3 ms·
My first thought was chemical as well due to the recent series of articles about DuPont's use of the surfactant C8[0] and how they continued to use it for fifty
by filoeleven 11y ago
My first thought was chemical as well due to the recent series of articles about DuPont's use of the surfactant C8[0] and how they continued to use it for fifty years after knowing that it caused major problems in humans and was leaking into the environment[1]. This chemical is now ubiquitous, it's in everybody, and it's an endocrine disruptor, meaning that it screws with living systems that are controlled by hormones, and it does so in very small doses.
There are literally thousands of unstudied, unregulated chemicals in industrial use in America. Chances are high that there are a number of them doing a number on us.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfluorooctanoic_acid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfluorooctanoic_acid
[1]https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/08/11/dupont-chemistry-deception/ https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/08/11/dupont-chemist...
- mirimir 11y agoIt's arguable that most industrial organic chemicals are degraded in the environment in one way or another. But some aren't. And others have environmentally stable degradation products. So there are probably at least tens of thousands of persistent, anthropogenic, organic chemicals. The lipophilic ones are most hazardous, because they bioaccumulate through the food chain. Also, the more volatile ones tend to get trapped in polar regions. So lipid levels for Eskimos and penguins are higher than those for more equatorial populations. I wonder if body mass has increased more in recent decades among polar populations than among equatorial populations.