Europe's drinking water contaminated by 'forever chemical': NGOs | Hacker News Reader

Europe's drinking water contaminated by 'forever chemical': NGOs

phys.org

32 pointsvinni212 comments

I am sure that this is not just a problem in Europe. Chemical contaminated is a trace of civilized man, unfortunately. I have long thought about the quality of water consumed, especially after I have children. I use a filter in the kitchen and change it every month. But I’m thinking about the filtration system. Parents have 3 stage whole house filters https://filterway.com/whole-house-systems/3-stage-filtration... and they do not complain about digestion, mom still notes the quality of the hair after washing.

Seems like forever chemicals and microplastics are in everything now, taking that premise as a fact, and also assuming you should care about not ingesting these things, what should we be doing as individuals to mitigate this?

(Don't get me wrong, I'd like to fix this for everyone but it seems completely hopeless w/ the recent overturning of chevron deference etc)

You can do nothing really, other than reduce your dose by drinking filtered water where you can or advocating for agriculture that has all of its inputs and outputs filtered (which seems to be more of a sci-fi premise than anything realistic given vertical farming type operations are extremely cost-prohibitive/don't make actual sense).

Microplastics are also in the air you breathe, so perhaps use a great air purifier at home or wear a cloth mask to reduce exposure if you really care.

And as a small act of protest and helping in a small way, you can try to avoid purchasing products that use these (easiest with microplastics than PFAS as with microplastics there at least is often a label that the good is made of plastic or synthetic fiber, PFAS is usually unlabeled in goods, as the chemical industry answers to no one).

And I guess finally you can vote for environmentally-friendly parties, and advocate for environmental regulation politically.

Seems policy driving more effective (and expensive) water treatment should be the main priority.

They're in effectively everything, including fresh fruits, vegetables and meat. "Apples have an average of 195,500 plastic particles per gram"

I think this is one policy area most could agree on, and likely not an insurmountable cost

Reverse osmosis (whole house) and bloodletting. Also going directly after those responsible.

Weren't the osmosis filters made out of fine plastic?

Yeah its awful

Would be nice if they did go into more details where exactly they tested, ie Paris means a massive agglomeration of 10+ million people that probably get water from N sources.

And even better would be some map that gets continuously filled and cca kept updated with measurements. I saw once something similar (also found it here, thanx HN!) but it was a map of known containment sites, usually around certain factories/manufacturing places.

Does anyone know if these chemical are removed via distillation processes? Not that I plan on distilling my own tap water, but just curious how "pure" distilled water can be

To anyone (thinking of) distilling: re-mineralize it post-distillation if your daily fluid intake is over dunno 2-3L. Whether your minerals powder has "forever-chemical" traces or not. Don't want to risk creeping chronic lowish sodium levels, which can do a real number on electrolyte balance, nerves system / neurology, mood and mental sharpness (in the programmer sense) and concentration abilities.

https://www.ewg.org/research/getting-forever-chemicals-out-d...

https://www.epa.gov/sciencematters/reducing-pfas-drinking-wa...

TLDR Activated carbon and reverse osmosis primarily. Distillation is most effective, but is more energy intensive (due to the energy required to evaporate and condense) and if used for drinking, should be re-minalized (sodium, potassium, magnesium, and calcium salts).

Many years ago there were marginals and "hated" researches about the switch from metallic pipes to plastic ones, back than those researches state plastic pipes cause colibacteria proliferation and might release some chemicals.

I found nearly nothing thereafter but some spread contamination might not came for exterior sources.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com