Magnetic method to clean PFAS contaminated water
uq.edu.au
uq.edu.au
1. These compounds are extremely good at what they do. From lubrication to fire retardants there’s a reason these compounds are everywhere.
2. The press and many activists tend to treat things in a binary manner but science doesn’t really work like that. It’s clear that very high levels of these compounds are bad. It’s less clear that lower levels are bad. Lots of things (like vitamins) are toxic at high levels and actually good at low levels. Not saying PFAS is good, but it’s not as simple as just saying any is terrible either.
3. The ability to detect these compounds has gotten much better over the years. We’re now talking parts per trillion measurements. At those levels you can find just about anything. A lot of the current panic is a combo of this ability to measure things combined with “2” above around any detection being slated as terrible.
4. Both the reporting and public’s reactions tend to be illogical. PFAS found at a nearby factory? Shut it down. Sue everyone. However a growing body of evidence is finding PFAS in things like synthetic turf playing fields and yet with rare exception most school districts seem perfectly happy having these instead of plain old grass. As such the amount of “outrage” is often rooted in the convenience of it supporting existing activist movements (close the factory!) than it is based in any science or defensible reality.
Not for a moment trying to suggest we shouldn’t pay attention to this, and we probably should look for alternative compounds. But the near hysteria from some corners creates more of a distraction than actually helping anything.
Reddit, 4cham, other cesspools like that I get, but why HN? This community fancies itself as having a little more rationality and self awareness than that. So either there's an explanation for why those takes gain as much traction here or...
(this is a serious question)
Many on HK has emotional intelligence id an edgy highschool student, plus often they live in a buble. This leads to poor grasp of social issues.
'Average' places like reddit are actually better in this regard.
That might be true in that niche subreddit you subscribe to, but it's clearly not true for /r/all.
For example, engineers are probably overrepresented amongst Islamic extremists[1] and, from what few studies there are, may be skewed conservative and religious compared to other higher education fields.
[1] https://eprints.lse.ac.uk/29836/1/Why_are_there_so_many_Engi...
How about denying megaphones to the hysterical fringes?
No naive rules of thumb like "well if the public health experts like it then it must be good" or "bigger overton window = better" will ever come close to being a viable replacement for critical thinking on any specific policy matter. If the extreme fringes can't convert people to their cause then is their cause really that worthy?
Eugenics is fringe now. It wasn't in the early 1900s. The point is that "no megaphones for the fringe" can also be a bad thing.
The fact that the fringe was unable to convert the broader public is why the overwhelming majority of eugenics policy was unilaterally adopted by institutions (government or otherwise) vs being legislated by politicians and that's because people didn't really want it en-masse.
"Official policy of 30+ states and upheld by SCOTUS" doesn't fit mine.
That official policy of what you speak is just that, unilateral policy by various government institutions (usually prison systems and public health institutions). Most states didn't manage to get it through the legislature in any meaningful capacity because it was not something the masses cared for and therefore not something that a politician could earn votes peddling. It was as endorsed by the masses as some DOT policy about pothole patching would be.
Eugenics got a bad reputation because of a certain moustachioed leader in Germany.
E.g. there are essentially no children with downs born in Denmark due to sex selective abortions.
Well intended is not always well done and hystery is seldom helping. I remember from my youth(in germany), that work for kids was also forbidden. With some exceptions like delivering advertisement to every door. The result was, that this was a very shitty job, very badly paid (you were replaceble) and the ones illegally working for the bike shed for example, made way more money.
So let me get this straight your hypothesis is that campaign to get kids out of sweatshops were harmfull, and the reason we stopped putting them insweatshops is not public pressure but spontanous mass enlightenment?
Maybe it is your perception of these campaignes as hysterical thats wrong.
My hypothesis is, that just banning kids working in sweatshop is not enough to improve living conditions for those kids, but can in fact worsen them. So I repeat my question, do you have good numbers, that the living conditions actually improved?
Hysteric campaigns from the west often stop exactly there - so the companies can place a label on their product that says free of child labour, but it does not say at all, where those kids are now, but the consumers now feel better.
We've had 26 climate change conferences, the issue was known for 40 years, nobody gave a flying fuck. Some kids blocked traffic in London for 1 day, and suddenly people paid attention.
How are you going to solve Nestle level of indignity and inhumanity?
"Nestlé admits slavery in Thailand while fighting child labour lawsuit in Ivory Coast"
If people were more hysterical, and the HQ of offending corporation burned down occasionally, then Nestle would sort itself out prompto
Yeah, I know. We have the same in germany. The common people now do pay attention to the road blockers and want them all jailed as terrorists. I just do not see, how this will help the cause.
"If people were more hysterical, and the HQ of offending corporation burned down occasionally, then Nestle would sort itself out prompto"
Yes, they would simply tighten up security.
Rage is just rage, it does not solve anything, unless it is channeled constructivly. Lynch mobs just create a state of fear and people driven by fear seldom act smart. We do need the rage to act, but just acting does not improve anything. It is the right act, that can improve.
There was this big rage about poverty and exploitation that lead to socialism. But do you really think, that the socialist states improved anything? I was born into such a state. I do not think so. They were worse for the workers and worse for the environment.
For some it did. In many places socialism was replacing some form of tyrany, foreign tyrany or feudalism, so it was hard to make things worse.
Before the revolutions some of my ancesteors were literally property. They were serfs, with all the fun bits like regular whippings, and living in a wooden hut. They went to nirmal-ish 2nd world life.
The other side of my family had someone who was repressed, i.e. dissapeared.
Today suffragettes are universally praised and noone remmbers that they invented the letter bomb.
I don't advocate violence, but if you want a social movement to suceed, it has to have some teeth and power, either through court, money or civil disobedience.
Before the revolution in russia, there were indeed quite some slaves. After the revolution, there were only slaves. Someone who is locked in and cannot leave the country and has otherwise little freedom to move and act, is a slave by my definition, so for me there was no overall improvement, rather the contrary.
"I don't advocate violence, but if you want a social movement to suceed, it has to have some teeth and power, either through court, money or civil disobedience."
I think it mainly needs to have a clear vision of what to achieve, if it wants to achieve that goal and not just blow of steam and create drama.
So, I am not saying, that blocking roads for example, is always bad, if it creates necessary attention to get a important message across. But what exactly is the message of extinction rebellion? We are all doomed, if we don't stop consuming so much? Because this is the message people are getting.
This is not helping the common people, who struggle daily to feed their family - and if those people have to fear of loosing their job, because they missed work because of a road block, then they certainly will not join the movement.
If you want to convince people, you have to provide solutions.
Green tech is a solution, but activism alone can only bring awareness towards it and not solve anything by its own. Otherwise I would join the road blocks.
This is fictitious argument.
My Grandmother lived in USSR, she had education, a choice of career, could move across thousands of kilometers if she fell like it. She had axess to functional, if basic, medical care.
Her grandmother was property, she was illiterate and had to grind wheat by pulling the mill, untill her legs gave out. She died in agony. She could not leave the place to get medical care, even if she could afford it.
Sure living in USSR wasn't great, but if you think that's equivalent to being forced into slavery, you have left the plane of reasonable discourse.
A house slave in the US was way better of, than a field slave, who were also way better off, than a slave in the mines. Their conditions were not equivalent, but slavery anyway.
"a choice of career"
Only as long as you strictly stayed in political line and had not the bad luck of someone denouncing you falsely. Or the bad luck of being born into the wrong family, etc.
The slaves in the gulag surely had it worse, than the better off ones in Moscow. So yes, the average peasant might have their living standard and freedom raised, but everyone else (except party members) had theirs lowered. Equivalisation of misery, hurey.
But we can probably end it here, because yes, generally not being allowed to leave the country, along with the daily terror of political totalitarian secret police qualifies clearly as a condition of slavery by my definition, to which you disagree in a discourse ending manner "you have left the plane of reasonable discourse."
Socialism is a big tent term.
One one end you have "social democracy" where a market economy exists with some state ownership and taxation is used to ensure a good standard of living for all. This is also referred to a social capitalism or a social market economy. This is the kind of socialism you find in the Nordics and to a lesser extent Canada. Your Bernie Sanders socialism if you will.
On the other end you have "authoritarian state socialism" - the kind of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism you may be thinking of.
Then there's communism in which, in it's final form, there is no state at all.
These are all socialism but each has had very different outcomes.
So to answer your question with a question, to which kind of socialism are you referring? I'd say the former has worked out very well. The middle, not so much. The latter may not even be possible?
Obviously Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and add Pol Pot to that list, among Che Guevara and Castro. Good intentions, but horrible outcome.
"Then there's communism in which, in it's final form, there is no state at all. The latter may not even be possible"
And it is up to debate and depends greatly how you would define "state".
Humans have existed and lived, before formal states were a thing, so it is definitely possible, but apart from that, Humans will always have organisations, to well, organize things. The question is, are these organisations mandatory and formal, or not. And then there are informal hierachies etc. so the main question is, will things improve and how and why, when we get rid of the nation states.
You are not exploring the edges of the Overton window when you drown balanced speech. That just creates multimodal extremism.
They were initially fringe. Activism by that initial fringe is what made it mainstream.
Do you think it is an accident that, when there is a popular movement, whether it is punk rock or protests against vietanm war, the media will invite the most crazy person possible and portray them as maniacs?
If the media is intend on lying and mass manipulation, that media exactly should not have the support of well meaning people.
Most megaphones today are in the hands of private corporations who profit off of "engagement", that is, giving megaphones to the fringes. How do you suppose we do that?
Not to mention that the line between not providing a megaphone and suppressing free speech is a thin one.
Message simplicity, discipline, and repetition, to maybe somewhat mitigate the inevitable and very effective nutpicking by corporate media (and other shills) for the purpose of discrediting any reform, accountability, etc.
--
"The practice of sifting through the comments of blogs, email threads, discussion groups and other user generated content in an attempt find choice quotes proving that the advocates for or against a particular political opinion are unreasonable, uninformed extremists."
If you weren't, you never made enoufg waves to be noticed.
It could be argued there are many things which we are morally obliged to stop using plastic for, as it only serves as a convenience. Disposable food trays and "silverware", straws, individually wrapped things, and so on. Society could adjust to bringing their own water bottles to be filled at restaurants/gas stations/work, but between laziness on the consumer and the profit motive of selling cheap plastic bottles for $3 by companies, we don't.
Then there are plenty of things for which plastic is useful, durable; and instances where even single-use plastic can be justified. But on the whole, society is trading the environment tomorrow for convenience and money today.
Nuclear power has, unfortunately, suffered a similar fate.
If you have a hazard in your home, just deal with it appropriately. "Cover it up until it's someone else's problem" is selfish and irresponsible.
Also, the guy in your link complains about a lack of warning. If he read the warnings that cam with that grinding wheel, he would have been fine. Even if it doesn't say stuff about specifically about asbestos, the warning about silicosis has practically the same precautions.
PFAs aren't even proven safe, they're just not-yet-proven-dangerous-in-small amounts, but that's so hard to measure it doesn't really assure us of anything.
Every sip of water you drink has arsenic and cyanide in it. These chemicals are harmful, but not at very low concentrations.
And putting it on every random consumer product whwre it has no need to be
If a product was being used where it "has no need to be", that would mean the manufacturer is doing something that is costing them money (the PFAS isn't free nor is the application of it) which ultimately cuts into the bottom lines. So if they are using it, maybe it is that something is needed in that fashion and they already have a large investment in it so use it vs let's just put this stuff everywhere because it's freeeeee.
https://treadingmyownpath.com/2019/08/22/microbeads/#:~:text....
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/sep/02/uk-gover...
Source? My impression was that alternatives were already being developed prior to widespread ban. A quick wikipedia search confirms this. The montreal protocol was signed in 1987 and came into effect in 1989, but by that time alternatives already existed.
"DuPont began producing hydrofluorocarbons as alternatives to Freon in the 1980s."
The Montreal Protocol was signed in '87 but things had been underway since the 70s, including a partial ban on aerosols in in US in '78. DuPont saw the writing on the wall.
"In 1976 the United States National Academy of Sciences released a report concluding that the ozone depletion hypothesis was strongly supported by the scientific evidence. In response the United States, Canada and Norway banned the use of CFCs in aerosol spray cans in 1978."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone_depletion#Rowland-Molina...
Then, there is the behavior of the factories producing it, which you brush off. Drinking supplies in certain areas are permanently destroyed, and producers aren't in jail.
Yes, strict liability should apply when indestructible chemical compounds ruin regional drinking supplies and give people cancer.
Typically, if you find someone is lying or manipulating repeatedly, you jump to stricter outcomes. If you ban a specific substance in cookware and they just create a slightly different, untested, one... If they promise that waste won't escape the facility because there are safe ways to handle it, yet it continues to happen...
It's like having a child that continually pushes the limits of the rules and repeatedly causes trouble. At some point you must realize they are lying and will hurt themselves or others. You can't play with that ball responsibly? Guess what, it's gone.
You say if we ban one substance, they'll just come out with a less tested, less understood, and likely worse new one. I probably agree with this!
Then you say we have to just take it away, like a kid who is being irresponsible with a ball. I understand this means you think we should ban the materials.
--
If we ban these substances, won't research just pour all the more heavily into the new ones, causing the 1st scenario you mentioned? Are you suggesting we ban research into _any_ new materials whatsoever?
Quite the opposite. I'm saying the items should be tested/researched. Hence my use of untested, as you also point out.
Essentially, stop trusting the company because they are acting like a child. You ban that class of chemicals until they can prove they are responsible and the chemical can realilistically be handled safely (unlikely for consumer products since the waste at product life end would be unmanageable). You can do this through a strict certification and surveillance program as well as limiting the use of the product to industrial applications where no alternatives exist.
But the only real point I was trying to make is that people are more likely to support bans on a rational basis that the companies have fucked up before and lied/manipulated and are likely to cause more harm like that in the future. The stuff we are discussing at this point is a little outside of that as we are getting into what people would debate considering what is reasonable.
We should have a system that requires demonstrable safety.
It's always funny when people pretend such policies would be the end of the world, when Europe has been doing this for years.
US media and politics in a nutshell.
Also the public's reaction is logical since information has been kept from the public for decades to hinder proper regulation. I think the successful class action lawsuit speaks for itself.
Right now they get all the upside with none of the downside.
You could make the same argument about asbestos (and people probably did at the time).
You could also argue that it took class action lawsuits to finally push the cost of using it from "wonder product" to "only when really needed" to "not worth it" to "it's now illegal". (Granted the last step is not 100% tied to the financial cost).
Unfortunately, unlike many other common toxins, PFAS is actually toxic at parts per trillion levels. It’s not just a matter of “we detected trace amounts.”
> 4. Both the reporting and public’s reactions tend to be illogical. PFAS found at a nearby factory? Shut it down. Sue everyone. However a growing body of evidence is finding PFAS in things like synthetic turf playing fields and yet with rare exception most school districts seem perfectly happy having these instead of plain old grass
Shutting down a factory is logical. Using a PFAS turf field is illogical. Is that what you meant? Or did you really mean to imply that we shouldn’t shut down the factory until we remove the turf field as well?
> 3. The ability to detect these compounds has gotten much better over the years. We’re now talking parts per trillion measurements. At those levels you can find just about anything. A lot of the current panic is a combo of this ability to measure things combined with “2” above around any detection being slated as terrible.
People don't understand how pervasive these chemicals are. When field testing for levels of PFAS, those doing the testing are given a list of things they need to avoid and not carry into the field because they will contaminate the results. This includes certain makeup, stain or water resistant clothing, certain types of paper, and lots of other things people would never consider.
PFAS have orders of magnitude differences in half lives, understanding which are bad and how to destroy them when needed is all that is required.
This has started year long tests and PFAS (+pfos, pfoa) has sadly been found in large amounts in most sectors. Even in just the tap water. The latest finding - today actually - is in organic eggs because of fish bonemeal in their diets, but this is just because these items were tested, apparently it's everywhere. Rain samples collected recently showed amounts exceeding the EU safe thresholds.
Point is, it's really, really bad and who knows what effects it will have. Counter point is that we've been swimming in a sea of inorganic chemicals for a long time and have just begun to test for them lately.
Effects on fertility, cancer, alzheimers, and the ecosystem in general is the joker.
https://www.npr.org/2022/04/02/1082871843/rich-companies-are...
> Here's how the maneuver worked. First, last October, J&J spun off a subsidiary in Texas called LTL.
> Then, using a wrinkle in Texas state law, J&J was able to transfer all of the potential liability linked to the tsunami of baby powder asbestos claims into the shell of the new company, while keeping valuable assets separate.
> LTL then quickly filed for bankruptcy in North Carolina. That move immediately halted the baby powder cases, which could remain on hold for months or years.
The spin they put on this is that "it is possible for these chemicals to be used safely", but the parameters for safe use are not realistic in the real world.
The fine print on your frying pan or waterproofing contains legal get outs that are unrealistic.
Nevermind the fact most paper straws, fast food wrappers (McDonalds) and others are lined with these chemicals.
They knew. They knew they don't break down, bio-accumulate and cause health issues, but still tell the world they can be safely used.
Jail them all.
I knew something was off about those paper straws...but they put PFAS in them?? It's like we're saying: copper is too damaging when mined, let's replace our water pipes with lead.
Not sure about paper straws specifically, it's put in paper based fast food containers as a waterproofing/greaseproofing agent.
Then McDonalds and many others, via packaging companies, greenwashed to paper looking containers lined with PFAS type materials.
The paper degrades and leaves the sealant in the environment.
Sickening really, given they know this happens. But if you can't see it happen, hey, better than polystyrene because it is easier to get away with.
At least my burger box seems greener.
Plastic doesn't seem so bad now eh?
What world are you living in that has "fine print" on pans? The pans I bought recently certainly doesn't have them, probably because the PFAS/PFOS risk is only there during manufacture, not usage.
That's not true. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymer_fume_fever
Any non stick pan comes with a warning you can’t use it in the same house/building as pet birds. Just like canaries in a coal mine, birds are highly susceptible to things which are also dangerous to humans. Just because it doesn’t kill you dead within minutes of turning on the burner does not make it safe.
source? The guidance from the FDA contradicts your claim
>Some PFAS are approved for use in the manufacture of non-stick cookware coatings. These coatings are made of molecules that are polymerized (i.e., joined together to form large molecules) and applied to the cookware through a heating process that tightly binds the polymer coating to the cookware. Studies show that this coating contains a negligible amount of PFAS capable of migrating to food. Similarly, the PFAS used in manufacturing of gaskets that come into contact with food do not pose a safety risk because they are also made of molecules that are polymerized.
https://www.fda.gov/food/process-contaminants-food/questions...
Like giving people a drink that can only be stored below 5C or it may become dangerous. Is your fridge exactly always below 5C? Mine isn't.
Hence the material being dangerous under normal conditions.
Do you cook steak with a thermometer on the pan?
I'm sure plenty of people sear steak in a non-stick pan.
(a) do not heat above 220C (b) do not use metal utensils
This isn't because they think these things won't happen (they know they will, and you do too). And it isn't because they want to ensure the longevity of your pan (the opposite is true). It's because they can say that the pan was used incorrectly, as highlighted by FDA testing parameters, and therefore liability for any ingesting of hazardous material is the user's problem.
Now, on the scale of things, probably the obesity epidemic due to sedentary life styles, sugar, etc. is 10-100x more of a societal health issue, but it’s harder to blame someone else for that.
Are they the same thing though? The "PFAS contaminated water" are from chemical plants or firefighting foam. That's not exactly the same thing as the polymerized coatings that's on pans. They're all vaguely PFAS adjacent, but people seem to be lumping the fumes (from burning their pans), the coating itself, and the precursor chemicals as if it's one thing, which probably isn't correct. paraffin, gasoline, and plastic are all petroleum adjacent, but they're all vastly different chemicals with different safety profiles. They all might be bad for you, but for different reasons. Just because plastic might be leeching chemicals that give you breast cancer, doesn't mean that you're going to get breast cancer from touching candles.
This is true, PFOS is not the same as PFAS, but the media already is fear mongering enough that politicians and juries are thinking it’s all the same. This is probably analogous to what happened with nuclear science, where the risks were worth it but we opted for more dangerous technology because of fear.
It's only $4,000 because the court saw clear evidence that the value of my home was damaged, but couldn't assign damages based on an increased risk of cancer; I would have had to actually get cancer to sue successfully for damages there.
For context, the old USDA/EPA threshold for health hazards was 70 ppt, new June 2022 directives say "negative health effects may occur with concentrations of PFOA or PFOS in water that are near zero and below EPA’s ability to detect at this time."
Too late to edit...
If ten million people have been negatively affected by PFOS (surely an undercount) then that's a fat US$179 per person.
"Okay, so force them to pay a portion of future profits."
Ah, the Purdue Pharma solution. But is everything else that DuPont making known to be harmless? If we discover a PFOS-2 in ten years, should they be required to keep making it in order to pay off the victims of PFOS-1?
The problem with taking over a company to operate it in the national interest is that a country can be tempted to continue operating it in the national interest. In 1947, the UK nationalized all its coal mines. In 1966, a coal mining waste pile collapse and killed 116 children and 28 adults.
Nobody was ever prosecuted, and no person ever went to jail. What was the government going to do, punish itself?
Per/polyflouride compounds are not naturally occurring, this is all stuff that humans brought onto the planet in the last few decades - neither nature nor humans have had the time to evolve adaptations for exposure to them.
We as a species are in for a real wild ride the next centuries.
We really can't keep ourselves safe in the face of greed.
That is until we reach the brink.
Think of the Montreal Protocol from the 80's, a treaty for phasing out and eventually banning CFC/HCFC's in an effort to protect and hopefully restore the ozone layer. The protocol was in response to a dramatic seasonal depletion of the ozone layer over Antarctica in the 80's.
To me, from everything I read and hear about PFAS pollution, it would seem we are at the brink again in terms of those chemicals.
As an example, my mother-in-law was using old non-stick pans. I had to tell about the FDA saying to throw out pans from before 2013. She was shocked. Then I had to explain the new pans still have similar concerns because they changed the formula which isn't that different and is just less tested. Her world view is that there's no way the government would allow anything harmful on the market. Yeah... ok...
Its reasonable to expect that people in government and the nedia are doing their job to inform the public.
I can't keep track of all the possible fuckups - like who here knows that Philadelphia police firebombed a house full of children in 1985 and noone was held accountable for their deaths?
If that happened today in your city, maybe you would be defunding the police.
It might be rational to expect that. But as you point out with your example, it's not actually reasonable to expect that. With the track record of screw ups that there are, it's more reasonable to assume that you have to do you're own research.
Like why should a naive person expect frying pans to be particularly suspicious and worth researching? How do you know to research issues with PTFA's, how would you know they even exist?
You have to trust that the rest of society is generally functional. This is what free market extremists do not understand, if all trust is gone, society collapses
If it's some new miracle product, like burnt on cheese not sticking to the pan, then it would be good to look into.
"You have to trust that the rest of society is generally functional."
And you would generally be right. In which case you should expect/accept that you might encounter products that fall outside of that general protection that put you at risk of harm.
As a member of society, you also have to think for yourself and question things. If 100% of society is just following everyone else, then nobody will discover, discuss, and address harmful situations.
"This is what free market extremists do not understand, if all trust is gone, society collapses"
Who said all trust is gone? Why are you bringing up extremists? Let's try to stay on-topic.
But are you questioning 100% of everything that's around you?
Do you do your own research on absolutely everything, from granola bars to plumbing of your toilet?
Ofcourse not, thats impossible.
So you have to prioritise, what is suspicious - maybe the financial system or why did Boeing MAX fall out of the sky.
A frying pan and a toilet is not gonna be at the top of that list.
Do you have a citation for that? The closest thing I can find from the FDA is https://www.fda.gov/food/environmental-contaminants-food/and... which says essentially the opposite:
> Non-stick cookware: PFAS may be used as a coating to make cookware non-stick.
For example, containment of certain chemicals is pretty much impossible without Teflon.
Chlorosulfonic acid is one of them.
Also, if you're working with this chemical, it may be useful to make mixtures of PFOS, PFBS, etc in order to process other products and not have highly reactive situations (effectively 'explosions'). Obviously these should get out of the facility they are contained in to pollute waste water or anything else, and should be used in a way that they are recovered and recycled for use over and over - much like what the authors are suggesting to do here.
Of course it obviously doesn't work perfectly that way, and things like this also introduce pollution as well while cleaning the water. So of course this should only be applied where there is a chance that they can remove more PFAS than they introduce to the system, which may not be as universally applicable as we may think.
Most of the uses are not due to necessity, but because these dangerous chemicals are cheaper to produce and have higher margins. Or use of them has second order margin increases by allowing us to do other things cheaper.
Humanity is terrible at long term harm consideration. Unless the danger is immediate we can't really feel the urgency.
Look how we all live, as if we won't die. It's sadly the human condition, and that bug in our cognition may be our downfall.
What happens when the urgency comes and the damage we did can't be undone, regardless of our ingenuity?
I do wonder what happens to the solutions after that, I hope the solution itself isn't very dangerous
This is either ignorant or ill-intended and neither of those is ok.
There is plenty of epidemiological data showing the very opposite:
> Merrimack residents experienced a significantly higher risk of at least 4 types of cancer over 10 years between 2005 and 2014. Merrimack is a community with documented PFAS contamination of drinking water in public and private water sources. Results indicate that further research is warranted to elucidate if southern NH residents experience increased risk for various types of cancer due to exposure to PFAS contamination.
[0] doi: 10.1177/11786302221076707.
And as that agent will be filtered out after absorbing the PFxx compounds, there should not be any after-effects of the water treatment.
There are so many online 3M/Dupont blame shifters that I completely jumped the gun.
Filtration isn't binary, so this may only be useful in a few target areas where water sources are contaminated enough that introducing a new contaminate (these NPs) into the water will pull out more PFAS than are left behind after magnetic separation.
The NPs (or more likely the PFAS that degrade off of the Fe3O4) also may have a different health affect than PFAS in the water stream (due to sulfonation etc).
So it's certainly not that simple, but a great technology for companies trying to recover their chemical products and reactants for reuse and for areas where contamination is very bad.
It would be great to have a reverse osmosis machine where only the membrane itself was plastic and everything else was glass or steel. But I am not sure anything like that actually exists?
"but that'll kill 'ya!"
It's a trade off between different types of plastic / chemical exposure. Not really ideal but I suspect nearly all sources of treated water will have traveled through a similar amount of plastic to get to you.
Copper is avoided on RO systems because the post membrane water typically drops 1-3 points in PH and will slowly corrode and leech copper into the treated water. All post membrane fittings and tubing should be plastic/stainless, cheap brass fittings with high lead content are the biggest concern. This can be resolved with post membrane PH amendment but you then create a failure point that can cause heavy metal exposure or leaks if it isn't maintained.
You could build a system with steel housings and braided stainless hose but the size/weight and cost are not practical.
One thing to note, you really need to change your filters regularly, otherwise they will potentially introduce more bacteria than you would normally get from treated water. I know this video is a Singapore based media, but I think the information is relevant anywhere you live: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LObbHbx_2fY
https://www.su.se/english/news/it-s-raining-pfas-even-in-ant...
https://www.businessinsider.com/rainwater-no-longer-safe-to-...