Study finds alarming levels of ‘forever chemicals’ in US mothers’ breast milk
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
I wish Governments would do their jobs and simply ban PFAS in all products used for domestic purposes. This is a huge burden to place on individual consumers.
Are they breathing in rain-proof coating? Are they rubbing it on their hands and ingesting it? Is it in the household air and it makes no difference to not wear it if someone in the household else wears it?
The mechanism is not made very clear.
Then, one day coming home, out of the rain, pulling it off I wondered what all those tiny white flakes on my shirt were?
Didn't even realise it until I discovered it was that white inner lining :-)
I really don't understand how some companies are getting off scot-free.
The Intercept and New York Times cover the issue well.
Robert Bilott's book Exposure https://www.amazon.com/Exposure-Be-Confirmed/dp/1501172816 covers the story of the lawyer who successfully sued DuPont and is continuing that legal pursuit.
I also recommend my podcast with Robert Bilott: https://joshuaspodek.com/guests/robert-bilott
That's pretty much all takeaway food boxes, no?
https://www.consumerreports.org/toxic-chemicals-substances/p...
Cups are typically coated with polyethylene to make them waterproof, but I think I read somewhere that they are then coated with PTFE to make them slide apart easier when stacked.
I believe it’s specifically those, not so much things like butcher paper or soda cups.
The ons that have been identified with these long half-life properties have not been manufactured for many years (but they are still around due to their long half-lives).
Anything with a half life of a year or more is concerning due to the near continual exposure. You'll accumulate it faster than you'll get rid of it.
Don’t use alcohol-based disinfectants after handling heat-printed receipts, it makes the BPA absorption rate through your skin go way up.
They aren't required to be eliminated, but minimized. I would be much more concerned with the duration of exposure (halflife) when working to reduce exposure given that it's impossible to completely eliminate.
I thought most/all of the PFAS is released during manufacture and not when it's being used?
edit:
wikipedia says
>Despite DuPont's asserting that "cookware coated with DuPont Teflon non-stick coatings does not contain PFOA",[91] residual PFOA was also detected in finished PTFE products including PTFE cookware (4–75 parts per billion).[87] However, PFOA levels ranged from undetectable (<1.5) to 4.3 parts per billion in a more recent study.[48] Also, non-stick cookware is heated—which should volatilize PFOA; PTFE products that are not heated, such as PTFE sealant tape, had higher (1800 parts per billion) levels detected.[92] Overall, PTFE cookware is considered an insignificant exposure pathway to PFOA.[93][94]
I wrote a paper last year regarding forever chemicals for my work. The US water supply is contaminated with forever chemicals, if you're drinking unfiltered tap water [1], you're likely drinking forever chemicals as well. If you eat /drink animal products, you're likely ingesting forever chemicals. If you use cosmetics, those contain toxic chemicals such as phthalates. If you use plastic containers to store food, the plastic particles leech off into your food. When you take hot showers, you breathe in forever chemicals through the steam as the water is contaminated.
Even thermal paper, which is often used for store receipts, have been shown to increase BPA exposure in cashiers. [2]
All these chemicals are known to increase cancer rates, disrupt hormones, cause birth defects, etc. Is it any wonder that we're seeing increasing rates of cancer, depression, etc?
[1] https://www.ewg.org/interactive-maps/pfas_contamination/map/ [2] https://toxicfreefuture.org/handle-with-care-are-cash-regist....
"All these .. Is it any wonder that we're seeing increasing rates of cancer, depression, etc?" Those things are part of the human condition in any epoch
agree,yes, problems with long-lasting chemicals in ordinary life, for certain
Regarding your second point, I agree that these things are a part of the human condition, but my point is that their rates of occurrances are higher than they would be absent of the exposure to these chemicals.
I have personally: stopped using food that is heated in plastic in the microwave. I drink mainly tap water, which I used to drink out of plastic bottles I refilled. I switched these to glass and metal. I stopped using my beloved water atomizer, as I also read on HN that inhaling this stuff is awful.
I want to replace my plastic cutting boards and bowls.
What else can I reasonably do?
you can learn to cook on stainless steal as opposed to "not stick" pans. Even a lot of "ceramic" pots/pans can be suspect.
You can switch to a french press for coffee (all coffee machines pass hot water through plastic before gettting to the pot). French Presses are a pain in the ass to clean, and it's been proven than French Press coffee having a lack of filter, somehow raises LDL cholesterol. I don't know a solution around that.
but good luck shopping - damned near everything comes with some kind of plastic/water proof container. Just try avoiding plastic when buying cheese, yogurt, milk, frozen veggies, ice cream. Everything - even fresh meat and produce, is typically wrapped in more plastic than Laura Palmer.
And health with food works just like technical privacy. It's a lot easier if you live a lone.
If you have an active social life, a romantic partner or a family -- good luck. Because now you're the crazy person avoiding grease resistant pizza boxes, telling your kid "no you can't have bottled water" at the soccer game, and generally looking like a crazy person and driving your partner mad who just wants to enjoy their life.
Mainly: ・Avoid all plastics however possible. This includes food packaging, clothing, carpeting, etc.
・Buy fresh foods. Foods marked organic have been shown to have lesser amounts of contamination in them.
・Try to balance your diet to include more vegetables. Forever chemicals don't accumulate as much in plant/vegetables as they do in animal products.
・Get more exercise / sweat more as you can sweat out some contaminants in your body.
・Get an air filter for your house. The dust in your house likely has particles from old clothing that contain plastics such as polyester. Carpeting in your home can also contribute, depending on what materials it was made with.
・Don't handle things like thermal paper, as the BPAs in the paper can leech off onto your skin.
・Reverse osmosis filters for your drinking water would be best, but they're expensive.
・Avoid scented cosmetics as they contain phthalates. There are some brands that avoid the use of phthalates in their products. Popular dish soap brands also contains phthalates, you can find dish soap brands that don't use phthalates.
Keep in mind you'll never be able to completely avoid forever chemicals, but you can limit your exposure.
the amount of money, time, awareness and effort one needs to exert in daily life is absurd.
Finding BPA/BPS/BADGE free canned goods.
Avoiding plastic - but don't jump to that french press just yet - French Press coffee raises LDL.
PFAS/BPAs/microplastics in our cookware, food storage, take--out/delivery food packaging.
Our friggin tap water - unless you have a $1k filter on your home.
Don't eat too much red meat - you'll get gout or heart disease or colon cancer.
Careful with those antibiotics and eating starches or large intestine flora will activate Crohns or Ankylosing spondylitis.
Don't eat too many carbs you'll get diabetes and heart disease.
Don't eat too much seafood because of heavy metals and/or antibiotics.
Watch out for the heavy metals in baby foods and root vegetables.
Pesticides/herbicides on our fruits and veggies
Antibiotics in our meat
Seed-oils in all "middle aisle" food. but if you eat meat, they're feeding the animals seed-oils or food they wouldn't naturally eat, so the omega6 levels in beef, chicken skin, pork, and even eggs can be 25x-50x what it normally would be.
Try to eat healthy, enjoy some spinach, sweet potatoes, some monosaturated fat heavy macademia nuts (to keep the omega6s low where you can), season your food with tumeric and black pepper for it's anti-inflammatory properties? Hellooooo kidney stones. I sure hope every bite of oxalate you consumed came with the appropriate amount of calcium to bind to.
All the things you have to take in mind in order to maximize your dietary health and exposure to various toxins in the modern world can give someone serious psychiatric conditions.
And it's hard to not justify those psychiatric conditions - with cancer, autoimmune, and other issues all on the rise, you sit back and look at your own kids and ask yourself "why did i even make you, all that's here is unavoidable suffering".
What antifa/BLM did to small businesses in the rage they had for racial justice, this entire nation needs to evoke against the likes to Dow and DuPont and much of BigAg.
The suffering chemical companies and the food industry has done to the population is a million fold what a couple of trigger happy racist cops have done. And yet... we do nothing.
The FDA plays ping pong with PFAS and pretends it's not their responsibility. Companies dedicate to getting rid of "some" of them on a 10 year time span, doing god knows how much more damage to us.
Something poisonous is in damned near everything we consume or touch.
You could eat a perfect blue zone diet in america and still die of cancer at 62 years old.
In short, we've made out bed. Now we have lay in it, go to church and pray in it. We deserve everything we get.
Such is life. Such is dignity.
I'm certainly not a cheery fellow, but to partake in evil and claim you were born in it does not absolve anyone of it.
In any case, the cost of progress has a steep price or did you think there is such a thing as a free lunch? Someone's wealth must be offset by others poverty because those are the rules we choose to live by. Yhe situation isnt getting better either. It's getting worse. At this point we are not entirely sure of how much we don't know about what we don't know.
I would nit be surprised many moons from now researchers find our tech and the plastics its made out of heat up during use and we inhale all sorts of unnatural nonsense.
Such is life. Such is dignity.
Other main suspects are obesity, poor choice of diet, and I believe a few other things. They probably all contribute somewhat.
It's also possible that the chemicals have something to do with some of the other contributions.
For instance, the rise in obesity rates over the last few decades isn't just a human thing. I've seen some research that found that animals are getting fatter, too. This includes lab animals that are fed controlled diets, so it isn't just that fat humans are eating more, and so also have more scraps to toss to the pets.
This suggests some sort of hormonal change or disruption might be a significant factor in rising obesity, and when you look for candidate hormonal disruption sources that both humans and animals would be exposed to, those "forever chemicals" are going to be at the top of the list.
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=7%2C39&q=gly...
tl,dr: deep voices in old movies are artefact of people liking deep voices back then.
There's even been a huge increase in diversity of, ex, contestants on game shows/challenge shows.
There's just simply much, much more media made now too.
Looking back even further, consider the influence of the electric microphone on music. It used to be that you had to be able to project to the entire room with your own power, but now many quieter varieties of voices are able to compete too.
Source?
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/10/its-not...
[2] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190109-what-we-can-lear...
Dogs too:
"Study demonstrates rapid decline in male dog fertility, with potential link to environmental contaminants"
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160809095138.h...
Seems to be getting better though if you look at the graph on page 16.
[0] https://www.civilianexposure.org/the-u-s-military-is-poisoni...
[1] https://www.stripes.com/news/us-army-in-ansbach-concealing-d...
But like they say, the dose makes the poison, so it might be just a matter of time (they're extremely stable substances)
edit: why the downvotes?
I often wonder how to square such observations with the fact that life expectancy and quality of life are, in general, increasing.
It’s a noisy metric, but all in all it feels like the totality of human development is (for now anyway) increasing human welfare.
Caveat global warming etc.
You'd have to be very silly to say that the life of someone in the lowest rung of the working ladder nowadays(e.g. a McDonalds worker) is not better than the life of a peasant in feudalistic times.
When people talk about quality of life going up and down, they mean compared to last 20 years or something like that.
See Gap minder: https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$ui$chart$cursorMode=plus;;...
The trend of obesity and declining birth rates is common across all developed economies. As a possibility, the accumulation of non-degradable hormone disruptors may have a cumulative effect causing the problem to grow as the decades go on.
The poor are vastly more likely to live in areas of higher industrial runoff, to use older materials/homes/appliances, have poorer water quality, and have fewer resources to counteract negative effects in the environment.
We've know about this for decades. There have been studies on groups of people with high exposure, like that town in WV. We know this stuff is harmful, yet the majority public doesn't really care. There won't be protests or civic involvement of any kind at a large enough scale to make a difference. I fear this will be one of many issues that just gets ignored.
Edit: Why downvote?
For example, my wife doesn't care if something might be harmful (and doesn't do any research to find out) if it's convenient. Nonstick cookware was standard at her house growing up. She complains about our current pans (stainless and cast iron). I try to explain to her about the risks and get her to watch a documentary about it. She won't watch documentaries because she finds them boring.
Her mother has the same general approach - doesn't investigate anything and favors convenience. Her stance is that the government wouldn't approve things if they were dangerous (specifically nonstick, fragrance chemicals, and fabric softeners). Even when the government does recommend an action, she isn't paying enough attention to know about it (the FDA recommends older, like 2013 or something, nonstick pans be thrown away).
I hope that people like this wake up to the warnings. Unfortunately, I think the convenience and government trust is really a mindset and lifestyle. After all, it is easier to believe that someone else is looking out for you so you don't even have to think about things for yourself.
I wish it were best practise to always put the title of the linked video next to the cryptic link itself.
If you think about it: if you put the title there, you allow possibly hundreds of users scrolling past this link to better judge, whether they want to follow the link or not. Just one small effort for the person posting, probably useful for many different users.
It's in a way similar to the question of whether you fill in the subject for an email sent to a number of people. A little effort for the sender can possibly save several recipients' time.
Just sayin' ..
oh!..but look at those companies being all green and scores on their ESG ratings. Oh, and they are using green electricity.
CO2 has been used as greenwashing and mis-direction.
Yes. It is a problem. No - it will not harm you today - but these chemicals harm you and your children today and every day after that, forever.
Persistent chemicals that are hormone disruptors are killing humans, killing fish, killing bees, killing literally EVERYTHING alive on this plant - TODAY.
And all you hear from powers that be is global warming and CO2 that drowns out this very immediate, but such a profitable problem.
Disgusting.
Uhm... no?
I'm not sure where you got this from or who your "powers that be" are, but I have yet to see a climate change advocate play down other environmental problems. All of those problems are understood to be in need of addressing.
Which is in sharp contrast with climate-change deniers and skeptics, whom I repeatedly see confusing people by directing attention away from climate change to other environmental problems, like talking about air pollution and clean water every time someone mentions climate change.
But they stated it was about emphasis, because their obsession (global warming) is drowning out other environmental issues.
> Which is in sharp contrast with climate-change deniers and skeptics, whom I repeatedly see confusing people by directing attention away from climate change to other environmental problems, like talking about air pollution and clean water every time someone mentions climate change.
I'm not sure what you'd expect? They disagree or are sceptical, do you expect them to talk up global warming? That would be strange. It also implies that they do care about the environment, which is in contrast to how they're usually portrayed, but they're emphasising different environmental challenges.
Maybe, if things like clean water and air pollution were tackled then they'd have less things to "play down" and "confuse" others with? Wouldn't that be a boon.
I expect them to deny or express skepticism about it. Not deflect to a different topic.
The logical response to e.g. "do you care about global warming? What should we do about it?" if you are genuinely skeptical would be something like "I'm not convinced it's a problem we need to address", not "of course I care about the environment! I love clean air and water!" as if the question had been about air pollution or water delivery...
a) they do care about the environment b) they get accused of not caring because of their stance on global warming
I think it's the language of a tribalist to say your opponent is deflecting without something more substantial than they don't want to talk about that thing they don't think is worth talking about.
Have you considered there might be a different explanation here than me lacking "substance" and you somehow being full of it? Ironically, have you considered you might be the one instantly jumping to a conclusion about me just based on a couple offhand internet comments on a discussion that's barely even started?
I think it's quite ridiculous (and frankly, rude) to accuse people of being "tribal" or lacking "substance" just because they you a couple quick comments summarizing years of events and didn't spend hours preemptively writing you an essay with detailed analysis and citations. And bear in mind that jumping to -isms accusations so quickly itself has the exact opposite effect of the one you're hoping for.
Firstly, I wasn't saying anything about you but the language you are using.
Secondly, I didn't accuse you of lacking substance, I wrote that your argument lacked evidence.
Lastly, your reaction is over the top, which is also quite a tribalistic response to being challenged.
Yes, now I'm making an insinuation, but that's your own fault for your own faulty assumptions. If you want, we can dial down the temperature and discuss things at a better level, or we can just leave it, not that I believe there's much to discuss other than why you're jumping to so many assumptions about the people you disagree with (or who disagree with you) and their bad intentions.
Mercury,Hg:
“ The EPA has established a limit of 2000 parts per trillion (ppt) of allowable mercury of drinking water. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has set a maximum permissible level of 1,000,000 part of methylmercury in a trillion parts of seafood.”
Lead, Pb: Flint water crisis had 15,000,000 ppt of lead, then after clean up it dropped to FDA ‘allowable’ 15,000 ppt (ideally would be zero).
Cadmium, Cd: EPA limits 5,000 ppt measurements of Cd in drinking water.
Arsenic, As EPA limit of 10,000 ppt in drinking water, short term exposure about 130,000 ppt can cause health effects.
Copper, Cu EPA limits of 1,300,000 ppt in tap water.
Elements functionally involved in human biology: “sodium (Na), potassium (K), magnesium (Mg), and calcium (Ca) that belong to main group of elements, and vanadium (V), chromium (Cr), manganese (Mn), iron (Fe), cobalt (Co), nickel (Ni), copper (Cu), zinc (Zn),”
This doesn’t exist, but I would imagine that the ideal water would have the exact ppt levels of these elements needed by the human body and nothing else.
There simply is no feasible way to have "zero" of pretty much anything today though. The molecules are out there and there time flows only in one direction. So thresholds simply mean that above that is when something can be done about it. If environmental levels rise thresholds would have to rise too because what can you do if it's everywhere? No use having the option to sue someone, including government, when it's out of there hands. Things like mercury or lead in the environment are global (even higher levels can be found in the arctic -- https://cordis.europa.eu/article/id/122855-a-better-understa...).
So for better or worse, life on this planet will have to adapt. There will only be action on the edges, when it gets so bad that it cannot be ignored. All the many small long term effects can't even be properly studied, because what do you compare with when it's everywhere and it's impossible to isolate only one or few chemicals' effects?
.
So, in summary, citing thresholds in a medical discussion is pretty much just a distraction at best. It's for discussions about what to do, or what can you do (legally). The values of the thresholds don't easily or directly translate to "it's safe". Of course they are taken into consideration when threshold levels are set, but only as one factor.