No Tylenol for y'all, but I'll shout the whole bar another round of PFAS!
> They have been linked to cancer, birth defects, decreased immunity, high cholesterol, kidney disease and a range of other serious health problems. They are dubbed “forever chemicals” because they can persist for thousands of years in the environment, and are designed to be indestructible.
But _not_ autism! Autism is the great evil we have chosen as our individual health enemy. I don't see autism listed, you may pass.
I think you mean PFOS and not PFAS, the relationship of cancers and health risks is linked to PFOS, but not PFAS in general at this time.
PFOS in consumer-facing products were also majority phased out back in 2015.
Not surprising at all. What are "action levels" supposed to do? It's basically a helpful suggestion to take action, but you don't have to. FDA obviously doesn't care about the well-being of anyone.
The decision has got to be 100% political. The level and damage could be 1000x and they still won't act if it makes them money in the form of corporate campaign donations.
Edit: This also helps others who are in accidents, car wrecks, have Cancer, etc. Yes, we pass on the PFAS to others, but the immediate need for blood is more urgent than the potential long term impacts of PFAS.
I'd assume donated blood matches the average level that people already have in them, so not sure it really matters. But if you donated regularly enough, you could be donating blood that has lower than average levels!
PFAS doesn't immediately harm you like missing a few pints of blood does.
And it's not like you're concentrating higher levels of PFAS into the recipient, they likely have the same average blood concentration levels as the donor does since we're all equally exposed to the same sources.
I used to donate blood regularly but now that I'm in Japan they require me to be decently fluent in Japanese to "understand" the risks, despite having done it a bunch of times in other countries (and other medical procedures not requiring Japanese knowledge).
I'm not sure there are any regulations around opting to do that in the US. Do you have a phlebotomist friend? If so, they might do it for you, but it can be risky and they might not want to take the risk, get sued, etc.
It is an interesting question. Are there companies that draw and discard?
Yes. But of course "healthier" is describing the health of brain worms. On the bright side, this probably indicates that the reactionaries' pushes to deeducate the population are reaching a point of diminishing returns, now that they have to turn to parasites to further lower intelligence.
>The agency said it plans to set less non-binding “action levels” that do not require contaminated food to be removed from shelves. “Tolerance levels”, or limits, make it illegal to sell food contaminated beyond a set threshold.
From the FDA
>Action levels and tolerances represent limits at or above which FDA will take legal action to remove products from the market.
Typical junk tier rage bait journalism you can expect from the guardian.
Your comment does not give a correct impression of FDA's position here.
Action levels are correctly described by the article and not by whatever FDA quote you provided, which seems to imply the FDA is required to take action to remove products. Surpassing action levels do not require FDA to remove products from the market.
The article fails to mention risk and the amounts that create those. In typical journalist fashion it just emphasizes the word “chemical” and other scary framings.
True. The risk is heavily downplayed, since the health effects manifest in decades and can be blamed on lifestyle factors, while the amounts causing health issues are in the order of parts per trillion.
The article has no responsibility of explaining to you why PFAS is harmful considering its harms are well established in science over many years. Your denialism and ignorance of it is a malicious attempt to discredit the article.
This is a stupid, manipulated article. The Guardian, which is already at the limits of reliability, is manipulating the situation and framing it as if the FDA is rejecting the idea of limiting PFAS when that is not the case at all.
A private entity filed a petition to try to force the FDA to set limits and the FDA has said they are studying it themselves, but there is no reason why they should follow this petition's timelines when it already has its own timelines.
They are definitely studying this and have narrowed down on areas where they think it's most at risk, ie. water and seafood. But they still have to do more research to figure out exactly how to quantify this. The idea that the FDA needs to follow the deadlines set by some random entity is nonsense. This is a complicated issue and needs deeper research to figure out if there is an issue with the food supply. They said they did tests on a variety of foods and they didn't find anything in many food types, so it's all a process of doing the science
Please actually respond to the comment instead of whatever this is. It looks reasonable enough to me and I trust the FDA more than The Guardian or the "Tucson Environmental Justice Task Force".
Another issue is that sewage sludge and "biosolids", unknowingly containing PFAS, is/was being used as farm fertilizer, causing some farms to have to be written off for food production. I would expect many more farms in the future to be found with PFAS soil levels exceeding what is safe to produce food with. The only way to find out is to test.
> The practice of spreading sludge as a soil amendment has been a common practice in Maine and across the nation for decades. Land application of sludge material occurred long before there was knowledge that it may contain PFAS or the health implications of PFAS.
The EPA first issued health advisories around PFASs in 2009. Why didn’t these folks file this petition sometime during the 12 years since then where it likely would’ve gotten a more favorable reception?
> Why didn’t these folks file this petition sometime during the 12 years since then where it likely would’ve gotten a more favorable reception?
Because then The Uniparty would look bad.
Instead, we can prop up the illusion of democracy and point fingers at "the other side" of good cop / bad cop while elites poison everybody more. We wouldn't want people living too far beyond their working years, after all.
Ya, everything is a conspiracy. It couldn't be that the FDA has been working on PFAS related issues for 6 years now and this petition was more to speed things along in a way that would force progress.
It's not a "conspiracy." The way our government is currently structured, we have a permanent bureaucracy that mostly runs things. And there is a robust revolving door between them and the industry. While they'll take dramatic actions on things that are hot button political issues, like climate change, they are extremely resistant to rocking the boat on almost anything else.
Environmental pollutants like PFAS fly under the political radar, and there's very little incentive at places like FDA to regulate the problem boldly.
2009 is a generation ago. Asking why a new generation why they might not have petitioned 17 years ago seems like asking where a 21 year old was on 9/11.
As for a better reception, the assumption was RFK Jr. would take it more seriously.
Lets agree that these folks are wrong and ideally they should have petitioned 12 years ago. The question to ask is - for an admin which loudly claims to make America healthy again and talk about making everything chemical free etc - why can't they pass this? Is it because they can't score brownie points with base or they are overtly corrupt and do the same thing they accuse others of doing? Or that they know their supporters will not look at the validity of the claim and instead discredit people by asking whataboutism and party line questions?
In any economy, there is a slider you can move to make tradeoffs between environmental protection and ease of doing business. The parties openly campaign on moving the slider in one direction or the other. Regulating PFAS would have a major economic impact, because they're in everything. So it's not a surprise that the folks who favor moving the slider more to the ease-of-business side would be opposed to stringent regulation of them.
What I'm asking--as someone who thinks we should have draconian regulations around endocrine disruptors, costs be damned--is why there's not more energy around regulating PFAS from the side that generally favors protecting the environment even if that increases costs of doing business. The MAHA people seem to be the most energized about the issue, but they're in the wrong party to do anything about it. How did PFAS fall into this weird donut hole?
Congress mandated the FDA for a particular mission and the president is obligated to execute on that mission. He clearly failed, so there needs to be a way to recall the president.
The agencies are not charged with pursuing a maximalist version of some open-ended “mission.” They are charged with enforcing the law. Congress understands that such enforcement involves compromises and tradeoffs and delegated authority to the executive branch to manage those tradeoffs. Presidential elections then allow voters to turn the knobs that control how those agencies make tradeoffs.
Like, Richard Nixon didn’t create an EPA that was going to pursue maximalist environmentalist goals no matter who was elected President. Nobody thought that when the EPA was created.
Whenever I see something like this, I'm always curious how the libertarians rationalize their world view. Because this is what they want: no regulations where companies can do whatever they want. And they will.
We're witnessing the looting of America. Every level of government seems increasingly dedicated to transferring wealth from the taxpayer to the wealthy. But even that's not sufficient. Apparently the wealthy also need to poison the land and people too for an uptick in profits. Why should they care? Capital is mobile. They'll simply leave whenever society collapses.
As a not libertarian, it's pretty simple. Look at Patagonia[1] for how the free market addresses this issue. If people care, markets will cater to them.
Short of frequent blood donation, is there any reasonably adoptable life change a person can make to meaningfully reduce expected PFAS intake, or is it best to try not to think about it?
Yes, there are a few things you can do. In rough priority / proven benefit order:
1. Eliminate as many items as possible from your diet that make use of PFAS based components, such as plastic linings. This means don't buy groceries packaged in lined packaging, this means don't cook with Teflon pans, and it means don't drink water from plastic bottles or bottles lines with plastic.
2. Get a whole-home water filtration system that is certified (NSF 53 or similar standard) to reduce/remove PFAS and if possible, on top of this do under-sink RO for drinking/cooking which is certified (NSF 58 or similar) to remove PFAS and use glass or stainless steel reusable water bottles to take water outside your home.
3. Exercise regularly so that you sweat and drink lots of appropriately filtered water, donate blood and/or plasma regularly.
Everything else is basically guesswork, these are the only things known to have any benefit. We mostly ingest PFAS due to contamination in the food and water supply. This contamination is unavoidable, but we can greatly reduce exposure by making smarter choices about packaging materials and cooking methods, and a big one is simply not drinking anything that you can't confirm has been properly filtered and packaged.
I'm a bit extreme, I even brew and bottle my own beer and other beverages like soda and water kefir/kombucha to avoid exposure to externally packaged products that may be contaminated with PFAS.
1. Don't use any PFAS coated nonstick cookware. Don't eat where they might have used them for your cooking.
2. Don't use conventional dental floss as it's made of PFAS. Find ones that aren't.
3. Intake substantial supplemental fiber daily, e.g. psyllium and acacia, as these bind to bile which dissolves some types of PFAS.
4. Strongly prefer certified Organic foods as these don't use PFAS pesticides that are allowed in conventional foods.
Note that RO water requires monitor pH adjustment, plus adding sodium bicarbonate on top for meeting bicarbonate/buffer requirement, and a substantial increase to one's supplemental calcium and magnesium intake if not already high. RO water is not appropriate for non-technical persons. Countertop RO works pretty well, and it doesn't necessarily have to be under-the-sink. For everyone else, a gravity filter is better than nothing.
> Everything else is basically guesswork
What's up with the haughty arrogance? It is both unjustified and wrong.
Yep, I didn't mention that regarding RO, but any properly designed system will include remineralization as a final filtration stage to buffer the water.
Definitely switch to waxed string floss vs plastic floss made from Teflon. I wasn't aware of the fiber connection, would love to see a study here.
> You completely confuse plastics and linings with PFAS. They're not the same. Linings can contain bisphenols but that doesn't imply PFAS.
I don't confuse anything. Tin cans, soda cans, and other non-plastic packaging is lined with PTFE (e.g. Teflon, made from PFAS) and contains residual PFAS that leach into the food products. One of the most common non-metallic, non-traditional plastic food packaging is Tetra Pak which is entirely constructed from PTFE. Many paper packaging products are coated with an aerosol applied DWR coating which is entirely made from PFAS, which is even worse than DWR coatings on clothing for exposure. This is especially common in paper take-out containers. Microplastics and plasticizer leaching are a separate but also problematic issue, and luckily you can kinda kill two birds with one stone by making these lifestyle changes. Due to the water propellant and flow properties and easy aerosolization of PFAS derived coatings and liners they have quietly pervaded nearly every aspect of the product packaging industry, so it's not just "plastics", it /is/ PFAS.
> What's up with the haughty arrogance? It is both unjustified and wrong.
I don't know what you mean? I provided a helpful reply to the GPs question, and I pointed out the limits of current knowledge. There's no arrogance or haughtiness here. What's with the overly defensive and uncharitable response?
No, you painted your knowledge as being comprehensive, which is absurd for anyone to claim. The arrogance is in asserting one’s personal knowledge as being absolute and complete. It is exactly such arrogance that has brought us to where we are. You obviously mean well for yourself and others, but understand that basic humility of knowledge is more important than the knowledge.
> any properly designed system will include remineralization
The quality of the remineralization can be quite poor. It may raise the pH without adding much minerals or even buffering capacity. Let me distinctly quantify the residual concerns of the RO output as: pH, bicarbonate, chloride, calcium, magnesium, and silica. All six are important. One has to be savvy enough to take steps to address each, failing which the RO water is not healthful.
> It ballpark costs me somewhere around $40k/yr to minimize exposure
Why so much? Where is the money going? Is it going on exclusively Organic food for a family of three?
> No, you painted your knowledge as being comprehensive, which is absurd for anyone to claim. The arrogance is in asserting one’s personal knowledge as being absolute and complete.
I never made any such assertion. I left out the word "my" to make the fact that I was only referring to my own knowledge explicit, which should have been implicitly understood as we /all/ operate from the limits of our own knowledge, all of the time. Once again, you are taking an uncharitable read of my comments even after I've explicitly clarified my intent to be helpful to others. You should disengage from this comment thread and I think it's impossible for us to have a productive conversation if your prior is that I'm an arrogant asshole, despite the fact I'm freely giving of what I do know to help other people. Be better.
i've heard some water filters can take out pfass, and a lot of it comes from food containers (i guess takeout items etc) and non-stick cookware, water-proof clothes [0] so probably good idea to avoid those...
I don't know why people eat pasta, considering bulgur wheat is pretty good, is easy to cook, also cooks in the microwave, and is much less processed. I like bulgur wheat a fair bit.
85 comments
[ 177 ms ] story [ 817 ms ] thread> They have been linked to cancer, birth defects, decreased immunity, high cholesterol, kidney disease and a range of other serious health problems. They are dubbed “forever chemicals” because they can persist for thousands of years in the environment, and are designed to be indestructible.
But _not_ autism! Autism is the great evil we have chosen as our individual health enemy. I don't see autism listed, you may pass.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...
Edit: This also helps others who are in accidents, car wrecks, have Cancer, etc. Yes, we pass on the PFAS to others, but the immediate need for blood is more urgent than the potential long term impacts of PFAS.
For starters, you're not supposed to donate blood when you're sick.
The other being the quantity. A donation is 1-2 pints. Wikipedia lists bloodletting as easily 3 pints [1].
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloodletting#Use_in_the_1600s_...
And it's not like you're concentrating higher levels of PFAS into the recipient, they likely have the same average blood concentration levels as the donor does since we're all equally exposed to the same sources.
Is there no way to filter them out of withdrawn blood?
It is an interesting question. Are there companies that draw and discard?
Did they really think RFK Jr. was ushering in a healthier, “more natural” America?
>The agency said it plans to set less non-binding “action levels” that do not require contaminated food to be removed from shelves. “Tolerance levels”, or limits, make it illegal to sell food contaminated beyond a set threshold.
From the FDA
>Action levels and tolerances represent limits at or above which FDA will take legal action to remove products from the market.
Typical junk tier rage bait journalism you can expect from the guardian.
Your comment does not give a correct impression of FDA's position here.
Action levels are correctly described by the article and not by whatever FDA quote you provided, which seems to imply the FDA is required to take action to remove products. Surpassing action levels do not require FDA to remove products from the market.
https://www.regulations.gov/document/FDA-2020-D-1956-0001
This is not true of any substance.
> Well it is scary and harmful
Well that narrative certainly came through. The facts supporting it did not.
> Do you work for the chemical industry?
No. Do you? Does this invalidate that the article did not use the opportunity to inform me?
Did you ask the LLM about your claim that no level was safe?
A private entity filed a petition to try to force the FDA to set limits and the FDA has said they are studying it themselves, but there is no reason why they should follow this petition's timelines when it already has its own timelines.
Here is their direct response to the petition.
https://www.fda.gov/food/process-contaminants-food/questions...
They are definitely studying this and have narrowed down on areas where they think it's most at risk, ie. water and seafood. But they still have to do more research to figure out exactly how to quantify this. The idea that the FDA needs to follow the deadlines set by some random entity is nonsense. This is a complicated issue and needs deeper research to figure out if there is an issue with the food supply. They said they did tests on a variety of foods and they didn't find anything in many food types, so it's all a process of doing the science
Not enough right wing denial of reality for your tastes?
The FDA were of course were well paid.
it's going to be a health and science dark ages for US
Is there a limit in food, which is what this petition was about?
Maine listened to farmers and confronted the PFAS crisis - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47509448 - February 2026 (0 comments)
Maine Is a Warning for America's PFAS Future - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40007582 - April 2024 (0 comments)
Toxic Chemical Contaminant PFAS Found on Maine Farms - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20142212 - June 2019 (1 comment)
> The practice of spreading sludge as a soil amendment has been a common practice in Maine and across the nation for decades. Land application of sludge material occurred long before there was knowledge that it may contain PFAS or the health implications of PFAS.
EPA Fact Sheet: Draft Sewage Sludge Risk Assessment for PFOA and PFOS: Information for Farmers - https://www.epa.gov/system/files/documents/2025-01/fact-shee... - January 2025
EPA Basic Information about Biosolids: https://19january2021snapshot.epa.gov/biosolids/basic-inform...
Because then The Uniparty would look bad.
Instead, we can prop up the illusion of democracy and point fingers at "the other side" of good cop / bad cop while elites poison everybody more. We wouldn't want people living too far beyond their working years, after all.
But no, everything is a big conspiracy.
No conspiracy required. It's just corporations acting like one would expect. In fact, it'd be very strange if they didn't.
It's fundamentally a design problem (or for elites, a solution).
Environmental pollutants like PFAS fly under the political radar, and there's very little incentive at places like FDA to regulate the problem boldly.
As for a better reception, the assumption was RFK Jr. would take it more seriously.
Lets agree that these folks are wrong and ideally they should have petitioned 12 years ago. The question to ask is - for an admin which loudly claims to make America healthy again and talk about making everything chemical free etc - why can't they pass this? Is it because they can't score brownie points with base or they are overtly corrupt and do the same thing they accuse others of doing? Or that they know their supporters will not look at the validity of the claim and instead discredit people by asking whataboutism and party line questions?
What I'm asking--as someone who thinks we should have draconian regulations around endocrine disruptors, costs be damned--is why there's not more energy around regulating PFAS from the side that generally favors protecting the environment even if that increases costs of doing business. The MAHA people seem to be the most energized about the issue, but they're in the wrong party to do anything about it. How did PFAS fall into this weird donut hole?
Like, Richard Nixon didn’t create an EPA that was going to pursue maximalist environmentalist goals no matter who was elected President. Nobody thought that when the EPA was created.
If there’s not a eureka moment of knowledge, should we do nothing?
We're witnessing the looting of America. Every level of government seems increasingly dedicated to transferring wealth from the taxpayer to the wealthy. But even that's not sufficient. Apparently the wealthy also need to poison the land and people too for an uptick in profits. Why should they care? Capital is mobile. They'll simply leave whenever society collapses.
[1]https://www.patagonia.com/our-footprint/pfas.html
1. Eliminate as many items as possible from your diet that make use of PFAS based components, such as plastic linings. This means don't buy groceries packaged in lined packaging, this means don't cook with Teflon pans, and it means don't drink water from plastic bottles or bottles lines with plastic.
2. Get a whole-home water filtration system that is certified (NSF 53 or similar standard) to reduce/remove PFAS and if possible, on top of this do under-sink RO for drinking/cooking which is certified (NSF 58 or similar) to remove PFAS and use glass or stainless steel reusable water bottles to take water outside your home.
3. Exercise regularly so that you sweat and drink lots of appropriately filtered water, donate blood and/or plasma regularly.
Everything else is basically guesswork, these are the only things known to have any benefit. We mostly ingest PFAS due to contamination in the food and water supply. This contamination is unavoidable, but we can greatly reduce exposure by making smarter choices about packaging materials and cooking methods, and a big one is simply not drinking anything that you can't confirm has been properly filtered and packaged.
I'm a bit extreme, I even brew and bottle my own beer and other beverages like soda and water kefir/kombucha to avoid exposure to externally packaged products that may be contaminated with PFAS.
1. Don't use any PFAS coated nonstick cookware. Don't eat where they might have used them for your cooking.
2. Don't use conventional dental floss as it's made of PFAS. Find ones that aren't.
3. Intake substantial supplemental fiber daily, e.g. psyllium and acacia, as these bind to bile which dissolves some types of PFAS.
4. Strongly prefer certified Organic foods as these don't use PFAS pesticides that are allowed in conventional foods.
Note that RO water requires monitor pH adjustment, plus adding sodium bicarbonate on top for meeting bicarbonate/buffer requirement, and a substantial increase to one's supplemental calcium and magnesium intake if not already high. RO water is not appropriate for non-technical persons. Countertop RO works pretty well, and it doesn't necessarily have to be under-the-sink. For everyone else, a gravity filter is better than nothing.
> Everything else is basically guesswork
What's up with the haughty arrogance? It is both unjustified and wrong.
Definitely switch to waxed string floss vs plastic floss made from Teflon. I wasn't aware of the fiber connection, would love to see a study here.
> You completely confuse plastics and linings with PFAS. They're not the same. Linings can contain bisphenols but that doesn't imply PFAS.
I don't confuse anything. Tin cans, soda cans, and other non-plastic packaging is lined with PTFE (e.g. Teflon, made from PFAS) and contains residual PFAS that leach into the food products. One of the most common non-metallic, non-traditional plastic food packaging is Tetra Pak which is entirely constructed from PTFE. Many paper packaging products are coated with an aerosol applied DWR coating which is entirely made from PFAS, which is even worse than DWR coatings on clothing for exposure. This is especially common in paper take-out containers. Microplastics and plasticizer leaching are a separate but also problematic issue, and luckily you can kinda kill two birds with one stone by making these lifestyle changes. Due to the water propellant and flow properties and easy aerosolization of PFAS derived coatings and liners they have quietly pervaded nearly every aspect of the product packaging industry, so it's not just "plastics", it /is/ PFAS.
> What's up with the haughty arrogance? It is both unjustified and wrong.
I don't know what you mean? I provided a helpful reply to the GPs question, and I pointed out the limits of current knowledge. There's no arrogance or haughtiness here. What's with the overly defensive and uncharitable response?
No, you painted your knowledge as being comprehensive, which is absurd for anyone to claim. The arrogance is in asserting one’s personal knowledge as being absolute and complete. It is exactly such arrogance that has brought us to where we are. You obviously mean well for yourself and others, but understand that basic humility of knowledge is more important than the knowledge.
> any properly designed system will include remineralization
The quality of the remineralization can be quite poor. It may raise the pH without adding much minerals or even buffering capacity. Let me distinctly quantify the residual concerns of the RO output as: pH, bicarbonate, chloride, calcium, magnesium, and silica. All six are important. One has to be savvy enough to take steps to address each, failing which the RO water is not healthful.
> It ballpark costs me somewhere around $40k/yr to minimize exposure
Why so much? Where is the money going? Is it going on exclusively Organic food for a family of three?
I never made any such assertion. I left out the word "my" to make the fact that I was only referring to my own knowledge explicit, which should have been implicitly understood as we /all/ operate from the limits of our own knowledge, all of the time. Once again, you are taking an uncharitable read of my comments even after I've explicitly clarified my intent to be helpful to others. You should disengage from this comment thread and I think it's impossible for us to have a productive conversation if your prior is that I'm an arrogant asshole, despite the fact I'm freely giving of what I do know to help other people. Be better.
[0] https://www.greenmatters.com/living/list-of-products-with-pf...