Comment by iforgotpassword | Hacker News Reader

Comment by iforgotpassword | Hacker News Reader

iforgotpassword

And yet we wonder why people get Alzheimer's and Parkinson's left and right. We look back at leaded gas and think "holy hell were people stupid back then, and man, BP knowingly preferred that over less hazardous solutions just because they already had a patent on it" when nothing has changed today.

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.

> And yet we wonder why people get Alzheimer's and Parkinson's left and right.

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.

Sorry, I didn't mean that PFAS (specifically, exclusively) causes Alzheimer's and Parkinson's (specifically, exclusively), let alone that it created them.

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.

> 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.

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%")

I would really like to see a study of the prevalence of all the major chronic diseases adjusted/controlled for an ageing population. I would be most interested in the number of people who are diagnosed, since the number of deaths could be due to better therapeutics instead of the individual's environment.

> "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."

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.

>And yet we wonder why people get Alzheimer's and Parkinson's left and right.

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.

You should look up what happens to canaries when people accidentally heat up Teflon too much. You can assume that at lower temperatures it's entirely safe, or just not use them and have slightly less convenience. I just chose the latter.

I’ve been watching some videos as of late on several disasters from radiation poisoning, to contamination from industrial waste and I can’t help but thinking just how much of mess some of this stuff is.

I don't want to detract from your comment, but it wasn't BP, it was Standard Oil, General Motors and DuPont.

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