Forever Chemicals

[Mazderati]

Forever chemicals nearly everywhere. Food supplies, water supplies. Food producers may be reluctant to test. Food brokers may be reluctant to ask. No way for end users to know. Robust regulation, if it exists, may not be enforced. Who knows how many are unidentified. Seems like we're fucked.


From a recent study:

- Exposure to PFAS through drinking water is a global human-health concern.
- Paucity of information on PFAS exposure in unregulated private-well tapwater (TW)
- Assessment of PFAS in > 700 private and public-supply TW in the United States (US)
- Models suggest at least one PFAS detected in 45% of US drinking water samples.
- Benchmarks and US proposed PFAS regulations exceeded in private and public-supply TW.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...069?via%3Dihub

[Kenny Satch]

So true

FYI NSFWish

[SumJongGuy]

Biggest one I heard was that testosterones, (steroids) and progesterone (birth control pills) are in the water tables making more people more gay. LOL but IF that were actually true I'd be 100% good with it and call it GOD'S Way of dialing back the population explosion same as C02 excess is met with more plant life. Systems have ways of finding equilibrium when forced out of balance.

Bring on more gay people! They'll provide loving homes to the kids of the people too broken to care for them at present.

[riser4]

So true

FYI NSFWish

Lewis Black is fucking funny.

[Dantheman]

Environmental scientist here. PFAS are a serious concern, but there's also a lot of hype surrounding them that isn't necessarily justified. PFAS being "detected" somewhere may or may not be meaningful. PFAS are detectable in water at single part-per-trillion concentrations--that's equivalent to one inch in 16 million miles (32 trips to the moon and back). There are very few other chemicals that are detectable at these concentrations using current laboratory techniques. If we started looking for other classes of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) such as organochlorine pesticides, PCBs, chlorinated solvents, dioxins, furans, and phthalates we would probably find them in "detectable" concentrations almost everywhere, too. We've contaminated the oceans with mercury on a global scale through coal burning.

The most common sites with PFAS releases are PFAS manufacturing facilities (duh), civilian and military airports and firefighting training centers from the use of aqueous film forming foam (AFFF) during legally-mandated fire suppression training, and chrome plating operations (PFAS are/were used as foam breakers in the plating tanks), so they tend to be found near cities, industrial areas, and military bases. If you have a private well or other non-public drinking water supply that could be in proximity to such a facility you can get your water tested for the most common PFAS compounds for a few hundred dollars. Depending on where you live there may be public programs that can cover the cost.

Environmental Working Group has a great interactive map showing known PFAS sites in the US: https://www.ewg.org/interactive-maps...amination/map/

[AK47bp]

Environmental scientist here. PFAS are a serious concern, but there's also a lot of hype surrounding them that isn't necessarily justified. PFAS being "detected" somewhere may or may not be meaningful. PFAS are detectable in water at single part-per-trillion concentrations--that's equivalent to one inch in 16 million miles (32 trips to the moon and back). There are very few other chemicals that are detectable at these concentrations using current laboratory techniques. If we started looking for other classes of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) such as organochlorine pesticides, PCBs, chlorinated solvents, dioxins, furans, and phthalates we would probably find them in "detectable" concentrations almost everywhere, too. We've contaminated the oceans with mercury on a global scale through coal burning.

The most common sites with PFAS releases are PFAS manufacturing facilities (duh), civilian and military airports and firefighting training centers from the use of aqueous film forming foam (AFFF) during legally-mandated fire suppression training, and chrome plating operations (PFAS are/were used as foam breakers in the plating tanks), so they tend to be found near cities, industrial areas, and military bases. If you have a private well or other non-public drinking water supply that could be in proximity to such a facility you can get your water tested for the most common PFAS compounds for a few hundred dollars. Depending on where you live there may be public programs that can cover the cost.

Environmental Working Group has a great interactive map showing known PFAS sites in the US: https://www.ewg.org/interactive-maps...amination/map/

Thanks but I’ll do my own research.




Kidding.

How well do you think water filters work to remove a lot of this shit? Mainly the ones that attach to your fridge dispenser, etc.

Always wondered how effective they really are.

[Cisco Kid]

It will only kill you if you're old and need vaccines. Wait, what!!!??

[Mazderati]

Environmental scientist here. PFAS are a serious concern, but there's also a lot of hype surrounding them that isn't necessarily justified. PFAS being "detected" somewhere may or may not be meaningful. PFAS are detectable in water at single part-per-trillion concentrations--that's equivalent to one inch in 16 million miles (32 trips to the moon and back). There are very few other chemicals that are detectable at these concentrations using current laboratory techniques. If we started looking for other classes of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) such as organochlorine pesticides, PCBs, chlorinated solvents, dioxins, furans, and phthalates we would probably find them in "detectable" concentrations almost everywhere, too. We've contaminated the oceans with mercury on a global scale through coal burning.

The most common sites with PFAS releases are PFAS manufacturing facilities (duh), civilian and military airports and firefighting training centers from the use of aqueous film forming foam (AFFF) during legally-mandated fire suppression training, and chrome plating operations (PFAS are/were used as foam breakers in the plating tanks), so they tend to be found near cities, industrial areas, and military bases. If you have a private well or other non-public drinking water supply that could be in proximity to such a facility you can get your water tested for the most common PFAS compounds for a few hundred dollars. Depending on where you live there may be public programs that can cover the cost.

Environmental Working Group has a great interactive map showing known PFAS sites in the US: https://www.ewg.org/interactive-maps...amination/map/

What do you know about spraying organic solids from water treatment facilities as fertilizer on farms? Hard to think of a more effective way to distribute them to every corner of the planet. I think prevalence is seriously underreported.

Adam and Johanna had planned to sell spinach and other leafy greens this winter from Songbird Farm. But now those plans are on hold along with everything else on the 20-acre organic vegetable and grain farm where they live along with their 3-year-old son.

The couple hired a private laboratory last fall to test their water, soil and some crops after learning that the land had been repeatedly fertilized – decades before they purchased it – with municipal sludge that was potentially laced with forever chemicals known as PFAS.

The results arrived just before Christmas.

“Complete Crisis,” Johanna said while seated back inside the family’s modest farmhouse. “Just devastated. Heartbroken. Really angry."

“Terrified,” added Adam.

The water they drink and give to their toddler son contains 400 times more PFAS than the state says is safe. Their soils are also contaminated.

https://www.mainepublic.org/environm...limmer-of-hope

[Dantheman]

How well do you think water filters work to remove a lot of this shit? Mainly the ones that attach to your fridge dispenser, etc.

Always wondered how effective they really are.

Cartridge-type filters typically use activated carbon as the treatment media. AC tends to be fairly effective at removing most organic contaminants, though results are variable and people tend to use the filters too long and once the media is saturated they don't do much. This is a pretty good study looking at PFAS removal specifically from consumer-level point-of-use (POU) and point-of-entry (POE) drinking water filters: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.estlett.0c00004

[Mazderati]

Thanks but I’ll do my own research.




Kidding.

How well do you think water filters work to remove a lot of this shit? Mainly the ones that attach to your fridge dispenser, etc.

Always wondered how effective they really are.

Also interested. 'Carbon filtration' is effective but if that is industrial or household scale I'm not sure.

[SumJongGuy]

How well do you think water filters work to remove a lot of this shit? Mainly the ones that attach to your fridge dispenser, etc.

Always wondered how effective they really are.

Let's see, to be IN the water tables the water has likely been consumed, filtered by our (and animals, fish, etc) kidneys, pissed out, gone down the sewers in to rivers streams, lakes, the ocean, sucked back up in to the clouds and full desalination... rained or snowed back down to roll down mountains and streams countless times then going throgh hundreds of feet of dirt and rocks settling in to the groundwater pockets...and still has the shit there that we're adding

Still, I filter my own fucking water!

[Dantheman]

What do you know about spraying organic solids from water treatment facilities as fertilizer on farms?

Not much, I haven't really done any work with biosolids. PFAS in biosolids is probably going to vary widely by source. IIRC I think the use of biosolids as fertilizer was popular for a while but has generally fallen out of favor for a variety of reasons.

[AK47bp]

Cartridge-type filters typically use activated carbon as the treatment media. AC tends to be fairly effective at removing most organic contaminants, though results are variable and people tend to use the filters too long and once the media is saturated they don't do much. This is a pretty good study looking at PFAS removal specifically from consumer-level point-of-use (POU) and point-of-entry (POE) drinking water filters: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.estlett.0c00004

Thanks.

Front the article.

. “All under-sink dual-stage and reverse osmosis filters tested showed near complete removal for all PFASs evaluated. In contrast, all other filters containing activated carbon exhibited variable PFAS removal”

[Dantheman]

Yeah, RO is highly effective for almost literally everything, but it's spendy.

[AK47bp]

The dual stage seem pretty affordable. This one is 3 stages and connects to existing faucet.

https://www.water-filter.com/waterdr...CABEgIVY_D_BwE

[LongShortLong]

Seems like someone's scared of PFAS. Are they any worse than all the other shit we've dumped in our environment? Much farmland is polluted with arsenic because they used it decades ago for ? pest control (is brown rice really better than white?). Your home garden is polluted with lead from burning leaded gas decades ago. Around here there's lots of mercury pollution from the Gold Rush days (that cold mountain stream may have mercury puddles in it, and it feeds the drinking water). And there's lots of TCE and its derivatives from dry cleaning, electronics production, and transformer leaks. Nuclear testing and plant incidents have left detectable residue planet-wide. Plenty of modern processes dump SOx and NOx and PM2.5 into the air. At the rate CO2 rates are rising, it may affect the alertness of future generations (maybe it affects us now?).

Which of these are worth worrying about? Supposedly very little of the lead makes it into my tomatoes. The TCE pollution around here supposedly raises cancer rates an extra 100/million, against a normal cancer rate of 500,000/million - seems I shouldn't care about the minimal additional risk.

Technically, I suppose the SOx and NOx and PM2.5 aren't forever, but we add them back as fast as they leave the air, so it's kinda the same.

[Kenny Satch]

Yeah, RO is highly effective for almost literally everything, but it's spendy.

Agreed.
The key IME is to change those filter often. I also threw out an entire under the sink system because of too much buildup in those plastic pipes/tubing. I got lazy and changed them once a year when 2 to 3 times should've happened.

[Conundrum]

I read npr too.

https://www.npr.org/2023/07/06/11862...als-pfas-study

[BobMc]

I grew up drinking that shit. I lived next to a paper mill till I was 30 years old.

"One source well was found to contain 1,839 parts-per-trillion of total PFOS and PFOA, two compounds given an EPA lifetime health advisory of 70 ppt. Contamination was also found to be greater than the health advisory in nearby private wells."

https://www.mlive.com/news/kalamazoo...f_pfas_at.html

[SumJongGuy]

Even IF you believe you have a good filter.. Are you drinking anything else from other sources.. say beer? Are you making sure all water used for making the food you eat is also filtered they way you believe to be effective?

[Cisco Kid]

[BobMc]

As someone that is getting a bit old I don’t understand all the clamor for environmental deregulation. I mostly grew up in the 70’s. We lived near several paper mills that were all situated on the banks of the Kalamazoo river. They dumped all their industrial waste into the river. Nobody swam, fished or even touched the water in the river. When the wind would blow a certain way the stench from the river would invade our house, especially in the hot summer, it was overpowering.

In the years after the Clean Water Act the river has turned into a benefit for the community, people swim, kayak, and enjoy a clean river.

Nixon vetoed the Clean Water Act in 1972 and was overidden by the House and Senate by substantial margins. Nowadays a certain group of politicians would like to gut it. I remember enough to know that if big business doesn’t have a regulation stopping them from harming the environment they certainly aren’t going to abstain by themselves.

[SumJongGuy]

As someone that is getting a bit old I don’t understand all the clamor for environmental deregulation. I mostly grew up in the 70’s. We lived near several paper mills that were all situated on the banks of the Kalamazoo river. They dumped all their industrial waste into the river. Nobody swam, fished or even touched the water in the river. When the wind would blow a certain way the stench from the river would invade our house, especially in the hot summer, it was overpowering.

In the years after the Clean Water Act the river has turned into a benefit for the community, people swim, kayak, and enjoy a clean river.

Nixon vetoed the Clean Water Act in 1972 and was overidden by the House and Senate by substantial margins. Nowadays a certain group of politicians would like to gut it. I remember enough to know that if big business doesn’t have a regulation stopping them from harming the environment they certainly aren’t going to abstain by themselves.

They've been reading Ayn Rand's rantings about how private industry cares more about the general public than any elected representatives do.

[J. Barron DeJong]

They've been reading Ayn Rand's rantings about how private industry cares more about the general public than any elected representatives do.

And since the regulations actually worked, they’re now ignorant about the scale of the original problems that needed solving.

[k2skier112]

Environmental scientist here. PFAS are a serious concern, but there's also a lot of hype surrounding them that isn't necessarily justified. PFAS being "detected" somewhere may or may not be meaningful. PFAS are detectable in water at single part-per-trillion concentrations--that's equivalent to one inch in 16 million miles (32 trips to the moon and back). There are very few other chemicals that are detectable at these concentrations using current laboratory techniques. If we started looking for other classes of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) such as organochlorine pesticides, PCBs, chlorinated solvents, dioxins, furans, and phthalates we would probably find them in "detectable" concentrations almost everywhere, too. We've contaminated the oceans with mercury on a global scale through coal burning.

The most common sites with PFAS releases are PFAS manufacturing facilities (duh), civilian and military airports and firefighting training centers from the use of aqueous film forming foam (AFFF) during legally-mandated fire suppression training, and chrome plating operations (PFAS are/were used as foam breakers in the plating tanks), so they tend to be found near cities, industrial areas, and military bases. If you have a private well or other non-public drinking water supply that could be in proximity to such a facility you can get your water tested for the most common PFAS compounds for a few hundred dollars. Depending on where you live there may be public programs that can cover the cost.

Environmental Working Group has a great interactive map showing known PFAS sites in the US: https://www.ewg.org/interactive-maps...amination/map/

So the the solution to pollution is dilution...we're fuct long term


https://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...069?via%3Dihub

It's more than just the fact that "forever chemicals" are detected, it's that we shit in out nest. We only have 1 planet

3.5. Implications and future directions
Approximately 40 million people in the US rely on private-wells for drinking-water (DeSimone et al., 2015, Dieter et al., 2018), most national testing programs, like the UCMR3 focused on community water supplies serving ≥ 10,000 consumers, do not include private-wells and rarely capture information from rural communities (52 million people rely on small water supplies serving < 10,000), indicating data on PFAS exposure and potential human-health effects is does not exist for over one-third of the US population (Hu et al., 2016). As noted previously, small public supplies and private-wells may be disproportionally affected by PFAS, emphasizing the value of studies like these focused broadly on point-of-use tapwater PFAS exposures, with an emphasis on comparing exposures in private-wells with those directly from public-supply using similar sampling/analytical methods. Some of these gaps associated with PFAS in small community public supply facilities may be addressed by the UCMR5, currently underway in the US and expected to provide extensive information on PFAS in US drinking water for public-supply consumers in the next few years (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2023a).