Hacker News Reader

Comment by tw04 | Hacker News Reader

Let me preface this with: I'm not advocating for continuing to use pfas. That being said, why are we still calling them forever chemicals? Didn't we come up with a way to break down the majority of existing pfas already?

https://www.verywellhealth.com/cleaning-pfas-from-water-6500...

View on HN

That article specifically discusses water filtration plants that are handling concentrated PFAS after filtering them away from drinking water. That the small fraction of them flowing through water treatment facilities can be broken down with special handling (which that article also says will not be ready for the market for some time) does not negate the fact that in the environment / our bodies, they are extremely slow to break down. I think it's obvious even to laypeople that the label is not literally true (nothing lasts forever), but it's still an apt descriptor. Even if municipal water can filter them out and break them down, these chemicals will be literally in our bodies and environments for the rest of our lives.

"Forever" is understood to be an exaggeration. And even if we are finding new artificial ways to break it down, the fact remains that there's a lot of it out in nature now and natural processes take a long time to break them down.

PFAS exists everywhere in the biosphere. It's impossible to clean all that up.

Mercury exists everywhere in the biosphere, it is impossible to clean up. Lead exists everywhere in the biosphere, it is impossible to clean up. Freon exists everywhere in the biosphere, it is impossible to clean up. Plastic exists everywhere in the biosphere, it is impossible to clean up. CO2 exists everywhere in the biosphere, it is impossible to clean up.

If we declare the situation hopeless then nothing will change.

I think they were explaining the "Forever chemical" name, not giving up.

Because it bio-accumulates and doesn't break down, and there's no way to remove it from entire aquifers or a huge chunk of land and the stuff is still leeching into aquifers?

How are small towns supposed to pay for these treatment processes? How are individual home owners, since in many areas everyone is on a well?

What are all the marine critters (and everything that eats them, and everything that eats those critters, etc.) supposed to do?

All so McDonalds can make a Big Mack container that doesn't get soggy?

> why are we still calling them forever chemicals?

Because it's a useful political slogan for the anti-PFAS advocates.

As others have alluded to, this works fine for municipal drinking water, but we're finding PFAS in our food supply now (they're in lakes, streams, rivers, vegetables, meat, etc). We cannot feasibly clean all the surface water and soil, so the best idea is to stop introducing them in the first place.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com