Researchers use electron beams to eradicate forever chemicals in water
phys.org
phys.org
The reason they're called "forever" chemicals is because natural processes that break these chemicals down are very slow acting once the chemicals have escaped into the wider environment. Even then, "forever" is a bit of misnomer. Various PFAS have environmental half lives on the order of decades, comparable to the medium lived fission products in spent nuclear fuel. That's not good, but it's not forever; the real "forever" pollutants are stable elements like mercury and arsenic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_gasification
where the idea is you throw in all your municipal waste and the organic material is converted to
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syngas
which can be burnt to make (much) more electricity than it takes to run the torch and heavy metals get immobilized in glassy slag that can then be broken down and incorporated into building materials such as concrete and roads.
I have this vision though of a civilization that does this for 100,000 years and gradually poisons itself the way we did with leaded gas.
There is a huge literature on the possibility of gasifying coal and burning the gas in a turbine or maybe doing the same with biomass, maybe capturing the CO2.
For that matter there are numerous pyrolysis projects aimed at converting plastics into liquid fuels, they usually are fought bitterly by environmentalists concerned about air quality and the fuel being carcinogenic, many of the plants have failed to stay in operation because they couldn’t figure out how to get them running reliably.
Here is a list of mostly failed plasma projects
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_gasification_commercial...
People previously had the idea of using ground up post-consumer plastic pellets as filler in roads. Now that stuff is finding its way into the waterways by the above process.
https://www.npr.org/2023/06/30/1185280180/florida-roads-radi...
- "Since there are large quantities of phosphogypsum waste, the industry encourages research into potential uses in order to minimize the disposal problem. The greatest use of phosphogypsum is in agricultural applications. Researchers proposing new uses must file an application with EPA."
- "Phosphogypsum has been used in agriculture as a source of calcium and sulfur for soils that are deficient in these elements. When the phosphogypsum is used as a fertilizer, it is simply spread on the top of the soil. When used for pH adjustment or sediment control, it is tilled into the soil."
- "The activity of phosphogypsum used for agricultural purposes may not exceed 0.37 Bq/g (10 pCi/g). An estimated 221,000 MT of phosphogypsum are taken from the phosphogypsum stacks and used in agriculture each year. There is no limitation on the amount of material that can be applied and farmers do not have to maintain certificates or application records."
- "In the past, phosphogypsum was incorporated into a Portland cement mixture for use in road construction. The use of phosphogypsum for such purposes is banned under the EPA final rule issued on June 3, 1992, which amends 40 CFR 61 Subpart R."
https://www.epa.gov/radiation/tenorm-fertilizer-and-fertiliz...
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-c...
For example, pure elemental mercury.
...that doesn't mean it's relevant to how people are exposed to them, that it is economically feasible or practical to do the destruction, etc.
It does nothing to address exposure from things like cookie wrappers, french fry bags, disposable food trays, bottled water (ironically, which some people have to drink because their water is contaminated with PFAS.)
The whole point behind fighting against disposable plastics, for example, is that despite it being possible to recycle it, almost none of it is.
"It has a half-life of up to decades but that's better than mercury and arsenic"
Whataboutism? And PFAS have nothing to do with mercury and arsenic?
> Sensitive sensors in the nosecones of the planes analyzed the chemical compounds diluted in the thin, pristine stratospheric air, which is out of reach of Earth-based air pollution sources. The researchers found traces of lithium, aluminum, copper and lead in the sampled air. The detected concentrations of these compounds were much higher than what could be caused by natural sources, such as the evaporation of cosmic dust and meteorites upon their encounter with the atmosphere. In fact, the concentrations of these pollutants reflected the ratio of chemical compounds present in alloys used in satellite manufacturing, the researchers said in a statement.
3M sampled both the headspace—the air at the top of the container—and the liquid to verify that the PFAS of concern had been destroyed without releasing hazardous products to the air.”
I think this is what we call fox guarding the henhouse. 3M has EVERY incentive to declare this whiz bang treatment effective because of the legal liability and financial incentives involved.
I’d want independent test results and a full accounting of the byproducts of this treatment before putting any faith in it.
"The fact that we were working with 3M, a world expert in PFAS"
Lol, lmao even. Wonder how they became an expert.
That sounds entirely incorrect. It seems to me that they'd want to avoid a second round of public flogging and lawsuits when it's later discovered that they falsified efforts to remediate their original catastrophe.
In the short term, actually cleaning up and only appearing to clean up probably give the same return in terms of PR and so on, but the former is cheaper.
Not to say I condone them misleading the public, not at all.
The interest rate is the mediator between the short term and the long term. Lower interest rates mean that the long term is comparatively more important.
Yes, a problem
Times are changing. It is upto us, but firms are grappling with the concept of social license
Clearly in democracies care must be taken not end up in endless fights with stakeholders
But even in China the authorities care about social attitudes
Incentives for a corporation are not the same as the incentives for the people, and the corporation's decisions are made by people who follow their own incentives.
That's eg why top executives get so many shares (or call options on shares).
But maybe the real problem is that most of today's shareholders will be gone by then, too. They benefit from juicing the stock and selling high, leaving the cost for some other sucker down the road. They have no incentive to find uncomfortable truths either. I think short-term ownership is one of the roots of a lot of today's economic ills.
The share price today already reflects the long term outlook for the stock.
If you can 'juice' the stock and sell it high, that's a job well done.
> I think short-term ownership is one of the roots of a lot of today's economic ills.
Why? A change in ownership doesn't affect how stock are valuated. If it's eg widely know that a company is going down in five years (because eg their industry is declared illegal), the price will already drop today. It's just a standard backwards induction argument.
Btw, with the stratospheric rise of passive index investing, truly long term ownership has never really been more widespread than today.
Stock prices should change as new information comes in, yes. I don't see any contradiction here with what I wrote earlier.
> The share price today already reflects the long term outlook for the stock.
as an excuse for artificially inflating the stock price? In a context where we're specifically expecting new-but-honestly-predictable information to push it down later?
You just need eg a few short-sellers who anticipate those predictable news. They can make a killing by selling the stock at the higher price now and buying it back at the lower price later.
If enough people take this opportunity to make easy money, that brings the share price down today as if the news had already dropped.
So, how do you want to 'artificially' inflate the stock price? Especially how do you want to do it in a way that doesn't require everyone in the market to be idiots only?
(The most obvious reason this is nonsense is that sometimes the future fall is only predictable to people inside the company. Short sellers don't help here. We need another incentive for those people to do the right thing.)
If the growth was bigger than the lawsuit, then from the corporations point of view, the earlier executives made the right decisions.
We were talking about aligning interests of executives and long term shareholders. You seem to be talking about aligning interests of those shareholders and interests of the environment or so?
That's an important topic, too, but it's not the same.
"We can destroy it with electron beams" doesn't mean shit when kids are getting a huge dose of PFAS from their happy meal french fries.
if it wasn't in the liquid and wasn't in the air... where did it go?
> Using nonstick cookware to fry your bacon and eggs can make your life easier at that moment, but scientists believe there may be long-term consequences because the chemicals used to make it nonstick are so difficult to destroy.
I have finally committed to buying cast iron for my new cookware. It was difficult because of a stereotype in my brain that cast iron == gas stoves == meat. I'm telling myself that cast iron and induction stove just means I have lots of money and don't want to eat PFAS.
I have had my cast iron fry pan for thirty years
Very easy to maintain
Very tolerant to abuse
As good as the day I bought it
I have heated it to heroic temperatures for cooking meat, on the stove top and in the oven. All good, just be *very* careful picking it up!
Cheap, and better than the best vegetarian oil IMO
See, you're equation here is slightly wrong.
cast iron == open fire == food
city folk consider gas stove as open flame, and it cracks us rednecks up. sure, you can cook meat in a cast iron, but it's much better cooked directly on the grill over the coals that were once the open flame cooking all of the sides in the cast iron
> It was difficult because of a stereotype in my brain that cast iron == gas stoves == meat.
This suggests a diet that is more on the vegetarian side... and in that case, cast iron can be helpful as a supplement if you don't have any iron intake from meat.
Food prepared in iron cooking pots as an intervention for reducing iron deficiency anaemia in developing countries: a systematic review - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12859709/
While I'm having trouble finding it (and thus it may only be folklore) - the cast iron skillets used by early American pioneers where helpful in supplementing their diet that was otherwise low in meats.
https://2012books.lardbucket.org/books/an-introduction-to-nu... is one such mention of it:
> Unbeknownst to the American pioneers, the cookware also leaches iron, an essential mineral, into foods as they are cooked in cast-iron hardware.
> ...
> Dietary sources of iron include red meats, poultry, leafy green vegetables, prunes, raisins, egg yolks, lentils, oysters, clams, artichokes, and enriched cereal grains. While there are many food sources of iron, only a small fraction of dietary iron is absorbed. One method of increasing dietary intake of iron is cooking foods in an iron skillet. Acidic foods high in moisture content, such as tomatoes, absorb more iron during cooking than nonacidic foods. For example, cooking spaghetti sauce in iron cookware can increase the iron content ten-fold. How much iron leaches into food is also dependent on cooking times; the longer food is in the pan the more iron is absorbed into the food. Stirring food more often increases contact time and thus more iron is absorbed from the cookware. The utility of iron cookware in increasing dietary intake of iron has prompted some international public health organizations to distribute iron cookware to high-risk populations in developing countries as a strategy to reduce the prevalence of iron-deficiency anemia worldwide.
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So yes, too much dietary iron is a problem. Iron deficiency is also problem and for people with a vegetarian, vegan, and women of childbearing age, additional iron may be a good thing.
> Thirteen researches were found to be suitable for inclusion in this systematic review. Four studies reported significant increase in blood hemoglobin levels while others reported only a minor increase. Significant improvement in amount of iron in food and iron bioavailability was also observed when food was cooked using iron pot or ingots.
https://www.americastestkitchen.com/guides/cook-it-in-cast-i...
> The Myth: When you cook in a cast-iron skillet, your food will absorb a lot of extra iron so you can effectively supplement your diet by using this type of pan.
> THE TESTING: We simmered tomato sauce in a stainless-steel pan and in seasoned and unseasoned cast-iron pans. We then sent samples of each sauce to an independent lab to test for the presence of iron. The unseasoned cast iron released the most molecules of metal. The sauce from this pot contained nearly 10 times as much iron (108 mg⁄kg) as the sauce from the seasoned cast-iron pot, which contained only a few more milligrams than the sauce from the stainless-steel pot.
> THE TAKEAWAY: Since this occurs in pronounced amounts only with unseasoned skillets, which you wouldn’t use for cooking, we don’t consider this an issue. A seasoned cast-iron skillet will not leach any appreciable amount of iron into food cooked in it.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/can-a-pan-add-iron-to-your-diet-...
> A 1986 study published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association found that a cast-iron pan used daily for a week transferred less iron to certain foods than a nearly new pan. The same study found widely varying levels of iron transferred to 20 test foods.
> There was hardly any transfer of iron from frying potatoes and cooking green beans compared with cooking in a glass-ceramic control. But cooking apple sauce in the iron skillet added seven milligrams of iron to each 3.5-ounce serving. Cooking spaghetti sauce added five milligrams. Adult women should consume 18 milligrams of iron a day, and men and women over 50 need eight milligrams, according to government guidelines.
The referenced study: Iron content of food cooked in iron utensils - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3722654/
> Twenty foods were cooked in iron and non-iron utensils. Also, three foods were cooked in two iron skillets. Three replications were made, and cooking time and pH for each food were determined. Duplicate samples of the raw and the cooked foods were dried, ashed, and analyzed for moisture and iron content. Iron content was determined by atomic absorption spectrophotometry. Most of the foods (90%) contained significantly more iron when cooked in iron utensils than when cooked in non-iron utensils. Acidity, moisture content, and cooking time of food significantly affected the iron content of food cooked in iron utensils. Perhaps because of differing amounts of previous use, cooking in different iron skillets resulted in some variation in the iron content of food.
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Yes, if you've got well seasoned cookware, it's not significant (compared to cooking with stainless steel).
However, if it is a regular cast iron cookware that is poorly or unseasoned, there can be a significant amount of iron leaching into certain foods.
Cannot remember the source,but iron deficiency is exceedingly rare, while iron overload is common. Anemia which is widely believed to have been caused by iron deficiency is generally a thyroid issue, 'Anemia' goes away if you give iron supplements but so does giving arsenic.
My gut feeling is that, since cast iron pans seem to last quite a long time, they're probably not shedding much iron into your food, and the amount of iron the body can handle is pretty significant, on the order of tens of milligrams per day.
Throw some Wheaties in a blender until they're dust, then take a magnet to the resulting pile. If we're not hearing about iron toxicity from breakfast cereals, I'm not inclined to worry about the pans.
Important operative words in a world where the unknowing are too quick to apply dish detergent, scrub brush, and elbow grease.
This is really underappreciated, iron overload is very common.
Meanwhile, food packaging is unregulated and has been shown to be a major source of PFAS. Water bottles are particularly guilty.
https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-contaminants/dan...
I avoid it, because I know I'm too stupid to never make a mistake with either a bad scratch, or bad temperature control.
In that case you should prefer teflon. Oil with bad temperature control is far more harmful, because oil produces toxic gasses at a much lower temperature vs teflon. You have much greater leeway with teflon to catch mistakes, and the results are not as harmful.
And what concern do you have with a scratch?
When I fry my eggs I add about half a tablespoon of butter to a cast iron skillet. It is nonstick.
Food packaging on the other hand...... Especially paper straws are really really bad. You should make sure to only use plastic straws.
Lots of things destroy lots of other things. That doesn't mean they are also a reasonable treatment.
>> used an electron beam accelerator at the laboratory for their testing.
Yup. I'm sure that most any organic chemical won't last long when put in front of an accelerator. Crank the voltage up enough and even the water molecules might have issues.
I wonder how well this works with water that has low concentrations of PFAS, because I guess that's what we've really got.
Also, would be nice to have some numbers on power consumption per cubic meter of water treated: is it feasible to deploy this method in waste water treatment plants for example?
Look for it in expensive water purifiers for the lifestyle market. Gadget sellers won't have a powerful enough electron beam to do much, because that's both expensive and requires safety systems. But that won't stop them.
For photolithography you're steering the beams with such precision that it results in one of the most accurate manufacturing processes known to man, in vacuum chambers, performed in cleanrooms, involving purities in the tens of part per billion for the materials involved.
That sort of accuracy isn't required when blasting garbage. Electron beams are how old CRT TV's worked, which were in nearly every home. If you have access to a vacuum chamber, you could order the parts off Amazon, if you want to DIY. You can also just go buy an electron beam welder and be done with it.
The problem is that the structure of the PFAS (a fluorocarbon chain with an OH at the end) looks a LOT like a hydrocarbon chain with an OH on the end... that's a saturated fatty acid which is crucial for body metabolism.
Compare the structure of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myristic_acid and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Per-_and_polyfluoroalkyl_subst...
This allows the body to accidentally substitute a PFAS (which does nothing) for a fatty acid (which does something - and often important things).
https://www.vox.com/2022/8/25/23318667/pfas-forever-chemical...
So yes, it had one job - and it did that job well. It also looks like something that has another job... and does that job really poorly when substituted.