'Forever chemicals' could be in nearly half of US tap water, federal study finds

I'm no expert on this and my interest has purely been from doing a home filter setup in an NYC apartment and trying to figure out what the best practices are, but my understanding is plants can also be impacted through uptake but there isn't too much evidence it's resulting in higher levels outside of known PFAS hotspots.

The FDA suggests that the primary issue at least in the US right now is seafood[1].

[1] https://www.fda.gov/food/process-contaminants-food/questions...

Most forever pollutants have greater concentrations as you go up the food chain. The grass has 1ppm, the cow eats 100x it's body weight over its lifetime, and cannot eliminate the pollutant so it gets up to 100ppm. Add in a few more levels and it can really ratchet up the dosage.

"Disturbing" levels were found in 7/8 samples from kale at various US supermarkets: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/30/kale-pfa...

> Seven out of eight US kale samples recently tested for toxic PFAS “forever chemicals” contained high levels of the compounds.

> The testing looked at conventional and organic kale bought at grocery stores across the country, and comes after Food and Drug Administration analyses conducted between 2019 and 2021 found no PFAS contamination.

> The findings “stunned” researchers who expected to find low levels of the chemicals, said Robert Verkerk, founder of the Alliance for Natural Health non-profit, which produced the paper.

>“It’s pretty scary and there’s no easy solution,” he said, adding that the findings highlight the need for the FDA to implement a more robust PFAS testing program for the nation’s food supply.

Seems at least kale [0] is affected, with the suspected pathway being more common for organic (organic fertilizer). This bothers me, as we do like our kale in the house. Still better than meat I suppose.

[0]: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/30/kale-pfa...

The EU is, typically, doing a far better job of researching this than the FDA. The latter of which seems almost entirely driven by corporate interests at this point. There's a paper from the EU here [1] which is far too verbose, but offers some interesting data:

- For PFOS and PFOA, ‘Fish and other seafood’ was the most important contributor to the mean exposure, followed by ‘Eggs and egg products’, ‘Meat and meat products’, and ‘Fruit and fruit products’. For PFOA, ‘Vegetables and vegetable products’ and ‘Drinking water’ were also important contributors. For several of the other PFASs, ‘Fish and other seafood’, ‘Fruit and fruit products, ‘Vegetables and vegetable products’, ‘Drinking water’, as well as ‘Starchy roots and tubers’ were the most important food groups.

- Diet is the major source of PFAS exposure for most of the population, but other routes such as dust ingestion and indoor air inhalation may also contribute substantially

- PFASs are transferred from soil to plants. In general, transfer rates are higher for the short chain PFASs and decrease from roots to leaves to fruits.

- In food producing animals, PFASs transfer from feed to animal derived food like milk, eggs and meat, with clear differences between species and the type of PFAS. This is also relevant for soil ingestion by foraging farm animals

---

I think the conclusion is that everything is potentially exposed, so the individual source is more important than the type of medium. Another somewhat interesting article [2] showed how a sampled chocolate cake ended up with extremely high levels. It (probably) wasn't even from the cake itself, but from a chemical used to greaseproof paper at some point in its production. So my take from that would be, as always, to consume foods which have gone through minimal processing before getting to you.

[1] - https://efsa.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.2903/j.efsa...

[2] - https://blogs.edf.org/health/2019/06/03/fda-high-levels-pfas...

You didn’t ask this, but I’m pretty sure the dental floss we used to use had it. I believe it went by the brand name of Glide

I grew up in an agricultural area and the water was completely untreated. It was literally a canal from the river that was then sprayed onto fields. It wasn't uncommon to have to clean out small fish from the irrigation pump's filter. Sometimes you'd lose water pressure completely and have to drive down to the irrigation ditch and clean a racoon carcass or something out of the intake grate.

IMHO we'd have seen the health effects more clearly if it really was. Currently, the research seems to only indicate some correlations.

I've been drinking RO water almost exclusively since conception and I'm fine. I eat a SAD(standard American diet) and I get enough minerals from my food.

You can purchase elemental mineral drops and add that back in to RO water. Given the importance of water and minerals, I find it to be worth it but that's definitely an individual choice, as well as a privileged one (meaning I can afford RO water and minerals to add).

As I remember the studies, minerals in water is on the order of 5-10% extra calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium. Negligible on the rest. A nice little bump, but nothing a decent diet won’t attain. Although half of westerners are deficient in magnesium, so that one is a good supplement to take regardless.

When the trade off is arsenic, lead, pfas, bromate, hexavalent chromium, haloacetic acids, nitrates, uranium, trihalomethane, and who knows what other carcinogens…

I've been drinking distilled water for 3 years and I have no noticeable body changes.

Would you trust someone that didn't tell you you were drinking poison from 40+ years? Because that is exactly what happened.

1970's - The EPA knew since 1970s[1], and possibly even earlier, of the evils of the stuff that was getting dumped into the open.

1983 - The EPA learned of the Oakdale Dump (supefund site) and they still took no action [2] on the chemicals itself.

2001 - It was left to hero Billot, to literally put a target on its back by whistleblowing on the whole industry after the EPA, local county regulators, had all failed to blow this issue open.

2016 - First year of advisory from EPA [3]

That's approximately 46 years for EPA to release regulatory advise on this carcinogen.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_events_related_to_...

[2] https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1983/07/21/047...

[3] https://politi.co/2KV5zMZ