"Among steps that the authors recommend pregnant women and mothers take to protect themselves are avoiding greaseproof carryout food packaging, stain guards like ScotchGard, waterproof clothing that uses PFAS, and cooking products with Teflon or similar non-stick properties, though manufacturers often do not disclose the chemicals’ use."

I wish Governments would do their jobs and simply ban PFAS in all products used for domestic purposes. This is a huge burden to place on individual consumers.

PFAS is as broad of a term as ‘nuclear’ in a sense. There are a range of different half-lives from hours to 10 years [1] (The term ‘forever chemical’ points to the 10 years-type that bioaccumulate).

The ons that have been identified with these long half-life properties have not been manufactured for many years (but they are still around due to their long half-lives).

[1]https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/tp200-c1.pdf

Hours aren't too bad. Although we would still need to understand if they cause any issues in the body.

Anything with a half life of a year or more is concerning due to the near continual exposure. You'll accumulate it faster than you'll get rid of it.

Endocrine disrupters (which these are) are bad at any level.

Don’t use alcohol-based disinfectants after handling heat-printed receipts, it makes the BPA absorption rate through your skin go way up.

Soy is an endocrine disruptor and it's ok to eat in moderation. The same is true of fish with it's dioxin and mercury.

They aren't required to be eliminated, but minimized. I would be much more concerned with the duration of exposure (halflife) when working to reduce exposure given that it's impossible to completely eliminate.

I don’t know why they wouldn’t mention parabens and pthalates which are used in all sorts of cosmetics and self care products and don’t have to be listed as ingredients, often just showing up as “fragrance”. They are ‘forever’ and hormone disrupters. Pretty scary stuff.

What about “natural” flavors in ingredients. Always wonder what they are adding to Lacroix flavored water and other things we are ingesting.

>avoiding [...] cooking products with Teflon or similar non-stick properties

I thought most/all of the PFAS is released during manufacture and not when it's being used?

edit:

wikipedia says

>Despite DuPont's asserting that "cookware coated with DuPont Teflon non-stick coatings does not contain PFOA",[91] residual PFOA was also detected in finished PTFE products including PTFE cookware (4–75 parts per billion).[87] However, PFOA levels ranged from undetectable (<1.5) to 4.3 parts per billion in a more recent study.[48] Also, non-stick cookware is heated—which should volatilize PFOA; PTFE products that are not heated, such as PTFE sealant tape, had higher (1800 parts per billion) levels detected.[92] Overall, PTFE cookware is considered an insignificant exposure pathway to PFOA.[93][94]

That burden is well documented in the movie 'Dark Waters' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Waters_(2019_film).

I really don't understand how some companies are getting off scot-free.

Also watch The Devil We Know, which you can watch free at ThoughtMaybe: https://thoughtmaybe.com/the-devil-we-know.

The Intercept and New York Times cover the issue well.

Robert Bilott's book Exposure https://www.amazon.com/Exposure-Be-Confirmed/dp/1501172816 covers the story of the lawyer who successfully sued DuPont and is continuing that legal pursuit.

I also recommend my podcast with Robert Bilott: https://joshuaspodek.com/guests/robert-bilott

Downloading your podcast now. Thank you.

> Avoid ...waterproof clothing that uses PFAS

Are they breathing in rain-proof coating? Are they rubbing it on their hands and ingesting it? Is it in the household air and it makes no difference to not wear it if someone in the household else wears it?

The mechanism is not made very clear.

The stuff gets brittle over time. Had a windjacket for bicycling where this happened after about a year of usage.

Then, one day coming home, out of the rain, pulling it off I wondered what all those tiny white flakes on my shirt were?

Didn't even realise it until I discovered it was that white inner lining :-)

Wiki says household dust is indeed one of the sources...

All of the above. The coating wears off over time. It can be absorbed through the skin or breathed in as dust.

Is there, any info on the magnitude of these effects? As in wearing a North Face jacket versus eating from a pizza box every couple of months?

From what I've seen there isn't enough research to know for certain. There is correlation with the issues mentioned in the article but I don't think any research has confirmed the pathway for negative effects or the doses necessary to cause them.

Does anyone know what greaseproof carryout food packaging includes?

The same kind of peel off paper backing that stickers come on. Some people would call it "wax paper", although I don't think any wax is involved anymore...

So you mean those paper food boxes with a 'fat' resistant coating?

That's pretty much all takeaway food boxes, no?

Yes.

It depends on where you get it from, but in general it seems like it's the same stuff.

https://www.consumerreports.org/toxic-chemicals-substances/p...

Cups are typically coated with polyethylene to make them waterproof, but I think I read somewhere that they are then coated with PTFE to make them slide apart easier when stacked.

The level of PFAs during the pandemic must have just skyrocketed if this packaging is indeed a culprit.

Think of the formed paper bowls at Qdoba or similar fast casual. The ones that don’t seem coated yet magically don’t disintegrate when they are covered in oil.

I believe it’s specifically those, not so much things like butcher paper or soda cups.

Any kind of food wrapping paper or food box.

Are these the faux-cardboard impregnated with plastic lining take out boxes?

Probably the same as “parchment paper” you get for baking - ptfe

A universal ban doesn't make sense but removing it from all food products does.

So... are “ceramic” coatings ok? And are we back to styrofoam packaging to be safe?

The article mentions to avoid greaseproof carryout food packaging, stain guards, waterproof clothing that uses PFAs, etc. but the problem is so much more than that.

I wrote a paper last year regarding forever chemicals for my work. The US water supply is contaminated with forever chemicals, if you're drinking unfiltered tap water [1], you're likely drinking forever chemicals as well. If you eat /drink animal products, you're likely ingesting forever chemicals. If you use cosmetics, those contain toxic chemicals such as phthalates. If you use plastic containers to store food, the plastic particles leech off into your food. When you take hot showers, you breathe in forever chemicals through the steam as the water is contaminated.

Even thermal paper, which is often used for store receipts, have been shown to increase BPA exposure in cashiers. [2]

All these chemicals are known to increase cancer rates, disrupt hormones, cause birth defects, etc. Is it any wonder that we're seeing increasing rates of cancer, depression, etc?

[1] https://www.ewg.org/interactive-maps/pfas_contamination/map/ [2] https://toxicfreefuture.org/handle-with-care-are-cash-regist....

So what reasonable steps can one take to effectively decrease intake of these.

I have personally: stopped using food that is heated in plastic in the microwave. I drink mainly tap water, which I used to drink out of plastic bottles I refilled. I switched these to glass and metal. I stopped using my beloved water atomizer, as I also read on HN that inhaling this stuff is awful.

I want to replace my plastic cutting boards and bowls.

What else can I reasonably do?

there are expensive filters you can get for your whole house that filter out chlorine, lead and PFAS. They're about 800-2000 bucks.

you can learn to cook on stainless steal as opposed to "not stick" pans. Even a lot of "ceramic" pots/pans can be suspect.

You can switch to a french press for coffee (all coffee machines pass hot water through plastic before gettting to the pot). French Presses are a pain in the ass to clean, and it's been proven than French Press coffee having a lack of filter, somehow raises LDL cholesterol. I don't know a solution around that.

but good luck shopping - damned near everything comes with some kind of plastic/water proof container. Just try avoiding plastic when buying cheese, yogurt, milk, frozen veggies, ice cream. Everything - even fresh meat and produce, is typically wrapped in more plastic than Laura Palmer.

And health with food works just like technical privacy. It's a lot easier if you live a lone.

If you have an active social life, a romantic partner or a family -- good luck. Because now you're the crazy person avoiding grease resistant pizza boxes, telling your kid "no you can't have bottled water" at the soccer game, and generally looking like a crazy person and driving your partner mad who just wants to enjoy their life.

I realized a french press was raising my LDL (after switching to a french press for this very reason). Now I use a fine paper filter with a glass chemex for pour-over coffee, and it removes the LDL issue.

Basically what loudtieblahblah said.

Mainly: ・Avoid all plastics however possible. This includes food packaging, clothing, carpeting, etc.

・Buy fresh foods. Foods marked organic have been shown to have lesser amounts of contamination in them.

・Try to balance your diet to include more vegetables. Forever chemicals don't accumulate as much in plant/vegetables as they do in animal products.

・Get more exercise / sweat more as you can sweat out some contaminants in your body.

・Get an air filter for your house. The dust in your house likely has particles from old clothing that contain plastics such as polyester. Carpeting in your home can also contribute, depending on what materials it was made with.

・Don't handle things like thermal paper, as the BPAs in the paper can leech off onto your skin.

・Reverse osmosis filters for your drinking water would be best, but they're expensive.

・Avoid scented cosmetics as they contain phthalates. There are some brands that avoid the use of phthalates in their products. Popular dish soap brands also contains phthalates, you can find dish soap brands that don't use phthalates.

Keep in mind you'll never be able to completely avoid forever chemicals, but you can limit your exposure.

Focus on “good enough”. A $200 RO system for your drinking and cooking water will manage nearly all of your exposure to water borne contaminants. Then move on to the next item. It’s better to hit all the items with “good enough” solutions than focus time & money reaching perfection on just one.

". The US water supply is contaminated with forever chemicals" every water district produces some kind of yearly lab summary.. every water source is not the same, right? so yes and, plenty of commercial bottled water is similarly unreliable that way..

"All these .. Is it any wonder that we're seeing increasing rates of cancer, depression, etc?" Those things are part of the human condition in any epoch

agree,yes, problems with long-lasting chemicals in ordinary life, for certain

To your first point, you are correct. I think Miami, FL and Philadelphia, PA had some of the highest parts per trillion when it came to detecting forever chemicals, while Seattle, WA was on the lower end.

Regarding your second point, I agree that these things are a part of the human condition, but my point is that their rates of occurrances are higher than they would be absent of the exposure to these chemicals.

there are things i'd rather not know. The pure act of existing in society, eating and doing what you need to survive is killing us and making us suffer along the way to that end.

the amount of money, time, awareness and effort one needs to exert in daily life is absurd.

Finding BPA/BPS/BADGE free canned goods.

Avoiding plastic - but don't jump to that french press just yet - French Press coffee raises LDL.

PFAS/BPAs/microplastics in our cookware, food storage, take--out/delivery food packaging.

Our friggin tap water - unless you have a $1k filter on your home.

Don't eat too much red meat - you'll get gout or heart disease or colon cancer.

Careful with those antibiotics and eating starches or large intestine flora will activate Crohns or Ankylosing spondylitis.

Don't eat too many carbs you'll get diabetes and heart disease.

Don't eat too much seafood because of heavy metals and/or antibiotics.

Watch out for the heavy metals in baby foods and root vegetables.

Pesticides/herbicides on our fruits and veggies

Antibiotics in our meat

Seed-oils in all "middle aisle" food. but if you eat meat, they're feeding the animals seed-oils or food they wouldn't naturally eat, so the omega6 levels in beef, chicken skin, pork, and even eggs can be 25x-50x what it normally would be.

Try to eat healthy, enjoy some spinach, sweet potatoes, some monosaturated fat heavy macademia nuts (to keep the omega6s low where you can), season your food with tumeric and black pepper for it's anti-inflammatory properties? Hellooooo kidney stones. I sure hope every bite of oxalate you consumed came with the appropriate amount of calcium to bind to.

All the things you have to take in mind in order to maximize your dietary health and exposure to various toxins in the modern world can give someone serious psychiatric conditions.

And it's hard to not justify those psychiatric conditions - with cancer, autoimmune, and other issues all on the rise, you sit back and look at your own kids and ask yourself "why did i even make you, all that's here is unavoidable suffering".

What antifa/BLM did to small businesses in the rage they had for racial justice, this entire nation needs to evoke against the likes to Dow and DuPont and much of BigAg.

The suffering chemical companies and the food industry has done to the population is a million fold what a couple of trigger happy racist cops have done. And yet... we do nothing.

The FDA plays ping pong with PFAS and pretends it's not their responsibility. Companies dedicate to getting rid of "some" of them on a 10 year time span, doing god knows how much more damage to us.

Something poisonous is in damned near everything we consume or touch.

You could eat a perfect blue zone diet in america and still die of cancer at 62 years old.

Well such things are to be expected since people cant work the land anymore. They dont own it. Writing code for Snapchat filters is infinitely more valuable than working the land.

In short, we've made out bed. Now we have lay in it, go to church and pray in it. We deserve everything we get.

Such is life. Such is dignity.

What the hell kind of jibber is this. Don't listen to this, Don't lay down, go do something! They don't win _until you stop fighting.

Jibber?

I'm certainly not a cheery fellow, but to partake in evil and claim you were born in it does not absolve anyone of it.

In any case, the cost of progress has a steep price or did you think there is such a thing as a free lunch? Someone's wealth must be offset by others poverty because those are the rules we choose to live by. Yhe situation isnt getting better either. It's getting worse. At this point we are not entirely sure of how much we don't know about what we don't know.

I would nit be surprised many moons from now researchers find our tech and the plastics its made out of heat up during use and we inhale all sorts of unnatural nonsense.

Such is life. Such is dignity.

i didn't make this bed. i was born and raised into a world other people already made and i'm powerless to control

A lifestyle change, switching to a vegetarian organic diet, can solve most of these issues regarding diet. The others, yes, are impossible to get around completely.

What about the faux-cardboard takeout boxes impregnated with plastic lining? Steaming hot food is placed in these and must be heating it up and absorbing some of these chemicals?

These chemicals are one of the main suspects in the decline in human sperm count and sperm quality over the last few decades in much of the world. From the early 1970s to the early 2010s, sperm counts declined about 60% in North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand.

Other main suspects are obesity, poor choice of diet, and I believe a few other things. They probably all contribute somewhat.

It's also possible that the chemicals have something to do with some of the other contributions.

For instance, the rise in obesity rates over the last few decades isn't just a human thing. I've seen some research that found that animals are getting fatter, too. This includes lab animals that are fed controlled diets, so it isn't just that fat humans are eating more, and so also have more scraps to toss to the pets.

This suggests some sort of hormonal change or disruption might be a significant factor in rising obesity, and when you look for candidate hormonal disruption sources that both humans and animals would be exposed to, those "forever chemicals" are going to be at the top of the list.

>decline in human sperm count and sperm quality over the last few decades

Dogs too:

"Study demonstrates rapid decline in male dog fertility, with potential link to environmental contaminants"

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160809095138.h...

> I've seen some research that found that animals are getting fatter, too. This includes lab animals that are fed controlled diets, so it isn't just that fat humans are eating more, and so also have more scraps to toss to the pets.

Source?

Here were a couple of articles about it [1] [2].

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/10/its-not...

[2] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190109-what-we-can-lear...

In addition glyphosate (roundup) has been around since the early 1970s and is omnipresent in our food chain.

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=7%2C39&q=gly...

Yeah, but think of all the uniformly dandelion-free yards we got out of it.

2,4-D is better for dandelions. Doesn't hurt the turf grass.

My disdain for herbicides and pesticides is not limited to roundup.

I know this is just anecdotal, but I've noticed an unusually large number of people I work with are having kids with developmental problems or who fall somewhere on the autism scale.

I’ve read those are diagnosed more these days than in the past.

That's just b.s. to shove the issue under the rug. The truth is these kids are exposed to environmental toxins left, right, and center. Yes, 72 vaccines since the day you are born are part of the problem (the ingredients in these things go directly into your bloodstream) but not nearly the only factor.

So which vaccines do you think are the problem?

Has anyone else noticed that men in old movies more often had "deep" voices than men in modern movies? Could this be related?

That's true, but if you look at old movies you'll see the men aren't in nearly the same good shape that men in modern movies are - if we used movies to determine what we think the population is like we'd assume there are way more 6 packs now.

It's tempting to view men from earlier eras as more manly, and may even be true, but besides fads in popular 'looks' another big difference was the near universal consumption of cigarettes earlier on.

Interesting observation, but this could simply be casting males with deep voices.

Wasn't that just caused by heavy smoking?

Casting practices has changed drastically and there's been major increase in diversity of characters in movies/tv.

There's even been a huge increase in diversity of, ex, contestants on game shows/challenge shows.

There's just simply much, much more media made now too.

You can control for that with casting. I don't think it was until Ira Glass came around that we got away from it in radio.

Looking back even further, consider the influence of the electric microphone on music. It used to be that you had to be able to project to the entire room with your own power, but now many quieter varieties of voices are able to compete too.

maybe - could just be because smoking and drinking hard liquor was more prevalent back then also

Each culture has aesthetic preferences. What you see/hear in movies and art generally is not how average person looks like, but what people in that era want people to look like. Art books sometimes even have explicit advice on what kind of people you should draw so that people like looking at them.

tl,dr: deep voices in old movies are artefact of people liking deep voices back then.

I was curious and looked up something for Germany: https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/sites/default/files/medien/25... (German)

Seems to be getting better though if you look at the graph on page 16.

So we have a regulation since October of 2020 [!] in the EU that says that water distributors ("Wasserversorger") have to check how much PFAS is in the water and cope with it if it's too much. This reminds me that I had a notice from my landlord at the start of corona that I shouldn't use the shower because they noticed that the threshold of legionella in the water was a little too high (which was especially annoying because falling ill with Legionnaires' disease would mean similar symptoms to covid-19).

Your landlord should be reported and get nice visit from local Gesundheitsamt. It’s no big deal to prepare water with higher temperature and avoid this issue.

That's not necessarily true. It can be non-trivial to get the heat specification right at all end points in the distribution pipeline.

Ok. Add nasty chemicals then. I think, even cheap chlorine can do the job. In my case higher temperature was enough. I rented a flat that was staying empty for long time and had these problems. Increasing temperature of the water and letting it run for 5 minutes solved it.

Interesting how that report lists all kinds of PFAS-Hotspots except for those created by US military installations [0] [1].

[0] https://www.civilianexposure.org/the-u-s-military-is-poisoni...

[1] https://www.stripes.com/news/us-army-in-ansbach-concealing-d...

This chemicals are terrible but they don't kill quickly, they may not even kill you at all, they just make your health really bad but aren't in general life-threatening.

But like they say, the dose makes the poison, so it might be just a matter of time (they're extremely stable substances)

edit: why the downvotes?

This is bad.

I often wonder how to square such observations with the fact that life expectancy and quality of life are, in general, increasing.

It’s a noisy metric, but all in all it feels like the totality of human development is (for now anyway) increasing human welfare.

Caveat global warming etc.

Male life expectancy in the US and UK at least seems to have stalled or declined on average over the last ten years.

See Gap minder: https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$ui$chart$cursorMode=plus;;...

I wonder how it looks for the subset of the US that generally isn't fat, affected by opiods, or unable to get basic healthcare. Obviously it'll be higher, but is it still growing or has it also stalled?

There is a cause and effect problem here, it's possible that modern economies are producing environmental contaminants which cause obesity and other problems ( hormone disruptors are complex ).

The trend of obesity and declining birth rates is common across all developed economies. As a possibility, the accumulation of non-degradable hormone disruptors may have a cumulative effect causing the problem to grow as the decades go on.

It is possible, but I think, unlikely to be nearly as important as change in diets. The poor are much fatter than the wealthy. Do we really think its because they're exposed to more hormone disruptors? Or is it a terrible diet because they don't have the time and resources and knowledge and stress to eat healthier? Contaminants are probably a problem, and could accumulate non linearly into an even bigger problem. But obesity is almost certainly a diet problem. The poor are much more likely to eat high calorie, low nutrient food. Homeless people are increasingly both hungry and fat. I don't think its especially controversial to say that's the likely outcome if you were to just remove these chemicals back to 1800s levels.

While poor diet is certainly the leading hypothesis, the universality of the effect across both Human and Animal populations is worth further consideration.

The poor are vastly more likely to live in areas of higher industrial runoff, to use older materials/homes/appliances, have poorer water quality, and have fewer resources to counteract negative effects in the environment.

Whos quality of life is increasing?

Of people living in the Western world at least, and in most cases 3rd world countries too.

You'd have to be very silly to say that the life of someone in the lowest rung of the working ladder nowadays(e.g. a McDonalds worker) is not better than the life of a peasant in feudalistic times.

Peasant feudalistic times are so far in the history that they are irrelevant.

When people talk about quality of life going up and down, they mean compared to last 20 years or something like that.

Comparing with a previous generation or two, how does a 25 year old's life compare now compared with 2001, 1981, 1961 and 1941

I don’t think you can make that generalization

When discussing short term changes, it's logical to compare to short term pasts.

I get your point, but at least in this case we should probably compare to quality of life just before these chemicals were in use.

I think in the US, life expectancy has been trending down, at least for males.

But do people care?

We've know about this for decades. There have been studies on groups of people with high exposure, like that town in WV. We know this stuff is harmful, yet the majority public doesn't really care. There won't be protests or civic involvement of any kind at a large enough scale to make a difference. I fear this will be one of many issues that just gets ignored.

Edit: Why downvote?

Defeatist. Some problems take decades and decades or hundreds of years to solve, like slavery. All the more reason to speak up more.

I don't see how my statement is defeatist. I'm not saying not to try. I'm asking if people care. I am also saying that I fear it will be ignored. These can be valid statements while still striving to create that change. Really, if one is serious about making that change, then it would be wise to acknowledge the issues preventing them from reaching their goal.

Good question, but then it begs the question that shouldn't we be doing a better job of advocating against the use of these chemicals?

Exactly. Many people have never heard of these chemicals or don't care for a variety of reasons.

For example, my wife doesn't care if something might be harmful (and doesn't do any research to find out) if it's convenient. Nonstick cookware was standard at her house growing up. She complains about our current pans (stainless and cast iron). I try to explain to her about the risks and get her to watch a documentary about it. She won't watch documentaries because she finds them boring.

Her mother has the same general approach - doesn't investigate anything and favors convenience. Her stance is that the government wouldn't approve things if they were dangerous (specifically nonstick, fragrance chemicals, and fabric softeners). Even when the government does recommend an action, she isn't paying enough attention to know about it (the FDA recommends older, like 2013 or something, nonstick pans be thrown away).

I hope that people like this wake up to the warnings. Unfortunately, I think the convenience and government trust is really a mindset and lifestyle. After all, it is easier to believe that someone else is looking out for you so you don't even have to think about things for yourself.

Another example of what is possibly blatant regulatory capture over toxic chemicals in american water supplies:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=i5uSbp0YDhc

off topic remark: As is often the case when I come across a youtube link, I briefly thought about clicking on it but somehow decided against it. I figure it's because the link (as always with youtube) doesn't contain any hint to what the video is about.

I wish it were best practise to always put the title of the linked video next to the cryptic link itself.

If you think about it: if you put the title there, you allow possibly hundreds of users scrolling past this link to better judge, whether they want to follow the link or not. Just one small effort for the person posting, probably useful for many different users.

It's in a way similar to the question of whether you fill in the subject for an email sent to a number of people. A little effort for the sender can possibly save several recipients' time.

Just sayin' ..

Sorry about that, the title in this case isn't really indicative of the content. It's called "Gay Frogs: a Deep Dive" and it follows the regulatory capture of the epa in regards to a hormonal disruptor that creates hermaphrodite frogs.

One of my favorite bowls is made of wood; it’ll go back to the earth without disrupting other life much. Same for our ceramic bowls with less-toxic glaze (the cost of this is being limited to a mostly-brown color scheme). I grew up with neighbors who harvested the plants in our field for animal feed using machines made of metal, wood, and leather, pulled by horses. The only plastic was the milk jug of water (though it could be a glass jug in a cushioned box). We can return to using non-plastic materials for most things, reserving plastic for where its properties are most useful.

Finally something in biopersistent chemicals.

oh!..but look at those companies being all green and scores on their ESG ratings. Oh, and they are using green electricity.

CO2 has been used as greenwashing and mis-direction.

Yes. It is a problem. No - it will not harm you today - but these chemicals harm you and your children today and every day after that, forever.

Persistent chemicals that are hormone disruptors are killing humans, killing fish, killing bees, killing literally EVERYTHING alive on this plant - TODAY.

And all you hear from powers that be is global warming and CO2 that drowns out this very immediate, but such a profitable problem.

Disgusting.

> And all you hear from powers that be is global warming and CO2 that drowns out this very immediate, but such a profitable problem.

Uhm... no?

I'm not sure where you got this from or who your "powers that be" are, but I have yet to see a climate change advocate play down other environmental problems. All of those problems are understood to be in need of addressing.

Which is in sharp contrast with climate-change deniers and skeptics, whom I repeatedly see confusing people by directing attention away from climate change to other environmental problems, like talking about air pollution and clean water every time someone mentions climate change.

> I have yet to see a climate change advocate play down other environmental problems

But they stated it was about emphasis, because their obsession (global warming) is drowning out other environmental issues.

> Which is in sharp contrast with climate-change deniers and skeptics, whom I repeatedly see confusing people by directing attention away from climate change to other environmental problems, like talking about air pollution and clean water every time someone mentions climate change.

I'm not sure what you'd expect? They disagree or are sceptical, do you expect them to talk up global warming? That would be strange. It also implies that they do care about the environment, which is in contrast to how they're usually portrayed, but they're emphasising different environmental challenges.

Maybe, if things like clean water and air pollution were tackled then they'd have less things to "play down" and "confuse" others with? Wouldn't that be a boon.

> I'm not sure what you'd expect? They disagree or are sceptical, do you expect them to talk up global warming? That would be strange.

I expect them to deny or express skepticism about it. Not deflect to a different topic.

The logical response to e.g. "do you care about global warming? What should we do about it?" if you are genuinely skeptical would be something like "I'm not convinced it's a problem we need to address", not "of course I care about the environment! I love clean air and water!" as if the question had been about air pollution or water delivery...

Maybe that's because:

a) they do care about the environment b) they get accused of not caring because of their stance on global warming

I think it's the language of a tribalist to say your opponent is deflecting without something more substantial than they don't want to talk about that thing they don't think is worth talking about.

> I think it's the language of a tribalist to say your opponent is deflecting without something more substantial

Have you considered there might be a different explanation here than me lacking "substance" and you somehow being full of it? Ironically, have you considered you might be the one instantly jumping to a conclusion about me just based on a couple offhand internet comments on a discussion that's barely even started?

I think it's quite ridiculous (and frankly, rude) to accuse people of being "tribal" or lacking "substance" just because they you a couple quick comments summarizing years of events and didn't spend hours preemptively writing you an essay with detailed analysis and citations. And bear in mind that jumping to -isms accusations so quickly itself has the exact opposite effect of the one you're hoping for.

> Have you considered there might be a different explanation here than me lacking "substance" and you somehow being full of it? Ironically, have you considered you might be the one instantly jumping to a conclusion about me just based on a couple offhand internet comments on a discussion that's barely even started?

Firstly, I wasn't saying anything about you but the language you are using.

Secondly, I didn't accuse you of lacking substance, I wrote that your argument lacked evidence.

Lastly, your reaction is over the top, which is also quite a tribalistic response to being challenged.

Yes, now I'm making an insinuation, but that's your own fault for your own faulty assumptions. If you want, we can dial down the temperature and discuss things at a better level, or we can just leave it, not that I believe there's much to discuss other than why you're jumping to so many assumptions about the people you disagree with (or who disagree with you) and their bad intentions.

I haven't seen a candidate run with an anti-PFAS statement. It does seem like a largely ignored issue in politics.

50 Parts per trillion (ppt) detection is an awesome level of detction, It is interesting to compare to EPA limits of heavy metals in drinking water:

Mercury,Hg:

“ The EPA has established a limit of 2000 parts per trillion (ppt) of allowable mercury of drinking water. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has set a maximum permissible level of 1,000,000 part of methylmercury in a trillion parts of seafood.”

Lead, Pb: Flint water crisis had 15,000,000 ppt of lead, then after clean up it dropped to FDA ‘allowable’ 15,000 ppt (ideally would be zero).

Cadmium, Cd: EPA limits 5,000 ppt measurements of Cd in drinking water.

Arsenic, As EPA limit of 10,000 ppt in drinking water, short term exposure about 130,000 ppt can cause health effects.

Copper, Cu EPA limits of 1,300,000 ppt in tap water.

Elements functionally involved in human biology: “sodium (Na), potassium (K), magnesium (Mg), and calcium (Ca) that belong to main group of elements, and vanadium (V), chromium (Cr), manganese (Mn), iron (Fe), cobalt (Co), nickel (Ni), copper (Cu), zinc (Zn),”

This doesn’t exist, but I would imagine that the ideal water would have the exact ppt levels of these elements needed by the human body and nothing else.

When you mention thresholds you also have to say that they are not medical but administrative. For many substances medical, desirable, values are zero. For example, lead: "There is no safe threshold for lead exposure" https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27837574/

There simply is no feasible way to have "zero" of pretty much anything today though. The molecules are out there and there time flows only in one direction. So thresholds simply mean that above that is when something can be done about it. If environmental levels rise thresholds would have to rise too because what can you do if it's everywhere? No use having the option to sue someone, including government, when it's out of there hands. Things like mercury or lead in the environment are global (even higher levels can be found in the arctic -- https://cordis.europa.eu/article/id/122855-a-better-understa...).

So for better or worse, life on this planet will have to adapt. There will only be action on the edges, when it gets so bad that it cannot be ignored. All the many small long term effects can't even be properly studied, because what do you compare with when it's everywhere and it's impossible to isolate only one or few chemicals' effects?

.

So, in summary, citing thresholds in a medical discussion is pretty much just a distraction at best. It's for discussions about what to do, or what can you do (legally). The values of the thresholds don't easily or directly translate to "it's safe". Of course they are taken into consideration when threshold levels are set, but only as one factor.

This is concerning, but with a sample size of 50, I don't think there's enough evidence to claim that "The study shows that PFAS contamination of breast milk is likely universal in the US".

Here's a related 2016 article about PFOA and PFAS for anyone interested: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27140589