Paper Straws Have Higher 'Forever Chemical' Concentration Than Plastic Straws | Hacker News Reader

Paper Straws Have Higher 'Forever Chemical' Concentration Than Plastic Straws

reason.com

54 pointswalterbell28 comments

This definitely is problematic because all of this will end up in the ground near the water table.

A question I have is whether PFAS exposure through these disposable products results in absorption into our bloodstream. If the answer is yes, these materials should be banned. For example, we already know how bad BPA is and the EU has banned the substance from being used in receipt printing.

I guess in the US, the FDA is responsible for regulation of PFAS in food contact applications: https://www.fda.gov/food/environmental-contaminants-food/and...

There was a show here in Australia which looked at paper packaging of take out food having high amounts of PFAS. If paper is treated to not just disintegrate/get soaked immediately - its going to involve some nasty shit.

Wax is also used, wouldn't that be enough for most applications?

Wax is great, but it isn’t as likely to stick to smooth surfaces for long periods, or if things get hot or abrasive. It’s good on cloth, covering a dish you put in the fridge — but not sure how it would work with burger wrappers or cups of hot coffee, that are where most PFAS are used. I’d love to check if, in a straw, it would be perceptible. Metal straws remain the simplest solution.

Can't metal straws literally impale you?

I usually use them to drink, but yeah… So can forks, knives, and if you’ve seen Kateshi Kitano’s _Fireworks (1997) - Hana-bi_, chopsticks.

Or maybe parchment paper, which uses silicon instead of paraffin.

I use some silicon kitchen stuff. It's terrific. I'm dreading some future revelation that it's even worse than PFAS (eg Teflon).

Yeah, the focus on straws is strange to me as that’s only a tiny part of the problem: every fast food wrapper, burger box, “disposable” soda or coffee cup has PFAS—maybe not the plastic lids, but those are clearly not things you want to dispose of either. The only exceptions are the old-school pizza boxes: that’s untreated cardboard, and they don’t handle the steam and grease for much longer than the delivery.

I was very confused when the law banned plastic straws, and they interviewed people on the street holding ten times more PFAS in their coffee cups, arguing they did their part…

The “solution” is non-disposable carriers. France is forcing McDonald’s and other fast food to change (but it’s mainly McD and small local actors there). I’m not sure why California and others haven’t pushed for those. There are solutions (disclaimer: I invested in a couple) using consignment, QR-code… It’s not super high-end tech, but it works. Start by mandating that coffee makers accept customers’ cups and the 20-penny discount that Starbucks does if you bring your own.

The focus on straws comes from two angles:

* the original environmental motivation was that they are strong, non-bio-degradable structures that pose threats to wildlife, similar to how the old 'can rings' got phased out.

* anything that involves government regulation, especially government regulation of stuff that involves the fossil petrochemical industry has an immensely well funded push back against it. It's a slippery slope, once you ban straws the next thing you know you might actually deal with the main cause of climate change and we wouldn't want that now would we.

> Their prohibition would, it was thought, reduce plastic waste getting into the environment. But to the degree that these bans led people to substitute paper for plastic, all they've done is swap out some minimal amount of plastic consumption for increased PFAS pollution.

Hmm "minimal amount of plastic consumption" vs "increased PFAS pollution"? Why is one pollution and one consumption? Why is one "a minimal amount" and the other an "increase"?

It's because this is effectively a PR outlet for fossil fuel corporations.

>>>once you ban straws the next thing you know you might actually deal with the main cause of climate change and we wouldn't want that now would we.

How are you going to deal with solar radiation, earth's position and orientation, the jet stream, and water vapor?

Can you cite a source that suggests those 5 things combined are a bigger impact than the real actual accepted by science singular main cause? I'm prepared to let it slide that you've named 5 different things as I think you're still factually incorrect even if I let you clump them together.

This is a joke, right? You're saying the sun, the Milankovitch cycle, water vapor, and other natural processes have less of an impact on climate than humanity? Care to explain how? That's hilarious. LMAO!!!!

The sun puts 4.4 x 1016 watts into Earth each year. How much does humanity put?

You appear to have misread the part of my comment that you quoted. I said:

> the main cause of climate change

You for some reason thought I was talking about the "main cause of climate". What an odd misreading.

But at least you're not making wildly inaccurate claims about climate change, just missing the point. You do believe in the accepted scientific consensus on climate change right? Now that we've established we're talking about climate change, and not just the climate.

The only system that causes climate change is the sun-earth-water heat dynamic. Everything else is just religious bleating and used-car salesmanship.

OK.

For those interested in reality:

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/climate-change/causes-o...

Covers the contribution of these natural variations to climate change.

> Natural climate cycles can change the temperature of Earth, but the changes we are seeing are happening at a scale and speed that natural cycles cannot explain. These cycles affect the global temperature for years, or sometimes just months, not the 100 years that we have observed. Meanwhile, longer-term changes like Milankovitch cycles and solar irradiance take thousands and thousands of years.

The parent has a point that if these natural cycles change even slightly, however unlikely that may be, it will swamp out any effect humanity has made up til 2023, heck maybe even 10x everything humans have done.

Yes and if the sun blinks out tomorrow that will be the biggest effect of all. Remind me again why that is worth talking about, other than to distract and detract from a discussion of climate change?

This seems like a strawman, the sun blinking out is not a slight change, obviously if only a world shattering change could produce such a effect then there would be a different calculation. In the context of the natural systems the parent's comment refers to, even a 1% deviation is enough to swamp out all human effects combined.

And that is entirely within the realm of possibility.

.. on average. There are paper, glass, bamboo straws in their sample set that have none, just as there are plastic straws that have PFAS, see figure 1

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/figure/10.1080/19440049.2023...

Maybe we should just regulate this?

We all know the right answer is dried pasta straws.

Doubles as a little snack at the end

Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37256484

Well not sure I trust this website too much. Sure it tries for journalism "outside of the left/right echo chamber", but it's not too convincing looking at some of their headlines.

The article has a link to the study here which should be quite trivial to reproduce by other researchers:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19440049.2023.2...

Just skip right to "Conclusion" for a TL;DR.

> Finally, three out of four plastic straw brands contained quantifiable PFAS concentrations.

Hmm, I wonder why this article didn't dwell on this finding?

Hey, at least we saved the planet.

[dupe]

Lots of discussion last week:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37256484

Reply on news.ycombinator.com