U.S. imposes first-ever national drinking water limits on PFAS
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When the information began to surface I found it interesting the letters on public record going back to the 60’s with people warning that allowing this kind of dumping was a bad idea. Of course being the primary employer to the entire city, the economics won at the time. Since, the cost of cleanup and lawsuits to that company have been massive.
RO typically needs a post filter. Hopefully that doesn’t add any bad chemicals. But you need it as pure water is desperate to bind, so you can either bind it to something you choose, or bind it to whatever pipe work / tanks are beyond the filter. Also you might want a higher ph.
Maybe some disruption to make a nice looking, compact and cheap and zero install RO unit would be good and some subsidy for people without the means to buy one who live in risk areas. Plus subsidy for maintenance.
If the design is like a printer where you pull out and push in new cartridges and have warning lights it will make maintenance easy.
I’m guessing RO is similarly bad (the membrane is made from one of the plastics in question).
I did buy no-plastics Aarke glass/steel carbon filter pitcher for my drinking water.
It's hard to find water filtration without plastic involved, hopefully other options will come to the market, but their offering is pretty good so far.
What about distillation as a filtration method?
Are the micro/nano plastics filtered by distillation?
Interesting what method of filtration the chip factories use, as they need 100% pure water for the cpu making process.
If you wonder about the crazy rise in colon cancer, I'd say doing that plus keeping a cellphone next to your ass 16 hours a day would definitely be more than enough in an animal model.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/scientists-find-about-a...
( https://www.geappliances.com/ge/water-filtration-systems.htm )
However RO is not water efficient, in the sense that only a fraction of water run over the RO membrane system is filtered, and otherwise inbound water goes on into the drain. You can hear this happening, and it's documented by GE, for example, as how the systems work. That makes me wonder if there are other systems with the characteristic that a higher % of ingested water ends up filtered as well as RO can.
The elevated pressure allows for more effective filtration and higher water recovery rates. By boosting the pressure, permeate pumps facilitate a greater volume of water passing through the semi-permeable membrane, resulting in increased production of purified water (permeate) and reduced reject water (brine). The heightened pressure helps overcome osmotic pressure and allows for a more thorough extraction of purified water from the feed stream.
They work pretty well to reduce waste but do add complexity to what is already a somewhat complicated device under the sink. They will also create bad TDS creep if used without an auto-shutoff valve installed in the RO.
What percentage of residential water goes to drinking water? I think of all water use in aggregate, in many places it’s already 90% is agriculture and 10% residential. And of residential you probably waste more water in a single toilet flush than you drink in an entire day.
You could definitely use it as gray water but if you are filtering for contaminants, that water would have a higher concentration and if you were pushing it out as gray water, would those areas of the yard have higher levels potentially of contaminants?
It just seems really sad that society is moving away from "let's fix it for everyone" toward just giving up and saying "the only solution is everyone for themselves." Like, surely it would be much more efficient and cost-effective to improve water filtration at the municipal level rather than expecting everyone to buy and maintain their own individual filtration systems....
I got over 99% reduction according to a cheap TDS meter at my condo in Phoenix with the 2 filter one. I can replace cartridges in seconds. I love that thing.
Zero install would probably suck as you’d have to fill tanks frequently (it rejects a good amount of water) and it would take up counter space but they do make em.
Honestly in most places you can buy the stuff for 25 cents a gallon from a machine, which is what I would do if I did not feel like installing
Been using them for a few years, water tastes great.
If it did cold water too would be awesome.
Question - how do you deal with countertops that have storage tanks made out of plastic?
Are there no concerns with microplastics at all with these units? I know the plastic is not the Polypropylene stuff, but still.
Other than that just basic hand tools are involved. I would have no problem installing one in a rental but I’m also comfortable with plumbing. It’s definitely a job that seems a lot more intimidating than it is.
This really resonates with where my thinking has gone. While I always try to be guided by science, my default these days is much closer to "assume it isn't safe" than "assume it is". I've got multiple chronic medical conditions that me both more susceptible to getting to sick, and more likely to have complications/have a slow recovery if I do. So for instance, I keep (medical grade) gloves at home and wear them when using any sort of cleaning chemicals. My skin is fragile anyway, and almost any sort of solvent (that isn't water) is at least somewhat bad for you, either short or long term.
Most of the risk is from the VOCs:
https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news-release/2023/09/clean...
The best option is to turn on the bathroom fan and open a window, or use activated carbon.
The home distilled water tastes so good, much better than store bought that often sits in plastic jugs for weeks.
I do not add any additional minerals, the amount of magnesium, iron, and sodium in drinking water is only like ~5-10% of a person's daily requirement, and I get plenty of those from vegetables.
My well water was contaminated by Wolverine/3M to 90 ppt, we got a settlement because it was greater than 70 ppt. They installed GAC filters in my home to limit the contamination to 10 ppt. Here are the old limits:
I’ve never done it myself, so I don’t have a sense of how expensive it would be.
https://www.epa.gov/dwlabcert/contact-information-certificat...
The closest I found was: https://www.meritlabs.com/sample-bottle-order but there are not even prices and it appears that you have to be more or less an industry expert to even fill out the order form.
Someone should make a startup like 23andMe but for water. Lots of us would pay $500 to have water accurately tested. Especially if the data could be aggregated and made pubic.
I've used them and been happy with the report. Happy to share if requested.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distilled_water#Drinking_dis...
"Distillation removes all minerals from water. This results in demineralised water, which has not been proven to be healthier than drinking water. The World Health Organization investigated the health effects of demineralised water in 1982, and its experiments in humans found that demineralised water increased diuresis and the elimination of electrolytes, with decreased serum potassium concentration.[citation needed] Magnesium, calcium, and other nutrients in water can help to protect against nutritional deficiency. Recommendations for magnesium have been put at a minimum of 10 mg/L with 20–30 mg/L optimum; for calcium a 20 mg/L minimum and a 40–80 mg/L optimum, and a total water hardness (adding magnesium and calcium) of 2–4 mmol/L. At water hardness above 5 mmol/L, higher incidence of gallstones, kidney stones, urinary stones, arthrosis, and arthropathies have been observed.[citation needed] For fluoride the concentration recommended for dental health is 0.5–1.0 mg/L, with a maximum guideline value of 1.5 mg/L to avoid dental fluorosis.[17]"
I have gotten used to the taste of my Zerowater filter and so I got worried when I saw your comment. Maybe its better to drink the clean water and supplement with electrolytes and vitamins/minerals. That way you control all the parameters vs leaving it up to chance.
Can you share your preferred tools for boiling the water? Seems simple enough but at this point I'm very skeptical of online claims, so always prefer something the HN crowd has examined in detail.
I'm in the process of getting rid of my beloved goerge foreman out out concern of the mon sticky surface as well...
But there's plenty of other ones out there. I liked that one because it's simple and seems unlikely to break soon.
I just fill it like a coffee maker at night and run it while I'm asleep. Fresh water in the morning, then I'll fill it again after breakfast and run it during the day.
Lots of cities in Alameda, San Mateo, and Santa Clara counties get their water from San Francisco Public Utilities, which owns large water rights both in the Bay Area and large watersheds in the Sierra Nevadas such as Hetch Hetchy.
SFPUC water is so clean it is not legally required to be filtered though it does go through ozone treatment to eliminate microbes. Much of the Hetch Hechy watershed, especially the upper Tuolumne, is bare granite so the water doesn't even pick up sediment or surface contaminates. SFPUC enforced removal of all lead water lines in the 1980s so there shouldn't be that risk (which was a real one given some buildings date from the 1800s in SF).
In short if you live in SF or one of the cities that buys their water from SF you shouldn't need reverse osmosis or any other filtering.
Often as these business shutdown they built offices and homes on top of the property, for the ones that happened in the 70s there was no remediation until much later. For the ones that happened in the 90s-00s there was a level of remediation but I am still not trustworthy of it 1) lasting and 2) the developers doing the best work.
So its not a "in short" story unless you are completely ignoring the large amounts of trichloroethylene contamination that is in still so much of the ground soil in the bay area. Sure if you live inside of SF proper you are probably fine in most of the residential areas as there was no manufacturing but areas like Bayview can be just as bad and you have the radioactive contamination on top of chemical. If you live anywhere in the south bay or east bay, you probably should at the very least get an idea of what was built near your office/home. Maybe test your water or just throw an RO on it. So many of these companies were dumping trichloroethylene and perchloroethylene in the south/east bay and we just built homes on top of them. They are indeed generally localized hot spots but when I realized how many were near me it opened my eyes. I remember years ago this was an issue at one of the google campus offices because it too had significant ground contamination.
https://www.epa.gov/superfund-redevelopment/superfund-sites-... - Even the homes built in later years have had problems with vapors contamination even though it was built with prevention in mind. You can see the other super fund sites there.
I cannot find the map now but there are even a larger number of DTSC cleanup projects from the bay area. Kind of surprising someone would ask where is the contamination when it literally is dotting the whole bay area.
Edit: What I would add is I often ponder how much additional nanoplastics are getting added compared to what is being removed. I know some of the test suggest RO is adding more but I am not sure if it accounts for the complete life cycle in a bottling plant. For the near term I have just settled that nanoplastics are the lesser evil to me than PFAS and other chemicals within the water. It is scare mongering but I look at how that town in Oregon I believe had has wide spread PFAS contamination in ground water from the airport fire foam.
https://www.michigan.gov/mdhhs/safety-injury-prev/environmen...
And well water testing through the Michigan DEQ, county health department, performed by Rose and Westra GZA:
https://www.accesskent.com/Health/PFAS/contact.htm
Culligan Water installed and serviced our whole-home water filter system until a township-approved excavation contractor was able to connect us to municipal water, which was funded by a separate lawsuit against Wolverine/3M.
No idea what (if any) the consequences were for the executives in the 70s and 80s who dumped chemical waste and leather scraps in a swamp behind a friend's farm upstream from my house, or their successors in the 90s who covered it up.
This says nothing of how impactful the different types of exposures may be, or if a partial reduction is meaningful when we still have other known exposures that we think are just too hard to deal with.
Sunken costs can be a bitch, but I really don't get the argument that removing exposures that we are adding into food, for example, can be hard. Just stop using PFAS chemicals, period. Its not hard or expensive, just stop using them and companies will stop manufacturing them.
Removing PFAS chemicals that are already out there, like in our water supply, is the difficult and likely expensive change. Giving up any process or product that creates more PFAS contamination is the easy one, and would make a huge dent in the contamination problem as part of the issue is that we continue to add even more chemicals into the environment at a faster rate than nature can deal with.
Why can't we have the government we pay for with taxes help all of us with this? I don't know what products have/don't have PFAS in them, as it's disclosed almost nowhere.
Why not just have them all banned and fined instead of me having to setup a laboratory to test every product I bring in to my house for lead, pfas, asbestos, radioactive isotopes, etc?
I was arguing that more consumers could step up to make similar decisions, in this case avoiding PFAS products.
We don't have direct control over what's in our water, especially in areas where collecting rain water or using a well isn't even allowed if you wanted to do it yourself. We do have control over what we buy though, we just rarely see consumers making decisions that match the values we often argue for (like we need to massively reduce oil/plastic use and chemical exposures).
With regards to labelling, I 100% agree companies should be making it clear what is in the stuff we buy. Again, though, that can be done by consumers if we actually care enough. Sticking with natural materials is a great start, whole foods instead of processed foods and wool or cotton instead of plastic/petroleum clothing, for example.
Unless consumers have the financial means to test everything, it’s not reasonable to expect the burden of consumer protections to fall on consumers. Consumers shouldn’t have to test all of their food for every possible contaminant.
Additionally, this doesn’t address harms which companies know they are creating but consumers don’t. Companies will lie and cover up the damage they cause, and pollute the information ecosystem with propaganda which confuses the issue. People used to think cigarettes were good for them.
We don't need big governments to save us from cigarette companies because people don't know better. We need consumers saying to hell with cigarettes because they just need to roll a bit of dried tobacco leaves if that's what they're going for.
We lost the scale of our lives in favor of convenience, marketing, and greed. Governments can't fix that.
And more importantly, you can’t deal on a local level for the most part. It’s not possible. You mostly purchase products from national or multinational brands, so good luck getting any consumer protection from them. If poisoning customers lets the CEO buy a longer yacht for his house in Cyprus, he will do that.
I'd say lets have a vote. Do you want to risk autism, cancer, infertility and whatnot for nonstick pans and all the other wonders of PFAS? If the majority doesn't, it will get a global ban.
If people care enough to decide not to use products that contain PFAS, the environmental exposures would disappear pretty quickly. More importantly, if its even possible for governments to effectively coordinate a cleanup process that job would be much easier if consumers pitched in by first using their individual power to drastically reduce the contaminants being added into the system.
> I'd say lets have a vote. Do you want to risk autism, cancer, infertility and whatnot for nonstick pans and all the other wonders of PFAS? If the majority doesn't, it will get a global ban.
That doesn't require a vote at all. Bans are only useful when we have to leverage the power of the state to force people to do something they don't want to do. If consumers agree that nonstick pans have all those risks and they aren't worth it, they stop buying nonstick pans and companies stop making them.
Even if we wanted the ban route, who enforces it? The UN? Some new global government? Or a unanimous agreement by every government in the world, including those who's economies are partly supported by producing the nonstick pans?
Humans made it very, very long without plastics and PFAS. Are we really to assume that a few decades with them and we'll never go back, by choice or otherwise?
Like I'm growing potatoes but I'm not under the impression that I'm going to be able to feed myself to an acceptable caloric and nutritional level off of what I can grow on a third of an acre or whatever my yard is.
Local food doesn't have to mean growing it for yourself in your own yard. Buying local food is a huge improvement. When the food is grown in your area and doesn't have to be processed or packaged to handle national infrastructure challenges the plastics and PFAS aren't necessary.
When buying locally you can also have the ability to actually see where and how the food is grown, an option that is never possible when the food is grown across the country, shipped overseas for processing/packaging, and shipped back before eventually hitting shelves at your local chain store.
Or you'd have to get a totalitarian government with a plan economy with this issue as a primary focus. Neither sounds realistic to me.
Either situation would also require many people to die as people now live in places which can't support themselves with the nearby farmland.
So what are you, in practice, actually advocating for?
Yeah, sure. Pre-industrial population level with pre-industrial living conditions and life expectancy. I prefer plastics.
I'd also assume that you don't see EVs as a practical solution, or any non-petroleum engine, since plastics can't be made without oil and it'd be crazy to drill enough oil to keep our post-industrial lives without using the refined gas and diesel that we'd be creating anyway.
> any chemical with at least a perfluorinated methyl group (–CF3) or a perfluorinated methylene group (–CF2–) is a PFAS
I don’t think that includes any of those, and Xanax is not fluorinated at all. You might have been thinking of Prozac, which I believe does meet those criteria.
It is a broad category with competing definitions, some of which are even broader, though, yes.
PFAS is a broad family of chemical substances, and the new rule sets strict limits on two common types — called PFOA and PFOS — at 4 parts per trillion.
Three other types that include GenEx Chemicals that are a major problem in North Carolina are limited to 10 parts per trillion. Water providers will have to test for these PFAS chemicals and tell the public when levels are too high. Combinations of some PFAS types will be limited, too.
Australia among hotspots for toxic ‘forever chemicals’, study of PFAS levels finds
Australia’s PFOA limit is 560 nanograms per litre, while PFOS and PFHxS is limited to 70n/gl. Canada limits all PFAS to 30 ng/l, and the US limits PFOS and PFOA to four ng/l.
“Australia has much higher limits than the US, but the question is why,” O’Carroll said. “Both health bodies would have different reasoning for that, and there’s not a really strong consensus here.”
Study referenced (Nature Geoscience 08 April 2024):
Underestimated burden of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances in global surface waters and groundwaters
Because the local industry has lobbied harder for less stringent measures, that is why. It's not rocket science.
If by "that" you refer to "Three other types that include GenEx Chemicals that are a major problem in North Carolina are limited to 10 parts per trillion. Water providers will have to test for these PFAS chemicals and tell the public when levels are too high."
then "they" (the water providers that detect high levels of any of the three sub types that are not strictly limited) will be obliged to advise customers.
> Basically just "sorry, your drinking water isn't safe; oh well"?
that the water supplied has levels of not strictly limited inclusion exceeding notification level, yes.
Whether the customers are drinking that water and whether the level past notification is unsafe is unknown to myself.
This interpretation is, of course, based on my reading of The Guardian reporting, the actual obligations, precise chemical variations, toxicologies, etc, can probably be found as an exercise for concerned readers by looking up the actual rulings and referenced papers.
I can understand, possibly, possibly, fronting the cost. But, only while they sort out the details with the installers. The first contaminant to make it through on a federally recognized level...9 billion dollars in funding. Holy shit. And this is just getting started.
This, after looking just now ( https://www.google.com/search?q=pfas+funding+sources&oq=pfas... ), Seems to be in addition to a 10 billion dollars that was earmarked in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of '21, and 2 billion from the EPA.
That's in addition to the up to 12.5 billion that 3M has agreed to pay directly to water providers through 2036. I didn't know there was a tort case, either. It finished last year.
33.5 billion dollars. I can't wrap my head around this. Seems like a significant amount for an equally significant problem that most people have never heard about.
And this is likely not nearly enough. This is shaping up to be a 100 billion dollar public health crisis / 3M offset.
Surely, I am missing several more broad funding allotments, this is just just getting started.
When I can't understand the scale of something, I tend to look at the size of the response. It's not perfect, but it's a start
Given the US population of just over 333 million, its a but over $100 per person.
That's true but not everyone lives in their own complex.
A family of 3 will benefit from 1 installation.
An apartment complex with 500 people could benefit from 1 installation assuming the benefit comes from something installed at the base of the unit and then applies to all inner-building plumbing.
The EU limits are 500 ng/L for the sum of all PFAS in drinking water. Canada has an "objective" of 30 ng/L but I don't know how well it's enforced. The US proposal is for 4 ng/L for each PFAS but I'm not sure how they calculate the combined amounts. If it's simple addition, then it's 38 ng/L according to the article.
emphasis mine.
[0]https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/us-appeals-court-cu...
That's pretty ridiculous. It would be nice if Congress did the obvious "right thing to do" and amended the law that defines the EPA's power, but we all know that they won't do anything of the kind, and it will be left to a higher court to reinterpret existing law and reverse the decision.
Even if the water treatment plant does everything right, the pipes from there to your house typically have contaminates as well
Relevant: “How to Make Tap Water” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvIky3B661s
Yes, that is exactly what they are doing. Going for "insignificant" settlements, and shift the real costs to the taxpayers.
locations of potential sources of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) https://gispublic.waterboards.ca.gov/portal/apps/webappviewe...
Do you work for an asbestos company?
So naturally we got a reverse osmosis water filter system and while the tap water has improved since then, I'm always reminded of the occasional accidents that can occur (e.g., lead, excessive chlorination, plain old entropy).
Plus it makes the water taste significantly better. Even if tap water was always perfectly safe to drink, I'd get one just for the taste alone.
Brondell Circle RO systems are my favorite because the filters are the easiest to change and when you have the same system for years, that ends up being the labor you repeat the most.
Never outsource your personal health to others. Filter your drinking water.
Just because a technology has become pervasive in some lives doesn't mean that it does a lot that matters. Like any other tradition, its value is often incidental and its popularity is mostly an accident of history (marketing, curiosity, fashion, ephemeral supply/industry shocks, etc).
Nonstick pans and synthetic fabrics are very much in that group.
While my view might be cynical, it is closer to reality than getting people to give up creature comforts voluntarily.
If it helped me avoid eating 20 meals out it easily paid for itself.
No. If these things were never invented, those people would no be asking for them. Least not very much.
what an even more myopic view. if only unicorns were real and pots of gold were at the ends of rainbows. if only wishing made it so. You can't put the genie back in the bottle.
Stainless steel is the more convenient option.
People are cooking at home for themselves less and less, and this has its own healthcare cost. Anything that reduces the number of people cooking at home is almost certainly a net loss for public health.
Personally I think each type of material has its place in the kitchen (nonstick, stainless steel, cast iron, enameled cast iron, etc)
There are plenty of non-nonstick (stick?) options besides cast iron. Most of my cookware is stainless steel (with a thick disk of copper under the pan for thermal inertia) and I've never felt it's an inconvenience or difficult to clean - in fact, its durable nature allows for the use of coarse scrubbers or acid-based cleaning products that would quickly ruin a non-stick pan.
Waxed cotton works well enough for me. Have also heard good things about boiled wool, but don't own anything like this.
The problem is with PFOA and related compounds, which are used to make PTFE and friends.
As for micro-plastics, if your claim is that PTFE is no better, but no worse, than, say, polyethylene, well. I suspect you're wrong, and that it's better, but no matter: at that point there's no reason to single it out.
to be frank cleaning a teflon etc pan is way more finicky because we need, hey, wait, more microplastics in the form of slowly degrading acrylic sponge pads or brushes etc.. but i guess you could use alternatives.
but anyway, there are also many other ways to keep dry lol it's not like teflon is the only solution
Also as I recall PTFE coatings (Teflon is an example brand name) are no longer made with PFOA in the US or Europe. Yes, PTFE itself is a PFAS as well, but as far as I know it does not delaminate or shed as long as the pan is used at lower temperatures (less than 450F).
If avoiding extra fat is one's highest priority, it's not like you're out of luck without nonstick pans.
I know it's my French heritage talking but life without butter isn't.
Lots of people do this, and it’s not because they’re somehow ignorant and against all fats. It’s more that people trying to be healthy make small tweaks they can live with that add up. It’s not about being an extremist but just moderating things where you are willing to. Everyone’s metabolism, dietary preferences, and lifestyle is different. If you live an active lifestyle with enough exercise or just have a higher metabolism, then it might make no difference to optimize at that level. But for lots of people it can make a big difference without making them feel like they can’t eat what they want.
Three meals a day prepared without added fat means savings of around 3-500 calories a day depending on how much fat you’re using and your portion sizes. Keep in mind as well that not all calories are equal and calories from protein sources tend to be more filling (compare eating 3 tablespoons of butter versus a chicken breast).
The health difference is large for someone trying to lose weight. A tablespoon of butter isn't that filling, but contains about 150 calories. That's equivalent to a whole pot of non-fat yogurt or two eggs, both of which are more filling and give you more protein.
When making eggs, I try to use about a teaspoon of butter, which still gives some butter flavor, but lets me save more calories for eggs.
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/low-fat-d...
Let’s take a simple example: have you tried to make a fried egg in a cast iron pan and compared it to a nonstick pan? In a cast iron, you’ll need to use a pat of butter to get the egg to slide easily (around 100 calories). In nonstick you can get away with zero butter. It adds up.
I heard recently that but and seed butters often have elevated amounts of this crap... One hypothesis floated was that machinery used in the processing of this food is being coated in the stuff.
Military and civil air fire-fighting foam.
About a million tons of perfluoroalkyl was put into the environment between 1970 and 2000. It's very mobile, so it quickly got into groundwater and rivers.
By comparison the leach from Teflon pans is probably a small percentage.
Always found that argument very strange - if it's too expensive to be healthy and alive, what the fuck is the money for?
But also, that's a very poor proxy - some intangible things like songs cost a lot of money but represent zero resources.
Some resources, like a piece of land, quadruple in price, once a fictional planning permission for construction is attached to them, etc.
And then you can run an economy like Britain does where you use all economic surplus to inflate value of already existing housing resources, therefore destroying any surplus you could have.
I have one for my kitchen sink that removes PFAS.
If you want to do it for your town, that's great! Perhaps your local news station would be interested, too.
One of the brands, Berke, actually resisted independent testing and was removed from a lot of reviewers' lists of recommendations.
which ones? which ones didn't? just 2 days ago i heard PFAS is still in the rumor stage.
> Water providers are entering a new era with significant additional health standards that the EPA says will make tap water safer
i thought you already said it's safe?
i have plenty of health issues caused by just about everything, everything has 10 billion perfumes for no reason, and new kinds of experimental plastics in every single possible thing you can buy, that smell terrible and unsurprisingly make you feel awful, just walking in a city and coming in fills my face with irritants and can ruin my day. this is a small difference in comparison. i doubt the PFAS thing is any more than a typical fad and way for gov to make money as usual. nobody actually cares about this stuff, they just pretend.
Just to clarify the terminology: PFOA, PFOS, PTFE, and thousands of other chemicals are all examples that are part of a larger group of (mostly) problematic chemicals called PFAS.
Here is the EPA’s guidance on filtration standards and how to identify filters that are effective for PFAS: https://www.epa.gov/system/files/documents/2024-04/water-fil...
That PDF has links to products certified by various certification bodies, and suggests looking for products certified against NSF 53, NSF 58, or both. but the EPA also notes the following:
> It's important to note that the current certification standards for PFAS filters (as of April 2024) do not yet indicate that a filter will remove PFAS down to the levels EPA has now set for a drinking water standard. EPA is working with standard-setting bodies to update their filter certifications to match EPA’s new requirements. In the meantime, remember that reducing levels of PFAS in your water is an effective way to limit your exposure.
EWG has a list of recommended filters: https://www.ewg.org/research/getting-forever-chemicals-out-d...
https://www.theperfectwater.com/reverse-osmosis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RqoPpZbszY
In particular the permeate pump makes it more usable and less prone to clogging and the 'insta-hot' option is great for tea/coffee. I'm not a fan of their branding and vague NSF certifications but likewise see fewer red flags with them than their competitors. Eg it's made in the USA, they've been around for a while, they have a few patents to their name, and their based out of Phoenix where the water tastes like garbage so they probably dog food their product.
My only wish is to upgrade the remineralization process to 'set and forget' a profile as described in this post on how to DIY name brand mineral waters: https://khymos.org/2012/01/04/mineral-waters-a-la-carte/
If you go deep enough down the coffee-snob rabbit hole you eventually get into fun conversations about remineralization: https://www.baristahustle.com/blog/what-can-we-use-to-remine... - and cheekily https://thirdwavewater.com/
For something less daunting and ready to go I've heard good things about the Waterdrop K6: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkTMsgOsgu0 - though there other models appear to be good too and the publish their reports on product pages such as this one: https://www.waterdropfilter.com/products/undersink-reverse-o...
You can build your own system for less than $150 from cheap parts on ebay. You can buy a branded unit at a big box or amazon for $150-250. Or a "health" branded version for $300-800. Or have an installer put whatever they sell in for $500-1500.
My experience is that you will get nearly identical water quality from each of those systems. There are different options and some fine details but the fundamentals haven't changed in decades and you are paying for some collection of service, parts quality, future replacement costs, marketing and snake oil.
NSF certification is good, it will rule out products that are flat out harmful. I have seen lots of cheap filters with fake certifications and there are many great filters that it don't carry certification. NSF material and safety cert (51) is a good one to look for, beyond that is has more to do with how the product will be sold and marketed than a real measure of performance.
$250-500 is probably the right price range for a diy install unit. Check for replacement part costs, buy something with standard components and cartridge sizes. Learn how it works, change the filters on time and expect to replace components every now and then.
I highly recommend it.
After each batch, all the residue that remains in the boiling chamber is revolting. It smells absolutely vile. I can't believe I used to drink that.
I went with this instead of a filter after finding out most filters use plastic mesh screens, that actually increase the amount of plastic in the output water.
Are you able to share any information about your setup for those who might be interested in replicating?
I don't do anything but drink the water as it comes out.
I use a timer to stop the distiller before the water boils dry. I recommend you do the same.
> I went with [distillation] instead of a filter after finding out most filters use plastic mesh screens, that actually increase the amount of plastic in the output water.
Same here. Brita and RO use plastic cartridges and housings. My distiller is nothing but stainless steel and glass. You can't beat that level of reassurance about the complete lack of microplastic contamination.
We have known about the dangers there for a long time and still it has not been solved.
Unless this comes with a few trillion USD I dont see how it will make much of a difference. Perhaps shutting off water entirely in regions?
We shouldn't be using these chemicals. Period. Sure we're hooked on them now, but sunken cost is a terrible reason to continue down a bad path.
We use these chemicals largely because industry kept finding more and more ways to use manufacturing byproducts. In theory that's great and all, but we avoid questioning if we should change that manufacturing process instead. A little pain now can avoid a mountain of pain later if we're actually willing to think ahead and question what we have today rather than focusing on what the next step forward is without ant context of how or why we got here.
The other thing about RO water systems is that they are not very efficient. For every gallon of pure(-ish) water that a home system generates, it typically has to throw away 5 gallons of salty water.
https://www.ewg.org/tapwater/system.php?pws=CA3810011
Contains Carbon Tetrachloride, Hexavalent Chromium (PG&E v. Erin Brockovich anyone?), Haloacetic acids, and Trihalomethanes, all carcinogens. All are reduced by reverse osmosis use.
You say "not efficient" when it's more like an extra 1-2 gallons waste, and yet the outcome is much cleaner water that makes up a large portion of your biology. I'd say that's a pretty efficient way to be healthier, especially when drinking water is a very tiny sliver of water consumption. The average person uses 3,000 gallons of water a month and you're sweating an extra 5 gallons for drinking?
Efficiency: see https://www.epa.gov/watersense/point-use-reverse-osmosis-sys...
For example, a typical point-of-use RO system will generate five gallons or more of reject water for every gallon of permeate produced. Some inefficient units will generate up to 10 gallons of reject water for every gallon of permeate produced. In recent years, membrane technology has improved and some point-of-use RO systems have been designed to operate more efficiently, with some manufacturers advertising a 1:1 ratio of permeate to concentrate production, meaning only one gallon of reject water is generated for each gallon of treated water.
To do it for all water- showers, washing dishes, laundry, etc- would require RO for all potable water for the city water supply.
Depending on where in California you are, that much extra water consumption (since the waste will have an even higher concentration of harmful chemicals) isn't exactly an option.
https://www.epa.gov/watersense/point-use-reverse-osmosis-sys...
The biological need for "water" is tuned to expect "water" to involve all sorts of trace minerals and compounds, some desired and some undesired, as well as some kind of stream of gut flora contributors and immune system challenges.
Thinking of RO and other forms of heavily or industrially purified H20 as the same thing is a technologist's mistaken idealization, and to a cynical eye reads a lot more like ancient Hellenic ideas about simple essential fluids than anything either scientific or sustainable.
It may be a necessary compromise because of modern contamination or because modern demand forces us to rely on increasingly worse supplies, but it's a long way from "verifying the response". It's more like an ugly last resort hack.
The rest is equally preposterous.
Just sad we made such a mess.
It's easy to dream up rules and government mandates or budget items, which would be more directly interesting if we lived in an actual democracy (no matter what country on earth today) but rather we have to understand why state and business as we've enabled them to operate structurally would ever work toward those directives, and not just to an appeasingly greenwashed extent. And then think what other tools are available to us besides voting and waiting, given all that. Don't we all know devops here? Where's the structural analysis and systemically-impacting follow-up discussion? Instead people talk about the quality of individual masters and operators
All we have to do is stop allowing industries to dump in our most important natural resource. How stupid can we be?
The best move is prevention rather than correction.
> Roughly 16% of utilities found at least one of the two strictly limited PFAS chemicals at or above the new limits. These utilities serve tens of millions of people. The Biden administration, however, expects about 6-10% of water systems to exceed the new limits.
Wow. Seems like a small but meaningful step toward better health, which seems like one of the best uses of technology.
Curious if people on wells can get their water tested somehow.
- The waterproof tape you used for your plumbing is made of PFAS.
- Your floss too
- Microwave popcorn and cupcakes
- Contact lenses
- Tampons
Teflon's predecessor PFOA is a PFAS, but there's not normally any remaining in the final produce. There is a valid concern with manufacturing of course, but not with use.
> Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) is a synthetic fluoropolymer of tetrafluoroethylene. It belongs to the per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)) and has numerous applications. The commonly known brand name of PTFE-based composition is Teflon by Chemours, a spin-off from DuPont, which originally discovered the compound in 1938.
PTFE is inert, it is not chemically active like a PFAS. The fact that it has a related chemical structure is interesting, but also not relevant.
Yes! that's the whole point of Wikipedia!
“After $400 million in state and federal spending, Flint has secured a clean water source, distributed filters to all who want them, and laid modern, safe, copper pipes to nearly every home in the city.”
This implies they have figured out a solution(ideal) or they are very worried about november.
"Obesity pandemic decreases mysteriously in US".
Sugar has low satiation, so you can consume a lot of it before feeling full (unlike, again, fats/proteins). This was of course worsened by the anti-fat/pro-sugar movement in the 1990s (which is a whole topic itself).
Unfortunately there is no mystery to obesity. We've being systematically poisoned by our own food supply. If they either removed the corn-subsidies OR added a corn-sugar tax to offset the subsidies, food prices would increase, but obesity would decrease.
It isn't politically realistic though to make food taste less good (i.e. less sweet) and increase prices, nor is it politically realistic to remove corn subsidies or create sugar taxes. So we're stuck here for the foreseeable.
Europe has not the same ratio of extreme obesity, while eating basically the same products, How would you explain that?
Some cities in US have much more overweight people than other similar cities, both eat basically the same corn subsidized and distributed by the entire territory. why?
It seems that low places down the river have more overweight people than high places up the river, why?
> It isn't politically realistic though to make food taste less good (i.e. less sweet) and increase prices, nor is it politically realistic to remove corn subsidies or create sugar taxes.
Other countries did it all the time. It was a more realistic goal for them (or they just didn't knew that it can't be done and did it anyway)?
They aren't the same products, since sugar is more expensive in Europe, they add less of it to the products. Add aggressive labeling laws on top of that and sugar taxes on top of that.
You can directly corroborate population sugar consumption with population BMI. You can also track the increase in BMI against the cost of sugar (i.e. lower it goes, the higher BMI goes) from 1970 to today.
I guarantee you that we can afford to spend 90 cents of Euro for 1 Kg of sugar.
Everybody here with a normal income use as much sugar on the kitchen as they want, plus a lot of fructose also.