Bloodletting recommended for Jersey residents after PFAS contamination | Hacker News Reader

Bloodletting recommended for Jersey residents after PFAS contamination

theguardian.com

57 pointsincognitojam38 comments

The idea that the government settled with 3M for 2.6M is unconscionable and needs to be investigated. The paltry sum reeks of bribery and corruption.

Fines should always be a multiplier of revenues otherwise it’s just a cost of doing business. There should be a law.

   The therapy costs about £100,000 upfront and then as much as £200,000 a year to treat 50 people.

Isn't it a little bit expensive just for a blood letting? Basically it should be like a blood donation where you can directly throw the extracted blood. No?

Seems to me they might have been saying the cost for the drug therapy rather than the bloodletting

I didn't see the actual procedure mentioned by name, but they're likely talking about therapeutic plasma exchange.

It's a procedure nearly identical to plasma donation except they use a larger volume that requires a replacement fluid. In this instance they'd replace with normal saline with albumin, which is a protein that's important for maintaining intravascular volume among other things.

Plasma donation will accomplish the same objective, but it takes about 4-5 donations to remove the same amount of plasma as an exchange would.

Synthetic chemistry has overall been a disaster for humanity, particularly since chemists employed the hacker ethos of "move fast and break things". Except in this case the things they broke were other people's bodies and the environment.

Tragic to see the crazed promethean spirit possessing scientists to push forward without a single inkling of the negative consequences. Perhaps Icarus' fate is our inescapable destiny.

Uh, chemists have been doing that since Chemistry was called Alchemy.

Yeah I can’t think of any practical applications of plastics.

All this concern about PFAs is reminding me of artificial blood made with perfluorinated chemicals. It would have utterly enormous quantities of the chemicals, circulating as a microemulsion throughout the body.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_substitute

And you just know there are probably a bunch of ex military privates (who are probably currently being denied care) who were just drenched in the stuff to see if they could run harder faster stronger :’(

‘Your condition is not service related’

Though a bunch did start getting treated for when they got doused in PFAS fire retardants.

It looks like this is for the actual island Jersey, and not New Jersey. I was pretty confused at first. People here on the East Coast call the state "Jersey" as often as we call it "New Jersey". Which is interesting now that I think of it, nobody EVER calls New York just "York".

> Which is interesting now that I think of it, nobody EVER calls New York just "York".

I don't know, kind of makes sense to me why that would be the case. Something tells me there are more places that start with "York" as opposed to "Jersey", so there are more chances to cause confusion in the former case.

I'm more interested in why it never caught on regionally. There would rarely ever be any confusion, nobody in the states would think you were talking about York England. But it still never caught on for whatever reason.

I think the regional name for New York is "the city".

I'm referring more to New York the state, to compare it to its neighboring state New Jersey

“The city” refers to Manhattan specifically, not New York City in general. Being in the other boroughs, you might say “I’m heading to the city later”.

Or if you're upstate and going to one of the boroughs, you'll generally refer to it by name. "I'm going to Brooklyn / Queens / the Bronx", not "I'm going to the city" or "I'm going to New York City".

I see what you are saying but one could easily go to two or more of those boroughs in single trip.

When feasible, spoken English favours double syllable combinations. Three is too many, one is too few for disambiguation in a lossy environment. Hence Jersey, LA, San Fran, Philly, but not York. It’s not a hard rule, of course.

Ahh that makes a lot of sense, thank you! It does feel like it's more about the syllables than anything.

> San Fran

Or SF, if you want to avoid making the people that live there mad

My SF-born mother also often calls it "The City" (though this is 3 syllables).

I am English, assumed this was about New Jersey when reading. Related; title credits of famous tv show set in Jersey.

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x843b0g

Looks like some of their biggest food exports are potatoes and milk (mainly to UK/EU). I wonder if those are also contaminated.

Prompts a couple questions.

Are blood banks testing for levels of PFASs?

How does one test blood for PFASs?

> The therapy costs about £100,000 upfront and then as much as £200,000 a year to treat 50 people.

Interesting that the bloodletting is so expensive. I wonder what makes it so?

For anyone who also thought that was a weird way to say the stat, it's £2,000 upfront and £4,000 a year for one person.

It does seem awfully high. Donating blood costs way less. Maybe the treatment they're saying the cost for is the drug rather than the bloodletting?

i assume they get a transfusion as well?

Would be unnecessary. They'd only be removing the plasma component. Either via plasmapheresis or a nearly identical procedure called plasma exchange.

Reminds me of this:

Regular blood donations can reduce “forever chemicals” in the bloodstream: study https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31123477

230 points by wirelesspotat on April 22, 2022 | 208 comments

Leeches, come get your leeches.

Pretty much. Though looks like it actually works: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8994130/

Dilution is the solution!

Aka changing the oil.

The only solution to pollution is dilution.

Also fight club. Burns calories too.

Cholestyramine is a bile binder, and while it can help with some PFAS, it won't be as effective as blood removal. For most of us, the solution is regular blood donations and Organic psyllium husk powder which too is a bile binder.

I simply cannot believe what I'm reading... :(

Reply on news.ycombinator.com