Men in their 50s may be aging faster due to toxic 'forever chemicals' | Hacker News Reader

Men in their 50s may be aging faster due to toxic 'forever chemicals'

cnn.com

88 pointsjb1991113 comments

This is about a journal article titled "Emerging PFAS contaminants PFNA and PFSA amplify epigenetic aging: sex- and age-stratified risks in an aging population" https://doi.org/10.3389/fragi.2025.1722675 .

The OP says mentions a report from a US Academy but the paper is published in a different journal—this wasn't clear to me at first so I thought I would share the original work.

I assume a lot of people 50+ were exposed to a lot more lead and cigarette smoke than younger people.

Yes, for those under 30 you have no idea how normalized smoking was right thru the 90s. Restaurants reeked of it, bars more so. A ridiculous percent of men smoked.

I have memories of being quite young sitting in a relatives lap at a baseball game while they smoked. Or my coach in little league smoking a pipe in the dugout filled with 11 year olds.

I was explaining this to my elementary school aged kids just a few days ago. We were eating in a restaurant and I told them that when I was their age most restaurants had a smoking and non-smoking section. Of course the smoke did not respect the invisible barrier. The idea that people could just smoke indoors and it was normal really blew their minds.

High school boys bathroom was basically a de-facto smoking lounge. It was banned but kids still did it. They occasionally cracked down, but the smell was permanent.

There was also an unwritten understanding that it was preferred the boys went out back to a certain door to smoke outside there instead and wouldn't get in trouble if caught.

"…had a smoking and non-smoking section"

You're younger than me if you don't remember before there was even that distinction.

I went to bingo years ago and there was a glass partition between the smoking and non, but it didn't go to the ceiling. So you'd sit in the non and just watch a wave of cigarette smoke roll over the top of the glass into your area... I only went once because of that.

Every vehicle came with an electric lighter and plenty of ash trays. One of the more common crafts kids used to do was making ash trays for their parents.

Never mind the automobile smoke. (Thankfully we dropped leaded gasoline but) have you ever found yourself following a vintage 1970's-era muscle car or similar down the road today?

Wow, that non-catalytically-converted smoke brings back the memories…

I spent two weeks in Caracas in 2000, and was shocked by the amount car exhaust. It probably wasn't excessive, but compared the US city I lived in it was always noticable.

I distinctly remember one Christmas in the mid-70s where my grandfather and uncles all got these ash trays shaped like a house (when you set your pipe/cigarette/cigar down the smoke coiled out the chimney). Everyone was smoking indoors, despite my grandmother was quite fussy and tidy about pretty much everything.

For that matter, my childhood art classes almost always included making an ashtray.

My grandparents didn’t smoke. They didn’t allow smoking in their house and that was seen as super weird in Texas. Even if you didn’t smoke, it was just expected that smokers can smoke wherever. Having ashtrays in the common area was the normal polite thing.

Smoking was allowed on planes!

The first time I ever flew as a kid, I was so excited to be on a plane! And then it turned out to be a 5 hour+ flight with negligible entertainment options and I was so bored...

And then, another dude got bored so he moved to the empty back rows of the plane and smoked for the rest of the flight, and the whole plane was suffused with the smell, and I was so sick.

Like, even those who smoke generally hate the smell of that stale second-hand smoke, especially if locked up in an enclosed space for hours.

Yeah, the airplane armrests had those little metal ashtrays with the door you could fidget with...

More than people 65+?

> “In younger men and those over 65, the associations were weaker and generally not statistically significant,”

On the Underground there were two carriages for smokers, they were usually a bit more empty, and they were browned with tar on the walls and ceiling.

The ban on smoking on the Underground was after the second tube station fire when they realised it might be dangerous, there was also a football stadium that caught fire around the same time too.

The root cause seem to be a build up of rubbish, along with a cigarette but starting it.

So many tragedies in the mid-eighties UK.

Consuming fiber daily, e.g. psyllium husk, is another way to lower some types of PFAS from the body, although not all types of PFAS are going to mix into bile to facilitate this excretion. The way this works is that some PFAS dissolves in bile which binds to psyllium which is excreted.

Remember, 5g psyllium should be taken with 20 fl oz water, mixed and consumed immediately before it gels. Do not take it two hours before or after any medicine, and do not take it if having swallowing difficulty.

Source?

Here's one, googling is probably faster than asking for a source: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12940-025-01165-8

Anything that binds bile is going to help excrete PFAS, e.g. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-11-pfas-body-faster-medi...

> psyllium husk

If you can source clean psyllium, the bulk of it comes from India and let's say they have different standards when it comes to lead/pesticides and regulations in general

I get the USDA Organic one which should handle the pesticides issue. I have asked the vendor to ensure the vendor test for heavy metals.

Note that psyllium is unique in that not only does it not absorb, but it also binds to everything on the way out, so the risk is low. Fwiw, I have had blood and urine tests for lead twice.

Finally, it's not as if the US is great with pesticides. We literally deliberately include PFAS in our pesticides.

why use phylllium, it's clear that fiber in general works. plenty of sources for that, and ways to get it.

"Soluble" fiber works. If it's not soluble, it might not bind bile. Psyllium is a convenient source of it, although it's been difficult for me to time it right to avoid meds for two hours around it.

I already take psyllium husk to mitigate problems with hard stools but I dislike the taste and consistency. It’s much more palatable if I add it to natural (I tend to prefer “live”) yoghurt with some soft fruit, e.g., bananas, strawberries.

There's this theory that you can dilute the chemicals by doing frequent blood donations.

I've been told that is beneficial for men with cardiovascular disease too, but I am not sure if that is true.

Is the leech back?

If you are scared of needles you can have the leech. Donation is generally more useful though.

Did it ever leave? I thought it was still preferred in certain medical procedures. I think something about after reattaching parts of the body it was one of the best options to ensure blood flow in the area, but it has been years since I last read about it.

(Had to delete my comment in deference to your beating me by an hour.)

People mocked the leechers, they called them mad. And now look who’s crawling back. It turns out leeches really do cure diseases.

Is there any studies quantifying it? It seems to make sense. Wonder if anybody has measured.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8994130/

“In this randomized clinical trial of 285 firefighters, both blood and plasma donations resulted in significantly lower PFAS levels than observation alone. Plasma donation was the most effective intervention, reducing mean serum perfluorooctane sulfonate levels by 2.9 ng/mL compared with a 1.1-ng/mL reduction with blood donation, a significant difference; similar changes were seen with other PFASs”

It means blood tests might qualify, too.

Its kind of funny that a lot of issues I had seemed to not be present when I was donating. Then I took finasteride and now I'm not allowed to donate anymore...

Finasteride, in the US at least, has only a 30 day refractory period. My MD let's me stop for 30 days so I can donate, then resume the regimen.

Does the recipient get the forever chemicals or is there filtration processing that removes them?

The recipient will get the forever chemicals, but they survive due to the blood transfer, so in a few weeks they can donate and get rid of the chemicals.

Hot potato! Right? (I remember that game.)

if they're getting blood chances are they're already down a few pints, which meant the forever chems in that older blood are gone

new blood replaces them so they're back to where they started, but you're down a bunch

Can't I just bleed out into the ground occasionally as well?

why just the ground? bring back ritual bloodletting

Right after this break, we'll find out: Is hemorrhaging in public a crime?

Sure but donating is the more sensible way.

ahh, bloodletting is back huh? we’re really redoing the middle ages but with iphones

So hard to believe all the skiers and snowboarders were putting PFAS as wax just until couple years ago. Also in Germany, you can buy "permanent baking paper" that is pure PTFE without a problem, which is insane to me.

The problem is most data shows PTFE as having significant pyrolysis after 400-500c in reality it starts to break down enough to poison you around 260c. In general though under those temperatures it’s not particularly problematic, ofcourse ideally we should just never make the stuff to begin with as it’s manufacture and its eventual breakdown are both horrible for everyone.

Teflon pans are still legal in every country in the world and used in every restaurant and food preparation industry.

It's basically impossible to avoid this stuff unless you cook all of your meals from scratch and never eat out anywhere

> It's basically impossible to avoid this stuff unless you cook all of your meals from scratch and never eat out anywhere

Which is pretty much what you should do if you are concerned about your health at all.

You can absolutely care about your health and still enjoy some unhealthy things every once in a while, be it dinning out, a grill party, a glass of wine or a motorcycle ride.

Thinking that you must optimize every single bit of your health 100% of the time or you do not care about your health at all is just pathological black and white thinking. What a miserable way to spend the mere decades you have on this planet.

>You can absolutely care about your health and still enjoy some unhealthy things every once in a while, be it dinning out, a grill party, a glass of wine or a motorcycle ride.

Isn't this the message we get from the food companies marketing departments every day. Sure you can eat that thousand calorie desert once in a while as part of a healthy diet. Then before you know it we are in an obesity epidemic and what is genuinely healthy looks extreme to the majority.

There is food advertisements everywhere in Japan and yet no one is fat.

Maybe the real reason Americans are fat is instead of taking responsibility of their own health they prefer to blame it on le marketing departments instead. Shrug.

Yeah I definitely agree with this.

Also at the end of the day it is ultimately largely down to fate/probability/deity of your choice.

You have control over some parameters, but you're just tweaking inputs to a huge RNG that is spinning 24/7 365 days a year and there's always a chance your numbers will come up

We are all going to die eventually but there is a good reason high cholesterol, type 2 diabetes and coronary artery disease are called lifestyle diseases.

You don’t have to completely avoid it, reducing exposure is helpful. It’s not hard to get rid of it in your own home where you probably spend most of your time and eat most of your meals.

Teflon is so useful when cooking that I'm going to use it until the moment it gets banned regardless of health impacts.

If you mean just a skillet / frying pan, i found that a cast iron pan is much better (for non stick), have been using a €10 one for about three years now. You can ignore all warnings about keeping it oiled etc. They also have glass air fryers now (borosilicate glass, quite durable). You can scrub both with a steel sponge.

Cooking with it at normal fry pan temperatures (350-400f) is safe, this has been repeatedly confirmed in experiments, some not even funded by DuPont. Don’t do crazy things like really high temp searing and don’t use metal utensils that cause the coating to flake off. Also if you’re really concerned ceramic nonstick + oil has come a long way. And I should add the the most nonstick pan I own is actually a properly seasoned carbon steel wok, yes it’s really possible if you know what you’re doing.

I've heard good things about carbon steel. Particularly, nitrided carbon steel. The pans are treated to be non-stick and are safe. It's what Alton Brown, the host of Food Network's Good Eats who also just launched a new cooking show on YouTube, uses.

Alton Brown had the best cooking show that ever existed. It was maximal knowledge with minimal BS (compared to most other TV shows in this space).

True but it owes a strong debt to Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking.

I love my Matfer Bourgeat carbon steel pan. It's just really heavy and kinda ugly. But it works great, especially at high temps when searing meats.

I use ceramic, but recently learned that nitrided carbon steel pans are the way to go. They are both useful AND safe. Do yourself a favor and invest in one.

I'll keep using teflon frying pans for eggs, but we do most cooking in stainless steel pots and pans anyway.

There is no advantage for eggs. I use a seasoned iron or steel pan and it's just as easy with better results.

I recently switched from teflon to stainless steel, and after a few false starts figuring it out I like it more now. Also for something that leaves a lot of grease like sausage and bacon, the stainless steel surprised me by being easier to clean.

What did the false starts teach you? I have some stainless steel pans and sometimes they work great and sometimes they're just mysteriously sticky, with whatever I'm cooking bonding to the pan.

If it's happening only sometimes I'm not sure how useful this will be but these were where I had issues at the beginning - I'd looked up how to use them before buying them because I figured nonstick wouldn't exist if I could use them the same, but some information was misleading or incomplete. For example when cooking:

* You should preheat until you get a leidenfrost effect - get some water on your fingers and flick it onto the skillet, it should form droplets that bounce around without boiling off.

* Once this happens, immediately turn the heat to the lowest setting so the skillet doesn't get too hot (most instructions are missing this step and I didn't really expect the skillet would get too hot - stainless steel just keeps getting hotter at a temperature the teflon nonstick would maintain heat). Depending on your stove, the lowest might be a little too low and heat is slowly lost, this is something you'll eventually get a feel for.

* After getting the leidenfrost effect (maybe? not sure how important it is to wait until after), you have to add something (butter or vegetable oil, for example) to coat the surface and not only get a nonstick effect but also sort of buffer the heat. It's kind of like cast-iron seasoning, but extremely low-effort and you do it / clean it off every usage. Some of the things I'd read before buying said the leidenfrost effect was the important part for getting a nonstick surface without mentioning this stage, which led to a pancake that was black and stuck to the skillet on one side and still liquid batter on the other.

And when cleaning:

* I'd mentioned sausage and bacon above, these leave gunk that sounds kind of like what you described except a lot more of it. For some reason getting a wet paper towel and rubbing down the skillet (instead of putting water on the skillet directly) works really well getting almost all of it off, though it will take several of them.

* If there's still residue not coming off, something I got from reddit worked even where grease-removing dish soap didn't: Lightly boil baking soda in water in the skillet for about 20 minutes. Don't let the water boil off or you'll be left with baking soda gunk stuck to the skillet, you want it to dissolve and soak in the hot water for a while before emptying it and wiping it down.

* And lastly one of the side reasons I like it over nonstick while cleaning: The surface is actually smooth. When using a scrunge to wipe it down you can feel where there's still something stuck to the surface, while nonstick is rough even when clean.

Honestly it doesn't take too long to learn how to cook properly on other types of pans. I use my cast iron pans for nearly everything. I have stainless steel for the rest. There is nothing I can't do in them.

PFOA was used previously, but now it's changed to PTFE, this is supposedly less harmful, but its considered perfectly fine (afaik) as long as the temperatures dont exceed 260°C.. Which at that stage you're probably using the wrong tool.. Maybe some Iron cast skillet or something ?

PFOA is a surfactant that was previously used for emulsion polymerization of PTFE. It's not found in the finished product. It's since been replaced with other less well studied PFAS surfactants that might be less dangerous or might not, which seems to me an example of bad regulation. It would make more sense to regulate disposal of PFOA, which can be done safely with processes such as supercritical water oxidation.

PTFE itself is about as inert as you can get, assuming it's not overheated. If you use PTFE cookwear, I recommend getting an IR thermometer so you can learn how your cooking setup responds and control the temperature properly.

Whenever you see a Youtube video from a restaurant kitchen you can almost be sure to see some pans where the teflon has been scrubbed down to the pure metal. Probably not that healthy...

PTFE is extremely chemically inert. There's possibly some risk from ultra-fine particulates that could be absorbed by the body, but compared to all the other sources of particulate exposure I don't think it's a major problem. I'm more concerned by thermal decomposition, which forms all kinds of mystery chemicals of unknown risk profile. Restaurants love to sear food and I wouldn't be surprised if some of them do it on PTFE cookwear.

its highly unlikely any restaurant uses teflon coated pans. Most use carbon steel or stainless. Teflon just won't hold up in daily use at a restaurant.

cost is also gonna be a factor. you can get bulk stainless pans in bulk at reasonable prices and they'll last forever

restaurants also love high-heat and that's a no-no for teflon

And it's amazing. I'd rather eat some inert and safe teflon flakes than carcinogens in the charred or burned food.

My understanding is that Teflon is perfectly safe. The concern comes from by-products of Teflon manufacturing which leech into water. The Teflon molocules are really long, they can't get stuck anywhere and your body just removes them through your urine.

I mean, did you know most dental floss has PFAS? You have to go out of your way to get PFAS free

Do you know what "countertop sealer" is made of? It's PFAS! Lots and lots of people rub PFAS on their food surfaces on purpose!

The stuff is everywhere even if you think you are avoiding it.

I use a water flosser, and walrus oil for my cutting board.

If this were true, would we not see a corresponding drop in life expectancy?

Dead people are easy to see, the issue is trying to differentiate one cause from everything else.

Smoking for example wasn’t believed to be particularly deadly for a surprisingly long time.

My armchair scientific answer to that is: eventually, maybe. The problem we / science / medical / life expectancy has right now is that so much has and is changing as we speak. PFAS and microplastics only really became a thing after WW2, so while on the one side we banned asbestos, leaded fuel, smoking (and more recently drinking) got out of fashion, on the other there's microplastics everywhere, PFAS, vaping, various radiations, and by the looks of it the effects of a lot of these things will only slowly become apparent and statistically significant / measurable and discernable from other possible causes over a long period (30-50 years I'd guess, maybe longer), by which time there will be other factors at play too.

Men aged 51, 53, 58[1] may be aging faster due to toxic 'forever chemiclas'

[1] born in June (** p < 0.01)

People born before the 1980 are also of significantly lower IQ up to a 7-8 points due to leaded gas use. The boomers and gen X really did a number on themselves with environmental hazards.

In countries that phased out lead later, even early Millennials faced similar or worse childhood exposure. It’s a global generational story, just with different timelines by country. As a personal example, Romania only phased out leaded gasoline at the end of 2004.

Some places still allow it in civil aviation too.

The US is one.

If you live by a small airport frequented by personal aircraft, you're getting bombarded by lead.

Now just imagine living next to a teaching airport that does aerial laps around the neighborhood.

Why the hate on the gens?

Most of this stuff was not widely known. There was no internet, so you only got info from 3 tv channels and a newspaper, magazines and conversation.

Blame it on the corps.

Intelligent people read books.

Lead poisoning was discovered in a year that is denoted with "B.C.E".

It wasn't news when the additive was invented for gasoline in the 20s, and it wasn't news all through the 70s.

Of course blame it on the corporations. On GM specifically, who also lobbied for jay-walking to become illegal so their cars would stop getting bad press for killing people.

A necessary (?) part of progress IMO. Environmental hazards have been a thing for a lot longer too. Settlements used to be covered in smog due to coal fires for example.

Part of the environmental/emissions argument from developing countries is about past emissions by developed countries. I think it's a fair argument to say given these sacrifices made by past generations in industrialised countries + the benefit of developed cleaner technologies through that industrialisation is an argument against that.

> Settlements used to be covered in smog due to coal fires for example.

London first tried to ban burning coal within the city in 1306 due to the air quality.

That long ago. Surely that helped identify it as a problem even though the science behind it would have been lacking.

I strongly suspect that most of the things we now know to be problematic were also known to be problematic to the ancients, but were thought still to be worth it for their rewards. That’s pretty much where we still are today. Nobody likes breathing pollution, everybody likes modernity.

Yes, some things would have just stood to reason in a general respect, even if there wasn't hard science to back it up.

I suppose even then it would have been obvious to anyone traveling outside London that, hmmm, the fog/smog goes away out here. Only in major cities… What could it be?

seems likely. but without a scientific method to back their claims it just becomes a 'common sense' thing.

> Settlements used to be covered in smog due to coal fires for example.

Used to? Lots of them still are. Right now there's 150 µg/m³ of PM2.5 outside my window, and it's a "clean" day. Yesterday's concentrations were up to 900 µg (yes, that's correct), and the highest I've seen this winter were 2000 µg (yes, this is also correct). And it keeps getting worse, recently our so-called president mentioned that coal is our strategic reserve and we won't be phasing it out any time soon.

I'm relatively sure most of the "global south" has bad air quality, even if such extreme values are rare.

Here are some random photos of a typical winter day (winter is 8 months per year):

https://pasteboard.co/d2uZDyCd2gvt.jpg

https://pasteboard.co/F1zT2VPXFPKs.webp

https://pasteboard.co/r2S12bHXxzcI.jpg

https://pasteboard.co/w7CfK2Yfaz2l.webp

https://pasteboard.co/ceSDNcQuD4qL.jpg

https://pasteboard.co/z7XJcpoI6FCv.jpg

I was thinking more localised. When legislation changes happened (here in the UK) the problem disappeared quickly. The UK being an industrialised country in the context of the parent comments.

Us GenXers didn't do this to ourselves. Boomers (and their parents) did it to us.

I was born '74. Alberta, Canada. I remember people raising a huge stink about "guvmint' interference" when leaded gasoline was banned and when seatbelt use became mandatory. And don't even get started about cigarettes and mandatory separate smoking areas at restaurants etc.

"Liberty" and "freedom" were concepts substantially abused and misapplied throughout the 20th century.

They still are. Measles was on the road to being eradicated until 10 years ago.

The part you are leaving out is that illegals (now in the millions), living in the US are almost never vaccinated for measles.

Vaccinate them. That's a policy failure.

Yet the measles outbreak in Northern Mexico was caused by antivax white mennonites who brought it from Texas. Turns out there are subpopulations everywhere who need to be vaccinated - if only we had evidence-based people in charge of public health instead of wellness grifters.

Can you cite some sources? Because most countries have a functioning vaccination program, in part thanks to now-cancelled USAID funding. But vaccination rates have been dropping, just like in the US. https://www.unicef.org/lac/en/press-releases/latin-america-a...

Your comment reads like anti-immigrant propaganda. If USAID were to be restored, the US could use its vast wealth to improve global health. But the current US regime is decisively anti-vax and wants everyone to suffer unnecessarily from preventable disease.

And it was the GOP senate that rubber stamped RFK, with only McConnell holding out because he had polio as a child before the vaccine was created.

Yesterday Trump's pick for Surgeon General was before the senate. She doesn't have a medical degree and dodged questions about vaccines.

But I have full confidence even Mitch is onboard with the stupid this time.

The part you are leaving out is treating them solely as "illegals" means these people will avoid going to physicians to get their shots, because they would risk deportation.

The obvious solution for better health for all would be providing public and freely accessible locations for getting these shots, or mobile teams providing them at schools etc.

Is there any issue in US society that is NOT caused by “illegals”

It’s incredible how dominant they are!

I have no concern for young generations wanting to blame our age group. The day will come soon that their generation is pointed at for not solving the complex problems of their day. Now if they will show me the same grace when I start a story with "back in my day" we will all get along.

1901 Oldsmobile curved dashboard was the first mass produced car. Lead was introduced to gasoline around 1920. You want the "Lost Generation", born 1883-1900.

Gen X also gave you the web, google, facebook, YouTube, twitter, and additive algorithmic brain rot. So who got the better deal?

Question is what is worse for IQ development in children/teens: exposure to leaded gas or TikTok?

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