Perhaps we should ban the production of "forever" chemicals in general and not wait until they've accumulated enough in the environment to warrant a study as to whether they are harmful or not. If you can't show plausible mechanisms of degradation to naturally occurring, reasonably safe compounds in the environment in a couple of decades, look for a different way to solve your problem.
There are a lot of things that won't degrade in decades under normal natural conditions. Probably a lot of metal alloys, ceramics, glasses.
There are also a lot of polymers and plastics we wouldn't call "forever chemicals" but still last quite a while.
So is it really the "forever-ness" of these chemicals that's so bad? Maybe it's how they seem to spread everywhere and potentially mess with certain biological systems (e.g. endocrine disruption)?
Metals, ceramics and glasses also exist naturally and we have thousands of years of evidence that they are okay (heavy metals excluded of course). Polymers and plastics, well, evidence is mounting that microplastics are not particularly healthy and it would be better if we hadn't spent a century producing literal mountains of plastic.
It is my understanding that currently you're allowed to manufacture a completely new chemical and put it into your product with essentially no testing of the long term effect of that compound. That doesn't seem very wise to me, but maybe I'm misinformed about this topic.
> It is my understanding that currently you're allowed to manufacture a completely new chemical and put it into your product with essentially no testing of the long term effect of that compound.
Pretty much. There's also a fairly long history of a compound being found to be harmful and banned, only for industry to come up with a very similar compound to replace it, but since it's not the same compound the previous ban doesn't affect it. Then after some time the new compound is found to be harmful as well, rinse and repeat.
The counter-argument is that requiring each chemical to be extensively studied before it can be taken into use would drastically slow down the rate of innovation.
So to an extent there's a conflict between safety and innovation. But of course it's not black and white, and I think there's good reasons to turn the lever more towards the safety end.
It's illuminating that there's the Federal Analogue Act used to go after recreational drugs users but nothing equivalent for chemicals that are environmental hazards.
Requiring a long term study for each new chemical used would almost completely progress in a huge variety of industrial fields. This includes things like solar panel and battery tech we're relying on to get out of the co2 hole.
> spent a century producing literal mountains of plastic
Plastic production is growing at 3.5% annually. This implies a doubling of annual plastic production about every 20 years (because 1.035^20 ≈ 2).
And because of how exponential functions work, this also means there has been about a doubling of the total amount of plastic in the world over the last 20 years.
So most of the problem has been created in the recent past. And it will get twice as bad in the next 20 years.
EDIT: OK, what I said is quite wrong or at least misleading, see forum_ghost's comment for discussion of importance of catalytic and enzyme inhibitor/activator activity of such compounds.
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...generally a chemical that doesn't degrade is chemically inert so it has less chances than any other more degradable compounds to cause harm (btw, how much research did we put into the multiple pathways of degradation for the currently fashinable "biodegradable" stuff? how many of those possible intermediary degradation compounds are not in fact quite toxical). (Bio)degradable also means reactive, so things are more complicated than it seems.
But yeah, any non-degradable fluid is probably a very bad idea because it's gonna spill and get everywhere, so even minor probability of toxic effect could have insanely large consequences...
That's not how any of this works. Metabolism (reactivity by proxy) and enzymatic/inhibitory activity are orthogonal.
One of the least reactive metals, Platinum, is an excellent catalyst in numerous reactions, but often found entirely unreacted in nature: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platinum
a stable chemical can have catastrophic consequences for various species, if it is a potent agonist/antagonist in a critical signalling pathway, or an enzyme/inhibitor of some process. Often these effects are clinically relevant in nanomolar concentrations.
The stable chemical DDT is so stable, it actually bioaccumulates, with biological half-life in decades. It's also a known carcinogen that elevates risks of cancer 4-5x simply from historical exposure decades ago.
As for "biodegradable", that's often basically fraud. PLA (polylactic acid), one of the most common greenwashing plastics, does not biodegrade at all under common conditions, outside of very specific composting process, not usually (maybe even never?) found in nature. Luckily PLA isn't very toxic.
That requires governments taking a strong position against businesses that are using such toxic industrial compounds for the health of their citizens. But, when money is involved, political will is usually weak. As is often the case, there will be a lot of bought off politicians, who will attempt to ignore or gaslight.
The trick of contaminating the environment with such dangerous chemicals is that death is slow. That people die 10 or 20 years later of strange cancers or have children with odd birth defects, allows businesses wiggle room. It's not a clear immediate threat, so many minds are slow on grasping the extreme danger involved.
Only very strong consumer advocacy and voter pressure (where politicians demonstrably get kicked out of office) will have a chance of making a true difference.
Thinking of cardboard/paper containers, if you take normal cardboard and put water in it, it will be a very short time before it seeps through and gets soggy. Take your container and do the same? If there is a significant difference it has been waterproofed.
Now specifically on coatings there are beeswax coatings and silicone coatings which judging from other food grade/medical grade applications would be fairly safe. The snag is that on a visual inspection (at least for me) I have no way of telling if a coating is just silicone or contains PFAS. So in general I would apply a cautionary principle and just stay away from them at takeout joints.
Silicone (siloxane) coatings isn't that big of a deal. It's just a different type of glass, fairly inert, fairly safe. It's also extremely unlikely that takeout joints have silicone-coated paper, as it is fairly expensive.
"Parchment" paper you buy today is actually coated with Teflon-related fluoridated compounds.
Just burn some of the paper, and see if the smell resembles the smell of an empty teflon pan that's overheated until it's giving off scent/smoke.
Lots of paper packaging of this sort claims to be biodegradable. Lack of PFAS seems to me to be a necessary condition for something to be biodegradable, but I've been wondering...
As an aside, Nikwax (https://www.nikwax.com/) make excellent waterproofing products for outdoor equipment and have been PFC free as long as I can remember (probably since inception).
>Lack of PFAS seems to me to be a necessary condition for something to be biodegradable
That's not the case at all. PLA doesn't even decompose much in normal conditions, outside of 60C+ compost piles. It is sold as a bio-degradable plastic.
Hmm off the top of my head there are many lubricants that are neither PFAS nor animal/vegetable fat, made out of petrochemicals/hydrocarbons: engine oil, petroleum jelly, mineral oil...
When I was a kid, I remember my dad throwing out teflon pans once they'd chipped. He believed it caused cancer if the coating got into your food.
I mostly cook on iron. But these chemicals are in almost all food packaging, too.
The thing is, they have been for almost 50 years. The trouble is that the damage they're doing is not noticeable on the scale of a few years, fast enough to force a change in policy, the way it was with saccharine or Thalidomide or DDT. So this may be one of those things people look back at in 2,000 years and say "this is what was in their water that brought down their civilization". But on the scale of one or two generations, it's going to be hard to prove what portion of the increase in cancers and birth defects these chemicals actually caused.
I'd support a total ban, but it seems that governments are just chipping away around the edges of the problem.
> But these chemicals are in almost all food packaging, too.
Can we please just go back to paper bags, wax paper and aluminum foil, thanks?
The whole reason we moved to these chemicals is that we needed to move away from the "chloro-" carbons which were ozone layer hazards precisely because they decomposed.
Although, as I understand it, the vast majority of the problems come from 1) the factories that make them simply dumping the waste products into the environment and 2) all the military installations that spray this garbage as fire suppression foam and just let it run into the soil.
Outlawing this stuff won't do jack if the military keeps spraying it around.
Older packaging like paper poses less of a chemical concern than plastic packaging, but it poses more of a risk of food borne illness. Plastic have their downsides but they also are very good at keeping food safe.
So says the packaging industry. I'm yet to be convinced that plastic is required or even that it performs notably better than other more environmentally sustainable solutions.
Long term plastics have been known causes of hormonal changes in the body and a host of issues. I'd take a slight increased risk of e.coli than generational deformaties.
There was an article posted recently about a lab testing paper straws and finding pfas chemicals in nearly all of them. They're used for their water resistant properties. And there was no way to tell from the packaging.
I'd opt for reusable glass containers in a few standardized sizes. Could also be made out of almost unbreakable stuff like it is used in all sorts of laboratories.
> When I was a kid, I remember my dad throwing out teflon pans once they'd chipped. He believed it caused cancer if the coating got into your food.
AFAIU that hasn't been proven. Teflon cookware is dangerous mostly due to the precursor chemicals used when manufacturing them (so the people most affected by this are those living downstream of the chemical plants, not the end consumers), and noxious gases released if they overheat.
But why risk it; there are certainly situations where teflon is indispensable, but cookware isn't one of them.
> I mostly cook on iron.
Well, me too. The added advantage is that an even somewhat adequately cared for cast iron frying pan will last forever, whereas these teflon things last only a few years. There's a reason why every bigger supermarket over here as a long row of teflon cookware for sale, the market for cast iron or stainless stuff must be tiny in comparison because they last forever.
> I'd support a total ban, but it seems that governments are just chipping away around the edges of the problem.
The EU is working on some kind of broad PFAS regulation, to get out of the vicious cycle of the industry just replacing one banned PFAS with a new PFAS compound.
You have exactly the same kind of factory from 3M Chemours in Dordrecht in the Netherlands. I wonder how many more sites are there like this.
It seems to be the pattern with these companies looking at the Virginia scandal and the Zwijndrecht site in Belgium. Pollute as much as you can for as long as you can and then contain the damage once the litigation starts coming in.
Another example is tetrachloroethylene (also known as PCE or PERC) - a commonly used solvent in dry cleaning. It’s absurdly toxic and can contaminate water, soil & air for decades following a “minor” spill.
Pro tip: don't use teflon or other coated pots and pans. They're full of this poison, and the coating turns the pan into a consumption item that has to be replaced frequently -- something Monsanto and other inventors of these coatings were very well aware of.
Or if you really want to have a non-stick coating there's also ceramic coatings. They don't have PFAS, but of course it degrades much faster than teflon so it still very much turns the pan into a consumption item.
I dunno, I've had my 8" ceramic nonstick for years now and it's almost like new. If you treat them right (no utensils harder than plastic), and wait to wash until they are cool, they are very durable.
Cast iron is effectively non stick if you put in a small amount of effort. Can last for generations too. Problem is, we've become too lazy to put in that small amount of effort.
The first statement isn't really true. Even a perfectly seasoned pan seasoned with high sulphur drying oil will still stick a little, even when greased up when cooking, depending on the food. Teflon is magic.
Works for me; for frying things, as long as it's heated up first, it doesn't stick. Sauces are another thing, but they don't tend to stick anyway, but can strip the seasoning.
Yes, Teflon _is_ magic, but might cause cancer etc.
I have never found a nonstick pan that worked well enough for me to call it truly non-stick, and have long since relegated myself to stainless steel, since I can more easily predict the stick-factor, and scour it with steel wool if I need to.
For people who must have non-stick pans, go with OXO and nothing else. They're PFAS & PFOA-free and tested by America's Test Kitchen to be the best non-stick pans (and I can anecdotally back that up).
Never go with ceramic for non-stick as it's a crappy compromise
I've read a few HN comments before regarding this that blood donation actually helps you get rid of some of these chemicals since the body is forced to regenerate new blood or something like that (i'm not saying its a good idea to donate for the sake of getting rid of chemicals and i'm not even sure if this is medically correct in the first place).
But does the donated blood get cleaned or something of these things before it goes to the new patient? I'd hate for it to get transferred to the other poor guy who already suffers from some condition.
The donated blood does not get cleaned. There is a screening step that looks to throw out blood with (some) infections. There is also a separation step to split red blood cells, platelets, and plasma (recipients have variable needs) before storage and eventually use.
EDIT: it’s worth mentioning that the screening step does include some filtration. White blood cells do get pulled out of the blood, but I’m not sure how common it is for a lab to do that.
Never mind just filtering the blood supply, if there's some kind of filtering/dialysis that removes chemicals and micro plastics sign me up! Let everybody go in once a year and get their blood cleaned. Maybe send the bill to DuPont
I would assume that piping your blood through any kind of machine will have vastly greater risks than leaving whatever you might be able to filter out in your body.
If you work at a Teflon factory or otherwise have high exposure, maybe you stay away from donating blood. But everybody has some PFAS in their blood at this point. The need for blood is worth the small risk
> “EPA had the courage to follow the science. This is a step in the right direction,″ said Stel Bailey, co-facilitator of the National PFAS Contamination Coalition.
The EPA (finally) fulfilled their duty to the American people. Calling that courage is a (sad) overstatement.
Courage would be the EPA championing better chemical control and approval.
Want to introduce a new chemical to the body (i.e., drug)? The FDA will have you jump through gazillion dollar hoops.
On the other hand, want to introduce a new chemical to a product that will eventually end up in the body? The EPA effectively operates on the assumption of innoscent until proven guilty.
We too little understanding of the effects of these chemicals, and approximately zero understanding of any combination of them.
Finally, it's difficult to imagine that Flint MI wasn't a wake up call. But here we are over 8 years later reacting? By the time that money gets from Fed to state to local and used, we're looking at 15 to 20 yrs for a solution. That's a long time to implementing common sense, if not a basic human right (i.e., safe water).
Forever chemicals mean those with half lives over ~100 years.
PFAS potential chemistries number in the >quadrillions (because of the unbounded nature of molecular arrangements/variations).
PFAS half-lives also can range from seconds to centuries.
PFAS chemistries with greater than 100 year half lives (those developed during ww2) can be broken down quickly with catalysis such as Pt nanoparticle driven catalysis.
Recent research on PFAS in blood has found that blood donation is one way to reduce levels. (Tech could be implored to scrub said blood in principal).
66 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 134 ms ] threadThere are also a lot of polymers and plastics we wouldn't call "forever chemicals" but still last quite a while.
So is it really the "forever-ness" of these chemicals that's so bad? Maybe it's how they seem to spread everywhere and potentially mess with certain biological systems (e.g. endocrine disruption)?
It is my understanding that currently you're allowed to manufacture a completely new chemical and put it into your product with essentially no testing of the long term effect of that compound. That doesn't seem very wise to me, but maybe I'm misinformed about this topic.
Pretty much. There's also a fairly long history of a compound being found to be harmful and banned, only for industry to come up with a very similar compound to replace it, but since it's not the same compound the previous ban doesn't affect it. Then after some time the new compound is found to be harmful as well, rinse and repeat.
The counter-argument is that requiring each chemical to be extensively studied before it can be taken into use would drastically slow down the rate of innovation.
So to an extent there's a conflict between safety and innovation. But of course it's not black and white, and I think there's good reasons to turn the lever more towards the safety end.
https://chemsec.org/eu-puts-200-pfas-out-of-business-but-tho...
Plastic production is growing at 3.5% annually. This implies a doubling of annual plastic production about every 20 years (because 1.035^20 ≈ 2).
And because of how exponential functions work, this also means there has been about a doubling of the total amount of plastic in the world over the last 20 years.
So most of the problem has been created in the recent past. And it will get twice as bad in the next 20 years.
It's not just endocrine disruptors. Those are just most salient to us because we are species with sexual reproduction.
You could also have forever carcinogens, forever mutagens, forever neurotoxins, anything you like.
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...generally a chemical that doesn't degrade is chemically inert so it has less chances than any other more degradable compounds to cause harm (btw, how much research did we put into the multiple pathways of degradation for the currently fashinable "biodegradable" stuff? how many of those possible intermediary degradation compounds are not in fact quite toxical). (Bio)degradable also means reactive, so things are more complicated than it seems.
But yeah, any non-degradable fluid is probably a very bad idea because it's gonna spill and get everywhere, so even minor probability of toxic effect could have insanely large consequences...
One of the least reactive metals, Platinum, is an excellent catalyst in numerous reactions, but often found entirely unreacted in nature: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platinum
a stable chemical can have catastrophic consequences for various species, if it is a potent agonist/antagonist in a critical signalling pathway, or an enzyme/inhibitor of some process. Often these effects are clinically relevant in nanomolar concentrations.
The stable chemical DDT is so stable, it actually bioaccumulates, with biological half-life in decades. It's also a known carcinogen that elevates risks of cancer 4-5x simply from historical exposure decades ago.
As for "biodegradable", that's often basically fraud. PLA (polylactic acid), one of the most common greenwashing plastics, does not biodegrade at all under common conditions, outside of very specific composting process, not usually (maybe even never?) found in nature. Luckily PLA isn't very toxic.
The trick of contaminating the environment with such dangerous chemicals is that death is slow. That people die 10 or 20 years later of strange cancers or have children with odd birth defects, allows businesses wiggle room. It's not a clear immediate threat, so many minds are slow on grasping the extreme danger involved.
Only very strong consumer advocacy and voter pressure (where politicians demonstrably get kicked out of office) will have a chance of making a true difference.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33770693/
There's a Finnish company that has developed a plastic-free coating: https://kotkamills.com/products/isla/
- It is _waterproof_ and not made from animal/vegetable fat.
- It is _lubricant_ and not made from animal/vegetable fat.
Waterproof jackets, bicycle gear lubricants, waterproof coatings in food containers, etc. etc.
Now specifically on coatings there are beeswax coatings and silicone coatings which judging from other food grade/medical grade applications would be fairly safe. The snag is that on a visual inspection (at least for me) I have no way of telling if a coating is just silicone or contains PFAS. So in general I would apply a cautionary principle and just stay away from them at takeout joints.
"Parchment" paper you buy today is actually coated with Teflon-related fluoridated compounds.
Just burn some of the paper, and see if the smell resembles the smell of an empty teflon pan that's overheated until it's giving off scent/smoke.
As an aside, Nikwax (https://www.nikwax.com/) make excellent waterproofing products for outdoor equipment and have been PFC free as long as I can remember (probably since inception).
That's not the case at all. PLA doesn't even decompose much in normal conditions, outside of 60C+ compost piles. It is sold as a bio-degradable plastic.
Hmm off the top of my head there are many lubricants that are neither PFAS nor animal/vegetable fat, made out of petrochemicals/hydrocarbons: engine oil, petroleum jelly, mineral oil...
https://chemtrust.org/pfas/
I mostly cook on iron. But these chemicals are in almost all food packaging, too.
The thing is, they have been for almost 50 years. The trouble is that the damage they're doing is not noticeable on the scale of a few years, fast enough to force a change in policy, the way it was with saccharine or Thalidomide or DDT. So this may be one of those things people look back at in 2,000 years and say "this is what was in their water that brought down their civilization". But on the scale of one or two generations, it's going to be hard to prove what portion of the increase in cancers and birth defects these chemicals actually caused.
I'd support a total ban, but it seems that governments are just chipping away around the edges of the problem.
Can we please just go back to paper bags, wax paper and aluminum foil, thanks?
The whole reason we moved to these chemicals is that we needed to move away from the "chloro-" carbons which were ozone layer hazards precisely because they decomposed.
Although, as I understand it, the vast majority of the problems come from 1) the factories that make them simply dumping the waste products into the environment and 2) all the military installations that spray this garbage as fire suppression foam and just let it run into the soil.
Outlawing this stuff won't do jack if the military keeps spraying it around.
And the laws were already supposed to stop the factory just dumping their crap but didn't (see: https://www.startribune.com/rare-pfas-factory-shutdown-in-be...).
Long term plastics have been known causes of hormonal changes in the body and a host of issues. I'd take a slight increased risk of e.coli than generational deformaties.
We've known about it for a long time, this article is from 2009: https://health.usnews.com/health-news/blogs/on-men/2009/11/1...
Interestingly the science has been out there for more than a decade. But little is being done to regulate. I wonder why.
(Lazy first hit for aluminum health risk https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5651828/ )
I'd opt for reusable glass containers in a few standardized sizes. Could also be made out of almost unbreakable stuff like it is used in all sorts of laboratories.
AFAIU that hasn't been proven. Teflon cookware is dangerous mostly due to the precursor chemicals used when manufacturing them (so the people most affected by this are those living downstream of the chemical plants, not the end consumers), and noxious gases released if they overheat.
But why risk it; there are certainly situations where teflon is indispensable, but cookware isn't one of them.
> I mostly cook on iron.
Well, me too. The added advantage is that an even somewhat adequately cared for cast iron frying pan will last forever, whereas these teflon things last only a few years. There's a reason why every bigger supermarket over here as a long row of teflon cookware for sale, the market for cast iron or stainless stuff must be tiny in comparison because they last forever.
> I'd support a total ban, but it seems that governments are just chipping away around the edges of the problem.
The EU is working on some kind of broad PFAS regulation, to get out of the vicious cycle of the industry just replacing one banned PFAS with a new PFAS compound.
https://chemsec.org/eu-puts-200-pfas-out-of-business-but-tho...
It seems to be the pattern with these companies looking at the Virginia scandal and the Zwijndrecht site in Belgium. Pollute as much as you can for as long as you can and then contain the damage once the litigation starts coming in.
https://twitter.com/realestatetrent/status/14378028033139220...
Yes, Teflon _is_ magic, but might cause cancer etc.
But does the donated blood get cleaned or something of these things before it goes to the new patient? I'd hate for it to get transferred to the other poor guy who already suffers from some condition.
EDIT: it’s worth mentioning that the screening step does include some filtration. White blood cells do get pulled out of the blood, but I’m not sure how common it is for a lab to do that.
Here are some interesting links:
https://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/news/20010126/blood-filt...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fS42C1GOyvM
The EPA (finally) fulfilled their duty to the American people. Calling that courage is a (sad) overstatement.
Courage would be the EPA championing better chemical control and approval.
Want to introduce a new chemical to the body (i.e., drug)? The FDA will have you jump through gazillion dollar hoops.
On the other hand, want to introduce a new chemical to a product that will eventually end up in the body? The EPA effectively operates on the assumption of innoscent until proven guilty.
We too little understanding of the effects of these chemicals, and approximately zero understanding of any combination of them.
Finally, it's difficult to imagine that Flint MI wasn't a wake up call. But here we are over 8 years later reacting? By the time that money gets from Fed to state to local and used, we're looking at 15 to 20 yrs for a solution. That's a long time to implementing common sense, if not a basic human right (i.e., safe water).
PFAS potential chemistries number in the >quadrillions (because of the unbounded nature of molecular arrangements/variations).
PFAS half-lives also can range from seconds to centuries.
PFAS chemistries with greater than 100 year half lives (those developed during ww2) can be broken down quickly with catalysis such as Pt nanoparticle driven catalysis.
Recent research on PFAS in blood has found that blood donation is one way to reduce levels. (Tech could be implored to scrub said blood in principal).