Chemicals called PFAS and PFOS are in the blood of virtually every person
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
There is a pretty good movie about this topic, Dark Waters. The movie is well informed, largely accurate, and more factual than this article. The main protagonist of the movie is actually Robert Billott, the author of this article.
How much fucking scarier can it get than carcinogens, mutagens, and birth defect causing chemicals being spread througout our entire food and water supply while any attempts to inform about it are systematically supressed?
If you are not scared, you must be blessed with not having seen anyone in your life get cancer.
E.g What is the primary route of ingestion?
Is it more or less dangerous than eating BBQ?
Is usage already being curtailed?
“the dose makes the poison”
We should not load ourselves unnecessarily but be realistic still not overusing strong scaring tactics regardless of circumstances as we will be powerless handling more serious cases presenting themselves. There is difference between going hysterical and being cautious.
You haven't demonstrated that this is "hysteria" and your own blasé attitude is worth imitating.
Also demonstrating if the level of hysteria reached, really? : ) Come on! Do you know some scientific method to accurately and objectively measure it so it will not be an individual/group human perception? I don't think so.
Consider this as it really is: a strong perception from the public. Thank you.
It's fine to be scared of things, and talking about scary things, but when you intentionally work to scare people for profit, that's a pretty shitty thing to do. At that point, you're no longer informing the public, you're trying to provoke a disproportionate and often irrational response for your own financial gain.
Warning: This post contains chemicals known to the state of California to cause cancer and birth defects blah blah Prop 65
This is the exact same tone the anti-vaccination crew consume constantly - it holds no numbers, and threatens us with words like "poison", "unique properties", and "have confirmed links", without specifying how strong those links are, or how much actual impact they have. With a good study, you can have a statistically significant outcome of "increases the odds of rectal cancer over a lifetime by 0.0001%", but that shouldn't really motivate much change, since you can say that about bananas.
It's attention-inducing alarmism: "scaremongering".
Most of the country consumes 'science' only through the lens of journalism, and journalists have been doing an increasingly awful job of helping readers distinguish between real problems, potential problems, and non-issues. Fear sells a lot better than science does.
Writing like this belongs on Taboola headings, not in an article about genuinely scary shit.
Someone being scared depends on so many things and it is subjective. On the other hand being paralyzed by our mind projections or being prepared to do something about is different thing. Flight of fight response...
Personally I would rather know, whatever information is, and how bad it is, than choosing alternative to bury my head into the sand when ever says something that is bad. You can act only if you have information, and only way to propagate information (unfortunately) in our society is if it shocking. Good news simply do not sell papers. Just imagine, in IT projects, someone finds a back door or Zero-day exploit, and you alarm the company and they answer, "nah it is all ok, stop scaremongering users" ?!
I am trying to imagine doctor that says to the colleague, this man has serious heart failure or cancer, but I should not tell him as that may scared him.
Trying to remember the movie scene/motivation speech where narrator says "Fear is good it keeps you alive."
Fear is good prevent us doing stupid things...
No. What is scaremongering is spending 2/3rds of an article playing up how teflon poisoning our blood is some tightly-guarded secret by nefarious actors twirling their mustaches and laughing at birth defects.
That is: this particular article in question is written in a way that puts scaremongering over actual actionable information, to the point where it ends up crossing into unintentional comedy by reading like the crazed ramblings of someone taking "dihydrogen monoxide" pranks at face value.
Issue is - it was tightly-guarded secret by nefarious actors, and still is because "informing" as you say does not do anything. I do not know how you call the people who poison other people for the sake of profit, but historically if you do it on small scale they call you murderer and you end up behind the bars. I would like to avoid quoting Stalin here. By many country law, for instance if you see crime in progress (rape, murder, robbery...) and you do not do anything about it you are defined as accomplice, in DuPont no one said anything, they had mortgages, families to feed, salaries and investment to protect.
So, DuPont knew all along that their product is not safe because they paid for the tests, and they hid the results. Their explanation was and still is that Teflon is too valuable and it is American product. So, lets scale this down, let's say I make a alcohol beverage, and it has poisons levels of methanol, and I know about it I know it is deadly, but I serve you that drink never the less because my excuse is, "I would be too ashamed and I will lose profit", so my question to you is what I am doing criminal is it evil and wicked?
Now, what if you scale that same beverage to the entire planet, and you do not tell anyone, because business is booming? People are poisoned slowly ...
"In 2019, DuPont led the Toxic 100 Water Polluters Index.[34] The film Dark Waters dramatized a legal case against DuPont related to contaminating a town in West Virginia with unregulated toxic chemicals which poisoned thousands of individuals, this case led to DuPont finally settling all 3,535 cases for $670.7 million."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuPont https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Waters_(2019_film)
In DuPont case they settled for $670.7 million and no one ended behind bars, and government needed years before reeling finding, while at the same time DuPont was lobbying and using different kind of other tricks to stop the entire case. DuPont for instance delayed the case, and prolong poisoning of all people on the planet, by finding loophole that says that case can be run against them on person bases. The entire battle lasted for 20 years. And you tell me that is not nefarious? How many people do you know that had perseverance to continue battle for 20 years, when you are running out of resources and everyone is abandoning you?
And I would like if you could explain me what is "actionable information"? You cannot go to hospital and say, please extract PFAS and PFOS out of me, it is deposited in our bodies, slowly killing us and we cannot do zip about it, only thing we can do is go for DuPont management (as it seems from the 2019 they have not change the way they do business) and shut them down forever and put all connected behind the bars.
Through exactly which sources, and in what dosages?
> slowly killing us
At what rate? At what dosages? With what symptoms?
This is what I mean by "actionable information". If the article spent anywhere near as much time explaining the actual details of the risks as it did trying to paint DuPont as mustache-twirling villains, people might actually be able to make an informed decision of "alright, well I should limit my exposure to these things by this much, and keep an eye out for these symptoms, and we should enact these measures to prevent further harm".
And that ain't to say that DuPont is not a bunch of mustache-twirling villains -- only that the emphasis on presenting them as such is far less helpful than an emphasis on the actual details and an actual solution beyond "let's be mad at DuPont".
> "alright, well I should limit my exposure to these things by this much, and keep an eye out for these symptoms, and we should enact these measures to prevent further harm". As I said, you cannot, you are already poisoned, and you cannot remove it from the nature. You can just try to stop "mustache-twirling villains" to do the future harm, as they shown in 2019 they are capable of simply giving Zero Fs for what public wants.
Additionally, calling them "mustache-twirling villains" it is downplaying danger turning it into the light comedy piece, which will make public care even less about the issue. Just imagine I poison you and then when you get angry I use perfect stand up comedian skills and everyone laugh at you, and say "don't worry you will be fine, people dying anyway" - (Which was exact sentence of the women from Scotland refusing to wear the mask during Corona virus pandemic while she was thrown out of the airplane)
My point is that the author's reliance on hyperbolic and emotionally-charged language is what makes the article read like a light comedy piece. It's exactly the sort of rhetoric employed by anti-vaxxers and chemtrail believers, and it cheapens the message.
The facts are damning enough. Let them speak for themselves.
https://osher.ucsf.edu/patient-care/integrative-medicine-res...
So now, as we struggle to live through a once-in-a-century pandemic...
This is just so categorically false, there has been both the HIV/AIDs pandemic and the Asian Flu in the 60s both were/are way more deadly.
There were no country-wide lockdowns for months for AIDS, there never was any factual reason to believe AIDS could be transmitted even by being in the same room as an infected person, there were no people dying in hospitals because there were not enough ICU beds because literally every single bed was occupied by another person infected, there were no entire industries employing many many millions of people being destroyed overnight (hospitality, tourism, events, sports).
Again: don't get me wrong, AIDS has been a devastating illness especially for the LGBT community. Still, doesn't mean that it's wise or sensible to compare it with coronavirus.
Most people dying have underlying conditions
It is the illness that's causing havoc because people are filling up all available ICU beds - and to make it worse, they're needing intensive care like ventilators and ECMO far longer than previous illnesses!
A relative of mine is a doctor and beds occupancy is often high in this season: this is because hospitals try to work at capacity and extra beds can be converted into ICU beds when needed.
This is how the NHS managed to survive the peak back in March (and how it will probably survive this peak which seems to have similar numbers).
I'm sure saying it doesn't make for a very compelling headline though.
Meanwhile people with more serious diseases (eg cancer) are postponing going to the hospital and dying.
I also consider the lack of scaling capabilities of our public sector to be a shame and I think we should put the private (which was heavily affected by job loss caused by the lockdowns) sector to work on it (converting privately owned businesses into it, speed training people to deal with the illness - we had almost a year to prepare).
But I don't see our society being agile enough to handle it in time from a regulatory point of view.
And while I get that most countries haven't completely shat the bed with their COVID responses like we have here in the US, those countries doing better (like New Zealand and Taiwan) have been able to react accordingly and return approximately to normal.
Cancer is the default disease, it amounts to a cell copying error, if something else doesn't kill you, you eventually develop it. It's basic statistics.
Life expectancy has never been higher, I'm not saying we shouldn't watch out for dangerous substances in the environment, but there will always be some, and the relative risk is usually quite small.
It's not if suddenly, life expectancy went down by 10 years and we cannot explain it. This is more like: "mhhh interesting, we should take a closer look at it".
Alcoholic beverages or going out in the sun are probably bigger health risks.
This is Teflon before 2016. If you were close enough, it was in drinking water... water you would have used for growing your own food. Organics would have provided zero protection.
Think of it more like an extensive comment on HN, by someone well-informed and a strong opinion on the subject.
I think there's a place for running articles by major figures as-is. And Robert Bilott would seem to qualify as a major figure in this context.
Great Article
Nordic skiing (and to a lesser extent, downhill skiing) have been going through a bit of a reckoning trying to remove them from competitions. Fluorowaxes are very effective for gliding quickly in wet conditions. The fact that they are melted during application makes them particularly pernicious.
Fluorocarbons are also ubiquitous in water repelling in clothing. Some of the more expensive brands of outdoor wear have moved to shorter chain fluorocarbons, but they haven't eliminated their use. From Arcteryx: "... non-PFC [water repellant] treatments... have fallen short of the level of performance and durability we deem imperative". It's likely less urgent with clothing, since these compounds are quite stable when left alone at normal temperatures.
Why not just only test the winner of every competition? As soon as winner crosses finish line, confiscate skis for testing. Negative = win, positive = disqualified. Ah, but then I suppose you have to test 2nd place's skis to see if they deserved to be bumped to first in the case of DQ... and this process has O(n) worst case where you would have to test literally every competitor's skis to find a winner...
I suppose you could just say "if you are in top 3 and you cheated, you are disqualified for life and nobody gets that medal" and then just let the communities sort it out.
Which is completely wrong. The PTFE pores will get clogged with skin oil, leading to more internal condensation, and the wax (the part referred to as "Durably Water Repellent," which is a hugely fraudulent marketing claim, as there is nothing durable about it) impregnated into the outer woven textile layer is less effective if there is moisture-wicking dirt on the outer layer, or the wax has rubbed off. In fact the wax is melted into the yarns of the outer woven fabric at about 40°C. To "re-activate" the DWR, most manufacturers recommend putting the garment in the dryer at 40°C for about half an hour. This re-melts the wax and wicks it into the parts of the yarn where it has rubbed off. Incidentally, Arc'Teryx recommends washing PTFE garments at 40°C as well.
The biggest scam in the waterproof-breathable garment industry (and that is saying a lot) are the so-called "2.5 layer" garments. Instead of being sandwiched between two woven textile layers, the PTFE film is coated directly on the inside of the outer layer, then some kind of ink or paint (yes, really) is printed over the PTFE layer for "durability." In 2.5 layer garments, the PTFE will start to flake off in a couple of years at most from abrasion with the clothes you wear underneath and bending and flexing of the outer textile layer (this has nothing to do with the acidity of skin oil - another completely fraudulent marketing claim I have seen as an attempt by retailers/manufacturers to deny warranty claims for "improper care"). These flakes (which is where all the PTFE is) will end up going down the drain, and you will have a ruined garment that is impossible to repair. 2.5 layer garments continue to be sold, because the manufacturing process is so cheap. I do not understand how there has not been a class-action lawsuit about this yet.
They meet the desires of most customers. For most people, they want an inexpensive jacket, they wear it pretty infrequently, and by the time it starts to fail in 2-5 years they're ready to get something new.
It's a good thing if you can keep your DWR garment clean enough that it doesn't need to be washed often. Avoid sweating on it as possible, for example.
Not sure how that plays into the larger debate about fluorocarbons, but sometimes I think the perspective frame can be shifted a bit.
It doesn't last long, but off the line it is like magic. Especially in sticky/wet snow. basically a pure form of the stuff we don't want in our water, though.
Are there any reliable figures on to what degree something like, say, wearing a pair of Arcteryx gloves on and off for a couple years, and frequently taking them off and then immediately eating, raises your risk of cancer? Asking for a... friend who just got some for Christmas and is now considering tossing them in the trash.
Besides, they've been phased out of new clothing. If you got something new they shouldn't have the same PFAS and PFOS, although it wouldn't be surprising if the new shorter chain replacements have similar issues.
Or contaminated ground water.
https://theintercept.com/2015/08/11/dupont-chemistry-decepti...
Truly despicable behavior from one of the world's largest and oldest companies.
So often I see comments "this company is awful", or whatever, which don't even refer to the name of the company; which I find most strange.
You need some bar of rigor they aim to clear that confers protection from damages. Whether that's field trials, drug trials, peer review, etc.
You're saying this like it's a bad thing.
We need to impress upon corporations to look at the long term condequences and any executive looking to keep living the good life to prioritize environmental/social matters with a high level of awareness and scrutiny before any machinations relating to increasing topline growth (figuring things like this out is why C-Suite execs get paid more than the presidents of most states)
To that we need a harsh route and I reckon the need for high profits will apply enough pressure for proper investment in R&D and allows new entrants to get a piece of the pie. Raising the bar will never stop progress -if it did we'd still be boarding some suspect aeroplanes amd driving ridiculous death traps we might call cars.
This is the reality under the current regulatory frameworks. Which is I'm advocating for a firm hand just as in the aerospace/motor industry.
Ofcourse there will be concessions as there will be non-obvious oversight and/or employees hiding bad information if it might damage their career. Regulators and civil organizations will have to figure out the meta information before proceeding to trial.
Your arms race argument is valid, but I think there's a lot of progress to be made before that negative effect dominates. I don't think we're currently at the optimum equilibrium of regulation vs. evasion. If the punishment for murder causes murderers to evade capture, society matches their efforts; it doesn't just give up.
With liability limits, you can do the math on whether a chemical is worth the risk because while some things are unknowable, your maximum liability is already established.
That's why I favor a "due diligence" regulatory arrangement.
New technology is always a gamble. It's just a matter of who pays -- the people who profited, or the bystanders who had nothing to do with it? If you want to do business and protect yourself against downside risk, take out insurance and do enough due diligence to satisfy the insurance provider. Passing off the risks to third parties just because currently there is no accountability system in place is not a just system.
I agree the person you responded to shouldn't have written "Or", but that doesn't change that individual actions and systemic change aren't exclusive but additive.
Which is, of course, complete bullshit.
I'm not dismissing the toxicity and persistence of fluorocarbons, but this article is too grandstanding and fearmongering for my likes.
You're better off just reading the Wikipedia page: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfluorooctanoic_acid
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/just-how-harmful-...
> A maintenance worker had used an abrasive floor cleaner, instead of the usual mild detergent, to wash out cages and water bottles. The acidic solution scarred the hard, polycarbonate surface of the plastic and enabled a single chemical culprit to leach out—bisphenol A (BPA).
Quote from the article. The plastics are polymers - monomers linked into chains, but the linking is random and this would be a plausible explanation.
How so? Your own link seems to support that reading.
The Wikipedia page says:
> "The chemical has received attention due to litigation from the PFOA-contaminated community around DuPont's Washington Works facility in Washington, West Virginia, along with EPA focus."
That litigation was handled by Robert Bilott, the author of the article and subject of the NYT piece[1] that confirms the story of Tennant bringing up the issue.
Perhaps you thought the article was saying that the harm of fluorocarbons is known at all because of Tennant, when it instead seems to say that it is widely known because of him.
1. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/10/magazine/the-lawyer-who-b...
The use of language in a piece of journalistic writing colors my perception of it. Saying that the only reason the world knows anything comes off as grandstanding.
That said... I think the author is fighting a good fight. Maybe this kind of reporting eventually helps the cause. I just don't like all the emotional strings being pulled.
Finally, unrelated... Every organic chemist should understand intuitively how dumb it is to let undegradable shit loose in the environment. This is polychlorinated biphenyls all over again, without the chloracne.
That's a better way to phrase it than "complete bullshit", which suggests you object to more than just the certainty.
I'm not really sure what your nitpick is here, anyway. Because <100% of people found out about this harmful pollution from that lawsuit, it's unfair to say that most people did?
Do you just believe that you can't credit anyone for popularizing anything, because some niche of people already knew?
DuPont is one of the big daddies of the chemical industry. The few who control the poisons of the world also control our seeds.
Having said that, learning about the author is also important to understand the motivation :
[..] Rob Bilott is a partner at the law firm of Taft Stettinius & Hollister, LLP and author of Exposure: Poisoned Water, Corporate Greed, and One Lawyer’s Twenty-Year Battle Against DuPont.
His book was the story behind the film, Dark Waters and the documentary, The Devil We Know.
Rob is also a 2017 recipient of the 2017 Right Livelihood Award, also known as the “Alternative Nobel Prize,” for his work on Forever Chemicals.
On Thursday, Rob Bilott is participating in an online discussion on the need to regulate PFAS titled Dark Waters no more! Is it time for a global agreement on toxic chemicals?[..]
[..] But if you are a sentient being reading this article in 2016, you already have PFOA in your blood. It is in your parents’ blood, your children’s blood, your lover’s blood. How did it get there? Through the air, through your diet, through your use of nonstick cookware, through your umbilical cord. Or you might have drunk tainted water. The Environmental Working Group has found manufactured fluorochemicals present in 94 water districts across 27 states (see sidebar beginning on Page 38). Residents of Issaquah, Wash.; Wilmington, Del.; Colorado Springs; and Nassau County on Long Island are among those whose water has a higher concentration of fluorochemicals than that in some of the districts included in Rob Bilott’s class-action suit. The drinking water in Parkersburg itself, whose water district was not included in the original class-action suit and has failed to compel DuPont to pay for a filtration system, is currently tainted with high levels of PFOA. Most residents appear not to know this.
Where scientists have tested for the presence of PFOA in the world, they have found it. PFOA is in the blood or vital organs of Atlantic salmon, swordfish, striped mullet, gray seals, common cormorants, Alaskan polar bears, brown pelicans, sea turtles, sea eagles, Midwestern bald eagles, California sea lions and Laysan albatrosses on Sand Island, a wildlife refuge on Midway Atoll, in the middle of the North Pacific Ocean, about halfway between North America and Asia.[..]
"Scientists have confirmed links between PFOA exposure and a variety of serious diseases, including kidney cancer, testicular cancer, ulcerative colitis, thyroid disease, and pregnancy-induced hypertension. And more recent studies are now raising concerns that some of these forever chemicals may negatively impact our endocrine system, our fertility, and our immune system – and possibly even the efficacy of vaccines."
A few moments spent checking out links to some of the issues mentioned above reveals enough 'actual information' to sink a boat. We can then make up our own minds as to whether the author is exaggerating. I vote for 'not'.
A valid position is one you’ve taken that the onus should be on the manufacturer to prove safety. However, it’s intentionally not the position of the government. Not just the US as I believe many/most/all countries err on the side of “it’s safe” without actually requiring evidence to that effect except for drugs and maybe some food production (such studies take a long time, are expensive, and often inconclusive).
That said, the pervasiveness and harmfulness of PFOA (and some of its newer replacements) is a real and significant issue that needs to be publicized.
I personally prefer this article from NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/10/magazine/the-lawyer-who-b...
(Note that the author of the OP Guardian article is actually the subject of this NYT article!)
I dislike this logic: it penalises expertise and commitment. It’s similar to the way broadcasters frequently dismiss people as “activists”. As far as I’m aware, he is only not neutral because he has learned a lot about the problem and found it serious enough to devote himself to doing something about it.
When weighing people's opinions, expertise should be rewarded but commitment should be penalized.
Committed people have a psychological need to prove themselves right and to discount contrary evidence. This is due to a combination of conscious and subconscious factors: enhancing one's social and career standing, making oneself feel better about the invested effort, etc. Among people who spent a decade or two arguing in favor of a certain theory, not many would be comfortable admitting they were wrong all along.
There is a period of time when someone is already an expert but not yet committed to any particular belief. This is an excellent time to listen to their opinions. Unfortunately, this period is usually quite short for most people.
Sometimes (as in this case), the commitment is quite obvious; at other times, it may be hard to detect it.
This feels like an unfairly broad brush to paint committed people with. True commitment and expertise invariably results in truths indistinguishable from opinion to the outsider, they can offer considerable insight to those who will listen.
> When weighing people's opinions, expertise should be rewarded but commitment should be penalized.
"Penalized" is too dismissive, and borderline bulverism. I would say it is important to listen to the committed while being critical and wary of any bias they may have.
That negative score is added to the positive score from the expertise part of the author when I determine how much credence to give their argument.
When presented with a true argument, information that can be reasoned about or verified, this is where penalization is not appropriate - healthy skepticism ensures you are critical of it, but an attitude of penalization adds a handicap to every argument produced by a committed person regardless of any truth it could hold.
When the argument is almost entirely emotional however I'm inclined to agree - a negative weighting is reasonable.
The parent's principle is in fact quite applicable in this case due to the lack of arguments presented along side facts and explanation, but that does not justify over generalizing it to argument from all committed people.
Also, in the history of science and philosophy, you’ll find that the majority of those whose work significantly advanced human knowledge were committed to their work and to the promotion of their ideas.
You say this as if it was a negative.
Besides the history of science is very fuzzy, and complex enough that "commitment" by itself is too vague a term. Also, science is not homogeneous enough for any kind of it to be a positive on every field.
That is absolutely correct.
Is there? Or is this an unfalsifiable classification that people one agrees with can be put in, and people who one doesn't agree with can be pushed out of?
The idea that opinions have no relation to expertise is a general argument against expertise. The magic period during which people have expertise but don't have opinions seems related to that magic period for journalists when they understand all of the facts about a story accurately but have no opinion about what is true and what is not true.
---
My own take is that it's less about a period of time [during which loosely-held opinions ostensibly ossify into the kind of commitment that interferes with honest pursuit of truth] and more about mindset, ego and circumstance. Which latter variables are difficult if not impossible to ascertain or verify. Which is why peer-reviewed science -- in removing as much subjectivity as humanly possible -- is our best and only plausible path to truly objective knowledge. (Which in turn is not the only kind of knowledge worth having or sharing! Far from it! But I digress.)
This is straight paranoia, unless you plan on only talking to people about their job or topics that don’t interest them.
You’re clearly too committed to your opinion here.
> There is a period of time when someone is already an expert but not yet committed to any particular belief.
Experts without opinions? It sounds like you’re just talking about a toaster. Toasters have no opinions about you when you set the shade to dark, like a monster
Experts who have strong unchanging opinions are really former experts pretending some point in the past is frozen.
I’m suggesting that hand-waving away information because someone has some strong opinions is silly. I don’t believe someone would ever dive into something that deep if they didn’t have some commitment to some opinion about their area of expertise
Not to say this bloke isn't right on the money. But one would certainly want to read other, less biased sources to weigh the actual gravity of the problem.
Plainly described, this is a grave threat to public health being deliberately covered up by people with monetary interests. We've faced literally hundreds of these threats since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. Remember asbestos?
Public awareness is the first major obstacle. Standing in the way of that means more people will die than necessary.
It's not hard to convince me that any type of plastic is bad. I dont use plastic containers for food. Only wood, metal and glass are in my kitchen when it contacts food. I dont even like plastic for anything else. If I can opt for something that's not made of plastic, I'd rather pay a premium than have it all if I can (obviously what I'm holding to type this flies in my belief's face, but right now the anti-plastic war I wage is a hill I will die on and it'll be a brutal death). Yet, after reading the article, I have doubts on what he's claiming.
Journalism used to be emotional only at very key, important points. The deadpan nature allowed for disciplined emotional tones to have extreme, nearly atomic impact on a subject. That used to move people. Now, everything is a life or death struggle. For fucks sake, figuring out what bathroom to use was and still is a "heated debate". 99% of people have zero issues figuring this out. Less than 1% are arguing yet everyone has to feel like THIS is what will collapse society if we dont fix it. The constant barrage of outlandish "passionate" claims to "save the world" along with the deep dark shady underworld of business, after a while, "yup, whatever". While I will always err on the side of "fuck plastic", I will also admit that I'm a casualty of the current "journalism" climate of ever increasing sense of doom around every corner. I dont believe the author even though I philosophically should knee jerk to being a cheerleader all because of the tone of the article. And given some other comments, I'm not alone.
And yes, my word choice is relevant to the theme I'm discussing.
With respect to the article, it's an opinion piece and clearly marked as such. I'm not sure if this is a difference between US and UK papers, but in papers that still try to have some journalistic integrity in the UK there is, by convention, a difference between articles marked as 'Opinion' and news articles. The writers of opinion pieces are invited to submit articles on a one-off basis and are not necessarily journalists, they can be anyone and the articles they write are expected to hold an opinion so when you read one the understanding is that it will be biased towards a particular viewpoint. So the Guardian frequently has opinion pieces written by politicians (generally centrist but from the left and right of politics), activists, scientists, etc. These opinion pieces typically lean leftish on average, because its The Guardian, but individually they are not always left leaning.
Do newspapers from other countries have a similar convention?
Becoming passionate about something is generally a result of the interpretation of facts, not the cause. It's very difficult to become passionate about plastic pollution without any knowledge of plastic pollution. The only people that can maintain this fantasy libertarian opinion without enthusiasm are people who support plastic pollution because it makes them money, and pay people to come up with arguments to continue doing it - hence all people without a financial stake are hopelessly biased activists.
If they're not making money, what could they possibly be getting out of it? They're obviously insane and feeding their own egos through heroism, and therefore can't be believed.
(As far as I know. If there's a study about all activists, please correct me.)
You need a neutral perspective, same reason dev should be his own qa, or lawyer should not represent himself or a doctor not operate on family.
While they can be objective and unbiased, it is right to question that, when the author has a vested interest in the matter as it easy to loose perspective.
Humans are emotional beings, not robots. If you want to have high performance, you want the performer to care deeply about his work.
Biases should not be hidden though! I think that is the pathology people generally confuse with bias. Bias is a positive thing, hiding it is not.
This does not contradict the above examples (lawyer, doctor, dev) but rather highlights there are different situations and no single approach to bias suffices.
Besides, journalism is almost never unbiased. If you don't know the bias of the writer, it means the writer has a hidden agenda. Much better to flaunt the agenda, then.
If everything is above board there's nothing to lose. But hand-waving it away doesn't help anyone except people with motives that appear good at first blush but are in fact not.
Our bodies are full of "toxins". For example, our bones are made up of calcium and phosphorus. Yet, if you eat a pinch of powdered phosphorus, you die.
Under the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act, the E.P.A. can test chemicals only when it has been provided evidence of harm. This arrangement, which largely allows chemical companies to regulate themselves, is the reason that the E.P.A. has restricted only five chemicals, out of tens of thousands on the market, in the last 40 years.
Given that we're talking about something that's practically harming the entire population of this planet there are only two groups of people. The one's that get sick from it and get rich, and the one's that just get sick, so I think it's fair to say the number of people who have any reason to be neutral actors is 0.
Yea: I have to agree. The 2016 NYT piece you linked is a better read. Thanks.
PFOA is very scary, but I'm also very concerned by some of the replacements[1] that DuPont is using now. What if they're just as dangerous?
Heck, we've know PFOS is dangerous for over a decade now, but we're still using it in industry and to fight fires.
[1] like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GenX
I was really frustrated after making the switch. Non stick pans are so forgiving. However, now that I’m over the hump, I really love these pans. They are so sturdy and will last my whole life. I’ve learned how to control heat much better, and they’re quite satisfying to cook with. There’s something so quality feeling about them.
At this sort of global scale these decisions really matter. What are the replacements?
I never used Teflon regularly. I did buy them because it was modern and seemed to make life easier. But I never liked how it smelled at high heat. I am trained as a professional chef and have been cooking for decades now. I rely on my sense of smell for everything.
These are my preferences in no particular order...and materials I have used over the years
stainless steel: My go to in the kitchen. It has to be thick and heavy. All Clad is great. But IKEA doesn’t disappoint either.
Cast iron: for skillets. Heavy..you need strong wrists. Never wash them. They have to be conditioned.
Copper bottomed stainless steel: I used this for a while and I like it because copper spreads heat evenly.
Copper: when I have to be fancy and serve in the same dish as I have cooked. Like with sauces because it has to cook evenly and at low temperature.
Also for serving. My grandmother kept a glass of water in a copper jug with a couple of leaves of tulsi leaves soaked overnight. She would drink it first thing in the morning.
Silver: only for serving. Hot liquids are really really hot in it. Will tarnish. There is some religious or cultural significance to it in south India. The older generation always ate on silver plates and had a silver tumbler. They’d also eat from banana leaves so I know it’s not a vanity thing. But I know there was some significance to it. I will find out.
Tinware: this is traditional cookware from India. It is used to make exactly one dish..a soupy item called rasam. This is handed down from generation to generation. My grandmother taught me how to cook in this and as a young bride, I was gifted one by my mother in law who handed it over to me with confounding reverence.. as though it was made of gold and studded with emeralds and rubies.
It is supposed to create a unique taste profile to the rasam(tamarind based broth soup with spices, tomatoes, lentils and herbs.) I was warned again and again not to use over high heat because it would ‘melt’. My mother explained to me later that at high heat, it would become a molten mess and that it can happen quickly. She also assured me that it’s ok. She herself has had her eeyum-chombu melted and there were tin smiths(?) who will remake it back to the shape you want in the kitchen.
I did my best rasams in that tho’..could have been the story. I was always excited when it came out without me melting dinner. I guess it’s the vegetarian south indian housewife version of ‘puffer fish’ syndrome. So there’s that. I thought I will pin it here.
Clay: I recently started cooking with this. I also make yogurt in it. And use small clay cups to serve tea. It’s a little tricky. Can’t use soap. Have to be soaked. I can use it only for one dish at a time. Because the odors stick around. It does make chai and yogurt taste out of the world or rather, ‘earthy’. I guess it’s an acquired taste. I like it. Don’t like the cleaning part. It will break. And pick up mold if it’s not dried out in the sun.
Brass/bronze: I could never tell what it is. I had a ton of stuff that I inherited from my grandmothers. It’s really heavy. It won’t work well with modern stoves. They have antique value now but were also used to cook.
Iron: I have a couple of ladles. I don’t use them.
Aluminum: some houses use these to cook for large crowds like events etc. to make rice or tea for 100 people etc. I don’t own them but we had a couple of utensils like this in the attic for family functions. As kids, we’d play hide and seek by crouching inside one of the giant utensils. Good times.
Glass: a lot of baking trays are aluminum. Some might even be Teflon coated. But Pyrex is awesome. But aluminum and coated with something nonstick(I never found out what it was ..maybe Teflon?) and silicone is still the way to go for cookies and quick order baking. I don’t bake a lot these days.
‘Stone’: I don’t know what kind of stone. My grandmother used to make only certain dishes in this. It was black and I think it’s soapstone. While copper is a good conductor. Soapstone was a good insulator. Super heavy.
Silicone: for the modern kitchen. In the oven, stovetop or for microwave. It’s very Meh. I don’t know what to make of it. I use a lot for cooking. Silpat baking sheets etc. I don’t know how to do any of my modern French culinary baking stuff without these materials. Like patisserie work or sugar work or working with chocolate etc.
I use many of these on a daily basis because I cook both traditional indian as well as classical French. They all conserve energy. The right material means you don’t use heat too much or that you don’t have to stick everything in the refrigerator.
You have to choose the right material for the right cuisine. You have to match the energy source you have with the cuisine and the material. Now we have electric stoves and induction and convection and ovens and gas stoves. So the cooking utensil material is meant to match those criteria. It is not a fad or a cost or a looks thing. It is about utility. And ultimately cooking with an energy source that is most efficient. It’s about controlling heat. A home cook doesn’t need all this. Stainless steel would do for a gas stove.
I am sharing this info because cooking brings me great joy. So just putting this out there.
Finally: Instant Pot. My absolute favourite. I mean. If you are starting out or an expert cook, this is a game changer. One pot electric pressure cooker. Changed my life in the kitchen during the pandemic.
I recently bought a 8l Instant Pot - it cooks really fast and I’m still exploring the best dishes to cook with it. But so far I find slow cooking stews and curries on minimum heat on a gas hob for ~7hours still brings out a bit more flavour - I just use the stainless steel pot from the Instant Pot on the hob, with a glass lid mostly on. Maybe it’s because of the time the flavours can mix, or because the dish reduces a bit more this way. We cook a lot of Burmese and Indian food and European stews this way, it’s great every single time.
However, as for myself, are things like teflon non-stick pans a serious concern? Do we have good data of the risk?
I tried to quickly research this, and this cancer.org article leads me to believe I shouldn't be too worried: https://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-causes/teflon-and-perfl...
In the past my impression was that only the corporatism and boundless greed of the people from the US yields such environmental catastrophes, which fill the pockets of executives while harming entire generations with massive pollution.
But the Corona catastrophe shows that too many people from all cultures and countries have the same disease of ignorance, rot, shortsightedness and stupidity. And once they fear to be picked out for it, all they try to do is to save their skin from prosecution. This is not American, this is Human.
Or eat food with it sprayed on. I'll even let you wait awhile from spraying before eating. Still happy to do so?
People are usually more protective of children than themselves, so perhaps a better question for them is: would you let your children or grandchildren drink it knowing what it can do? A good question for various politicians and officials around Flint, Michigan perhaps.
assume its the year 2000 with a 20 year old having some level of PFOS in blood & cells etc and the half-life of that PFOS is 5 years*
2000 100% of accumulated measured concentration in blood & cells by some measure
2005 50%
2010 25%
2015 13%
2020 6%
2025 3%
2030 2%
2035 1%
2040 <1%
So our fictional 20 year old is 60-70* by the time the stuff has "fully" degraded. This doesn't mean they are now healthy. It just means the toxic stuff is now no longer at the original level. Impact on organs? Not a great picture.
A "Forever chemical" indeed.
* Assumptions just to make things easier to see. PFOS half-life is actually 5.4 years. So the table above is too short. Assume nothing gets stuck where it can't decay. What is toxic for this? What is typical buildup for a 20 year old for various locations/contexts?
I didn't assert that. I did state that after 70 years of only getting to some vague level of trace amounts its still likely there and that something of that nature is a "forever chemical" indeed. You haven't cancelled that.
You do realise that PFOS actually does have a half-life when in the body and that the body does break them down? Slowly. My point is that even at 5.3 years or anything around that half-life the stuff is in your body. Basically forever... until you're likely very old or dead.
You want to quibble about "forever" in a human being only 70 years. Ok. That's excessively pedantic however I'm not going to exhaustively iterate over every detail to do so.
Your link is year-on-year PFOS concentrations. Seems that the exposure from the environment is increasing. Sure.
How does that cancel out what I wrote? I fail to see where you've cancelled out my simulation at all.
https://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/insight/these-chemicals-ar...
Wrong.
https://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/insight/these-chemicals-ar...
"PFASs can concentrate in the bodies of humans and animals over time through a process known as bioaccumulation. For example, as a result of PFOA’s tendency to bioaccumulate and its long half-life in humans, PFOA’s presence in the body can persist even after exposure stops. PFOA’s half-life (the length of time it takes for a substance to decrease to half of its original value) in humans is anywhere from over two to nearly four years, while other PFASs have been shown to have a half-life of over eight years. There is also evidence that some PFASs can biomagnify, or increase in concentration, up the food chain."
Without knowing the initial concentration, it doesn't really mean they are still unhealthy either
Edit: thank you, I see that now here too - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1964923/
PFOS has a half-life of ~5.4 years in people.
I live (and grew up) drinking groundwater downstream of a plume of PFOAs. Wolverine Worldwide (of Cat/HD/Hush Puppies/Merrell footwear brands) made waterproof leather goods in my hometown of Rockford, MI. In the 60s and 70s, they dumped barrels of leather scraps and excess 3M Scotchgard in woods and swamps in the area. They knew it was dangerous (they used PPE when handling it), but when it was phased out in the 90s they forgot about all the old dump sites until someone sued them in the last few years. Now they've been forced to install thousands of carbon filters in homes across the area, and most of us who have been on well water will eventually be moved to city water. Fortunately, the testing has proven that the carbon canisters are highly effective - my well went from 80ppt to non-detectable - but they're expensive to maintain, and I spent 30 years drinking the stuff...
They even have a "current use" button on that page. Lo and behold the information is right before your very eyes.
They never made fire fighting foam, and currently don't manufacture those chemicals.
I'm not saying there's no threat here, just that this headline is worthless.
To clarify, you should absolutely be concerned about this particular category of particles - the impacts are not fully understood, but they are substantial and meaningful. I'm just railing against the consistent failures of modern scientific 'journalism'.
I mean, I could take blood sample from any, any, HN reader and find arsenic. No problem. But it’s natural right. So no big deal. And at levels that aren’t toxic.
One of the things about poison is that the more poisonous it is, the fewer living people it will be found in.
Unless you can show a dos exposure curve of some symptom getting worse with dose, something that is ubiquitous would likely be relatively harmless.
Remember dihydrogen monoxide with is also in everyone and results in quite a few fatalities every year in both its solid and liquid form and in its gaseous form is a very potent green house gas.
Haha, that’s excellent!!
PFOAs do have various impacts on mice, at high dosages: https://cfpub.epa.gov/si/si_public_record_report.cfm?Lab=NHE...
The question at hand is:
How much ubiquitous, world-wide PFOA presence is too much ubiquitous, world-wide PFOA presence?
Related question: is it physically possible for DuPont to synthesize and release an amount of persistent environmental toxin sufficient to end all higher life on the planet within 500 years?
Never thought about it this way. Scary interesting.