I've been in the same camp, mostly against BPA (and it's analogs) and PFAS. It's amazing how casually they are used in consumer products, even by brands who carry marketing that is nauseatingly "save-the-earth-happy-healthy-eating".

Another one is nitrites in processed meat. All the fancy "health conscious" brands proudly state "NO NITRITES!", but then those ass hats put in a bunch of celery salt...which is just nitrites with a different name.

Note: For anyone curious, trader joes actually does sell a bacon with no nitrites of any form. First and only time I have seen it.

Comparing nitrites (which occur naturally) with PFAS and other "forever chemicals" is off the board. To my understanding the observed and very real ill-effects of toxic bacterial excretions due to nitrites being phased out in lunch-box products (sliced ham, salami) here in the EU far outweigh any possible effects of the nitrites. Source: reddit comments that seemed legit.

I would hazard to say that PFAs and microplastics are safer than lead and mercury but less safe than not having them at all, but only with the caveat that I believe there's got to be some sort of Zeno's Paradox correlation with environmental human health and safety.

To wit:

People used to do all sorts of self-harming things not knowing any better and now we do fewer of them.

The Romans used to sweeten their wines with powdered lead. The ancient Chinese alchemists used to make elixirs of immortality out of mercury compounds and feed them to their wealthy.

I'm not saying things are good now and that we shouldn't push for them to be better, not by any means.

Rather I am saying that as we take further steps towards optimal human health, aligning our common environmental encounters with our biology, we should remember that the effort people have put in to get us this far is only going to take us half as far the next time, and half again the time after.

And that is all well and good, progress is progress, right?

However, does it not seem like the smaller the flaw we find the more we get upset about it?

I believe this phenomenon is caused by a continuing delusion that we were once ever perfect, that we ever lived in harmony with nature, that there is some paradisian SI Garden of Eden unit we can measure our present environment against, and that the current state of events is the face of our fall from grace and must be destroyed like the monster it is.

I believe the truth is things have never been better in hundreds of ways, and they're going to keep getting better as we repent of our past mistakes and learn more about what mistakes we are still currently making, and that the world 25 years from now will be as different a world as the world of today is to the world of 1999.

The secret, and it is a secret, is to understand everything that you've just written, and quietly let the machine worry on.

That collective handwringing (set in eternal struggle as it is with financial greed) is what got us here, and it's what will get us the next 50% and the 50% after that. Wink and enjoy the ride.

...I'd like to think that we can do a bit better than that. The world could have done without things like Tetra-Ethyl-Lead, Thalidomide, and all the other fd things we've ended up with as a result of just letting the machine whirr on. We need to recognize that perverse incentives exist, the system is vulnerable to them, and as our technical prowess increases, the consequences of even one lapse are becoming larger and broader in scale beyond, in some cases, our ability to handle it by just winging it, and not* applying some level of precautionary principle.

Circle of control.

My personal ability to influence these things is so small compared to the vast swathes of the ignorant who just go with the flow of the mainstream.

Any energy I spend trying to influence things outside of my control is wasted.

Therefore, I will only endeavor to control that which I have the ability to control.

"God grant me the serenity", if you will.

Wring on brother/sister. You're (100% genuinely) the future

J&J Reach floss is pfas-free, very cheap, and a pleasure to use.

I tried a few PFAS-free dental flosses that were horrible. I settled on Reach Waxed - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005IHMXEQ