and the environment. Look at how many Parkinson's related deaths there were per year per 100k over the last 50 years, it's been ever increasing, same with cancer. When I have to pick between "this is complete coincidence and out of our control" and "this might be because of some chemical we started using excessively for a dozen different things during the last century" I know what my choice will be.
And I do see the problem that there are too many possibilities here to make an educated guess, and it's possible that PFAS and whatever is in detergent ultimately doesn't cause any significant harm to you, but my choice has simply been to change my everyday behavior in minor ways where it might have a positive impact in the best case, and worst case is placebo for peace of mind and will cost me a bit of time and convenience. Hope that cleared things up.
Life expectancy has been on a steady increase over the last 50 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#/media/File:Li...
It's likely we see more "old person" diseases as a result. If you normalize cancer deaths by age, for example, they're down. https://ourworldindata.org/cancer ("The age-standardized death rate from cancer declined by 15%")
democrats are not the "good" party, and we can hope for, but shouldn't expect, better from them. it's crucial that we look critically at both major parties, all the time, while also looking to indepedents for fresh perspectives. both parties have been highly effective at dividing the nation roughly in half and facing them off at each other, rather than at the politicians themselves and their big money donors who are surreptitiously wreaking the most havoc on our collective stability, well-being, and prosperity. we--citizens and residents--must remain vigilant that our representatives reflect our will, not theirs. it's not only ineffective, but actively harmful, to blindly root for and support one political party.
correlation =/= causation.
>I threw out all Teflon pans years ago.
AFAIK teflon pans in their finished state doesn't really leech any toxic chemicals. All the emissions come from manufacturing, the coating itself is mostly inert.