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Comment by DoreenMichele | Hacker News Reader

They've found a way to destroy it in water, which is good news. No mention of progress towards getting it out of people.

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The primary route of elimination of PFAAs is through the kidney in the urine (Han et al., 2008). Other important clearance pathways include menstruation (Harada et al., 2005; Taylor et al., 2014; Park et al., 2019; Ding et al., 2020), pregnancy (Monroy et al., 2008) and lactation (Bjermo et al., 2013). Sex hormones have been identified as a major factor in determining the renal clearance of PFAAs. One study examined the role of sex hormones and transport proteins on renal clearance and observed that, in ovariectomised female rats, oestradiol could facilitate the transport of PFAAs across the membranes of kidney tubules into the glomerular filtrate, resulting in lower serum concentrations (Kudo et al., 2002).

Han X, Mingoia R, Snajdr S, Yang C, Nabb D. Uptake of perfluorooctanoate in freshly isolated hepatocytes from male and female rats. Toxicol Lett 2008;181:81–86.

Harada K, Inoue K, Morikawa A, Yoshinaga T, Saito N, Koizumi A. Renal clearance of perfluorooctane sulfonate and perfluorooctanoate in humans and their species-specific excretion. Environ Res 2005;99:253–261.

Taylor KW, Hoffman K, Thayer KA, Daniels JL. Polyfluoroalkyl chemicals and menopause among women 20-65 years of age (NHANES). Environ Health Perspect 2014;122:145–150.

Park SK, Peng Q, Ding N, Mukherjee B, Harlow SD. Determinants of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in midlife women: evidence of racial/ethnic and geographic differences in PFAS exposure. Environ Res 2019;175:186–199.

Ding N, Harlow SD, Batterman S, Mukherjee B, Park SK. Longitudinal trends in perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances among multiethnic midlife women from 1999 to 2011: the Study of Women’s Health Across the Nation. Environ Int 2020;135:105381.

Monroy R, Morrison K, Teo K, Atkinson S, Kubwabo C, Stewart B, Foster WG. Serum levels of perfluoroalkyl compounds in human maternal and umbilical cord blood samples. Environ Res 2008;108:56–62.

Bjermo H, Darnerud PO, Pearson M, Barbieri HE, Lindroos AK, Nälsén C, Lindh CH, Jönsson BAG, Glynn A. Serum concentrations of perfluorinated alkyl acids and their associations with diet and personal characteristics among Swedish adults. Mol Nutr Food Res 2013;57:2206–2215.

Kudo N, Katakura M, Sato Y, Kawashima Y. Sex hormone-regulated renal transport of perfluorooctanoic acid. Chem Biol Interact 2002;139:301–316.

A correction. The Kudo et al., 2002 study found that estradiol lowered the filtration rate in ovariectomised rats. But supplemental estradiol did improve the clearance rate for intact male rats.

So PFAA is not eliminated in sweat?

I'm no expert, but it feels like it's everywhere and comes in and out of every orifice and pore.

But getting it out alone isn't the full story, it has to stop getting in first / as well.

Donating blood too?

Plasma donations do:

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...

So menstruation, pregnancy and lactation are alternative elimination pathways. Men have recourse only to their kidneys?

From those pubmed titles it sounds like male rodent excretion accelerates by the same hormones that slow it down in females. Or, something like that.

Well, humans are mostly water, so...

> The patent-pending process infuses contaminated water with hydrogen, then blasts the water with high-energy, short-wavelength ultraviolet light. The hydrogen polarizes water molecules to make them more reactive, while the light catalyzes chemical reactions that destroy the pollutants, known as PFAS or poly- and per-fluoroalkyl substances.

Oh. That does not sound like a process that I want happening inside my cells. So, yeah, what you said. No progress toward getting it out of people.

Or any actual ecosystem

If it can be done in water purification plants then that's good news.

I mean it'll cost a lot of hydrogen to do at that scale, but they're considering and setting up projects to build hydrogen production plants to turn any excess electricity from e.g. solar panels into hydrogen. It scales up and down easily, and hydrogen stores pretty well and has plenty of applications, from this to hydrogen cars / trucks, etc.

They're even thinking of reusing the existing natural gas lines throughout the country to transport hydrogen. Probably not to homes though.

But couldn't this be made into an intermediary device that one would hook up to their main water connection to a home, like a reverse osmosis type device, and ensure that your tap water is pure?

Then, if you're flushing your system with such pure water - maybe it does a good job on the liver and kidneys?

I drink A LOT of water each day... and what I would also like to know is if this system has any effect on the removal of fluoride from water (tap water)

---

Side note: My dad was very good friends with the CEO of Alcoa for many years... and fluoride is a side product of aluminum manufacture, and the quote Ill never forget was "The reason the put fluoride in the water is they dont have any other place to put it - so they store it in your liver"

I dont know if that was a joke - but I was like 15 when he said it, so I wasnt sure if he was fn with me....

As I understand it, this is a process, not a filter, so it does not remove any matter from the water, it changes the PFAs into something else, presumably something that is not as harmful.

Carbon filtration will remove any contaminants (e.g. Florida, chlorine) in your water through adsorption. For the money, you can't beat it.

He was probably joking, but that is one of the many conspiracy theories that exist about fluoridated water so it's possible he was a believer. The actual reason the put fluoride in the water is because it helps prevent cavities. Reverse osmosis filters can remove it.

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/features/fluoride-children...

> In a meta-analysis, researchers from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and China Medical University in Shenyang for the first time combined 27 studies and found strong indications that fluoride may adversely affect cognitive development in children.

My GF is from the UK where they fluoridate the water. Tap water is undrinkable (flavor) and should only be used after boiling (evaporates the fluoride and chlorine). She had pretty serious fluoridosis (demineralisation of her teeth) which sorted itself out while living here (NL, we're lucky to have fresh groundwater).

IMO, fluoride is fine for external use (in toothpaste), but shouldn't be consumed. If I may put on my conspiratorial tin-foil hat, it's a means of population control - keep them stupid and docile.

I'd wait for better research than a review of a bunch of flawed studies from china where they have a lot of environmental exposure to things that could impact IQ besides the fluoride in their water.

Fluoridated water doesn't taste any different than non-fluoridated water, so whatever taste the water in the UK has doesn't come from that, and leaving it out will not remove the fluoride through evaporation. That trick does work for chlorine though.

One conspiracy is that Nazi's or Russians used fluoridated water as a mind control substance that could make people stupid and willing to accept whatever they were told, but that's been repeatedly debunked. It might be exciting to think about, but there's nothing to support that fluoride (which often occurs naturally in water) has mind control properties. In the US all you have to do is look around you to see that people have zero problems resisting and complaining about the government (sometimes to their own detriment). The fluoride doesn't seem to be effective for anything but keeping teeth healthy.

As for harm to people's IQ, we don't have the evidence to support that at the levels added to municipal water, and I'd suggest a bigger contributor to the problem of lower IQs might be lead and mercury. We've been spooning heavy metals directly into our children's mouths for decades and you don't need conspiracy theory websites or weak research on children living on the other side of planet to know that it's been going on here in the US.

https://oversight.house.gov/news/press-releases/oversight-su...

It's not being done for government mind control reasons though (the government is calling for it to stop in this instance) instead it's being done because corporations are greedy, don't care who they poison if doing so will grant them higher profits, and the regulatory agencies which should protect us and our children are weak and captured by industry.

It's strange how conspiracy theories seem to take up people's attention causing them to passionately rail against myths while real atrocities are going on around them largely ignored.

He was half-joking. A great book on this topic is "The Fluoride Deception", pretty interesting documentation and very restrained in jumping to conclusions.

Btw, it would be a bane of aluminum producers if they had to find safe ways to dispose of it, instead they get to sell it to utilities.

Only necessary if it accumulates in our body, instead of staying in equilibrium with the environment (which is likely the case)

Unfortunately these chemicals bioaccumulate, as their half-life in vitro is measured in years.

The only way I’ve read for a male to remove it is through blood and/or plasma donations.

That sucks if you're gay though. Maybe there should be places that will just take your blood and throw it away for you?

Leeching makes a comeback.

This would be a dialysis machine. There is some evidence that they're capable of removing some perfluorinated chemicals, though it seems they aren't effective against all types, at least at low concentrations. I'm sure there are private clinics somewhere that will take your money and hook you up for a blood detox, but it's a four hour process so not a practical solution for everyone.

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

Aren’t they finally starting to think about letting gays donate blood again? I know we aren’t there yet but sounds like at least some rumblings of progress…

Pretty easy to convert humans into aqueous goo; I don't see the problem here.

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