EPA: 'Forever chemicals' pose risk even at low levels
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There are also a lot of polymers and plastics we wouldn't call "forever chemicals" but still last quite a while.
So is it really the "forever-ness" of these chemicals that's so bad? Maybe it's how they seem to spread everywhere and potentially mess with certain biological systems (e.g. endocrine disruption)?
It is my understanding that currently you're allowed to manufacture a completely new chemical and put it into your product with essentially no testing of the long term effect of that compound. That doesn't seem very wise to me, but maybe I'm misinformed about this topic.
Pretty much. There's also a fairly long history of a compound being found to be harmful and banned, only for industry to come up with a very similar compound to replace it, but since it's not the same compound the previous ban doesn't affect it. Then after some time the new compound is found to be harmful as well, rinse and repeat.
The counter-argument is that requiring each chemical to be extensively studied before it can be taken into use would drastically slow down the rate of innovation.
So to an extent there's a conflict between safety and innovation. But of course it's not black and white, and I think there's good reasons to turn the lever more towards the safety end.
https://chemsec.org/eu-puts-200-pfas-out-of-business-but-tho...
Plastic production is growing at 3.5% annually. This implies a doubling of annual plastic production about every 20 years (because 1.035^20 ≈ 2).
And because of how exponential functions work, this also means there has been about a doubling of the total amount of plastic in the world over the last 20 years.
So most of the problem has been created in the recent past. And it will get twice as bad in the next 20 years.
It's not just endocrine disruptors. Those are just most salient to us because we are species with sexual reproduction.
You could also have forever carcinogens, forever mutagens, forever neurotoxins, anything you like.
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...generally a chemical that doesn't degrade is chemically inert so it has less chances than any other more degradable compounds to cause harm (btw, how much research did we put into the multiple pathways of degradation for the currently fashinable "biodegradable" stuff? how many of those possible intermediary degradation compounds are not in fact quite toxical). (Bio)degradable also means reactive, so things are more complicated than it seems.
But yeah, any non-degradable fluid is probably a very bad idea because it's gonna spill and get everywhere, so even minor probability of toxic effect could have insanely large consequences...
One of the least reactive metals, Platinum, is an excellent catalyst in numerous reactions, but often found entirely unreacted in nature: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platinum
a stable chemical can have catastrophic consequences for various species, if it is a potent agonist/antagonist in a critical signalling pathway, or an enzyme/inhibitor of some process. Often these effects are clinically relevant in nanomolar concentrations.
The stable chemical DDT is so stable, it actually bioaccumulates, with biological half-life in decades. It's also a known carcinogen that elevates risks of cancer 4-5x simply from historical exposure decades ago.
As for "biodegradable", that's often basically fraud. PLA (polylactic acid), one of the most common greenwashing plastics, does not biodegrade at all under common conditions, outside of very specific composting process, not usually (maybe even never?) found in nature. Luckily PLA isn't very toxic.
The trick of contaminating the environment with such dangerous chemicals is that death is slow. That people die 10 or 20 years later of strange cancers or have children with odd birth defects, allows businesses wiggle room. It's not a clear immediate threat, so many minds are slow on grasping the extreme danger involved.
Only very strong consumer advocacy and voter pressure (where politicians demonstrably get kicked out of office) will have a chance of making a true difference.
There's a Finnish company that has developed a plastic-free coating: https://kotkamills.com/products/isla/
- It is _waterproof_ and not made from animal/vegetable fat.
- It is _lubricant_ and not made from animal/vegetable fat.
Waterproof jackets, bicycle gear lubricants, waterproof coatings in food containers, etc. etc.
Now specifically on coatings there are beeswax coatings and silicone coatings which judging from other food grade/medical grade applications would be fairly safe. The snag is that on a visual inspection (at least for me) I have no way of telling if a coating is just silicone or contains PFAS. So in general I would apply a cautionary principle and just stay away from them at takeout joints.
"Parchment" paper you buy today is actually coated with Teflon-related fluoridated compounds.
Just burn some of the paper, and see if the smell resembles the smell of an empty teflon pan that's overheated until it's giving off scent/smoke.
As an aside, Nikwax (https://www.nikwax.com/) make excellent waterproofing products for outdoor equipment and have been PFC free as long as I can remember (probably since inception).
That's not the case at all. PLA doesn't even decompose much in normal conditions, outside of 60C+ compost piles. It is sold as a bio-degradable plastic.
Hmm off the top of my head there are many lubricants that are neither PFAS nor animal/vegetable fat, made out of petrochemicals/hydrocarbons: engine oil, petroleum jelly, mineral oil...
I mostly cook on iron. But these chemicals are in almost all food packaging, too.
The thing is, they have been for almost 50 years. The trouble is that the damage they're doing is not noticeable on the scale of a few years, fast enough to force a change in policy, the way it was with saccharine or Thalidomide or DDT. So this may be one of those things people look back at in 2,000 years and say "this is what was in their water that brought down their civilization". But on the scale of one or two generations, it's going to be hard to prove what portion of the increase in cancers and birth defects these chemicals actually caused.
I'd support a total ban, but it seems that governments are just chipping away around the edges of the problem.
Can we please just go back to paper bags, wax paper and aluminum foil, thanks?
The whole reason we moved to these chemicals is that we needed to move away from the "chloro-" carbons which were ozone layer hazards precisely because they decomposed.
Although, as I understand it, the vast majority of the problems come from 1) the factories that make them simply dumping the waste products into the environment and 2) all the military installations that spray this garbage as fire suppression foam and just let it run into the soil.
Outlawing this stuff won't do jack if the military keeps spraying it around.
And the laws were already supposed to stop the factory just dumping their crap but didn't (see: https://www.startribune.com/rare-pfas-factory-shutdown-in-be...).
Long term plastics have been known causes of hormonal changes in the body and a host of issues. I'd take a slight increased risk of e.coli than generational deformaties.
We've known about it for a long time, this article is from 2009: https://health.usnews.com/health-news/blogs/on-men/2009/11/1...
Interestingly the science has been out there for more than a decade. But little is being done to regulate. I wonder why.
(Lazy first hit for aluminum health risk https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5651828/ )
I'd opt for reusable glass containers in a few standardized sizes. Could also be made out of almost unbreakable stuff like it is used in all sorts of laboratories.
AFAIU that hasn't been proven. Teflon cookware is dangerous mostly due to the precursor chemicals used when manufacturing them (so the people most affected by this are those living downstream of the chemical plants, not the end consumers), and noxious gases released if they overheat.
But why risk it; there are certainly situations where teflon is indispensable, but cookware isn't one of them.
> I mostly cook on iron.
Well, me too. The added advantage is that an even somewhat adequately cared for cast iron frying pan will last forever, whereas these teflon things last only a few years. There's a reason why every bigger supermarket over here as a long row of teflon cookware for sale, the market for cast iron or stainless stuff must be tiny in comparison because they last forever.
> I'd support a total ban, but it seems that governments are just chipping away around the edges of the problem.
The EU is working on some kind of broad PFAS regulation, to get out of the vicious cycle of the industry just replacing one banned PFAS with a new PFAS compound.
https://chemsec.org/eu-puts-200-pfas-out-of-business-but-tho...
But does the donated blood get cleaned or something of these things before it goes to the new patient? I'd hate for it to get transferred to the other poor guy who already suffers from some condition.
EDIT: it’s worth mentioning that the screening step does include some filtration. White blood cells do get pulled out of the blood, but I’m not sure how common it is for a lab to do that.
Here are some interesting links:
https://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/news/20010126/blood-filt...
https://twitter.com/realestatetrent/status/14378028033139220...
It seems to be the pattern with these companies looking at the Virginia scandal and the Zwijndrecht site in Belgium. Pollute as much as you can for as long as you can and then contain the damage once the litigation starts coming in.
The EPA (finally) fulfilled their duty to the American people. Calling that courage is a (sad) overstatement.
Courage would be the EPA championing better chemical control and approval.
Want to introduce a new chemical to the body (i.e., drug)? The FDA will have you jump through gazillion dollar hoops.
On the other hand, want to introduce a new chemical to a product that will eventually end up in the body? The EPA effectively operates on the assumption of innoscent until proven guilty.
We too little understanding of the effects of these chemicals, and approximately zero understanding of any combination of them.
Finally, it's difficult to imagine that Flint MI wasn't a wake up call. But here we are over 8 years later reacting? By the time that money gets from Fed to state to local and used, we're looking at 15 to 20 yrs for a solution. That's a long time to implementing common sense, if not a basic human right (i.e., safe water).
Yes, Teflon _is_ magic, but might cause cancer etc.
PFAS potential chemistries number in the >quadrillions (because of the unbounded nature of molecular arrangements/variations).
PFAS half-lives also can range from seconds to centuries.
PFAS chemistries with greater than 100 year half lives (those developed during ww2) can be broken down quickly with catalysis such as Pt nanoparticle driven catalysis.
Recent research on PFAS in blood has found that blood donation is one way to reduce levels. (Tech could be implored to scrub said blood in principal).