11 ms·

PFAS “forever” chemicals found in hundreds more everyday products

113 points by mimixco 6y ago

tda 6y ago
Quite scary to read. Known poisonous and long lasting chemical substances are used in a very wide range of products. In the Netherlands all earth movement was temporarily prohibited last year when it was found that many sites had too high concentrations of PFAS. So nearly all soils were considered hazardous material. Of course this was "solved" by changing the threshold of allowed PFAS to something much higher...
- themmes 6y ago
  And if we (I'm also Dutch) can't change the regulation for some reason we simply drive a bit further and dump it in Eastern Germany (has happened for other types of soil pollution in the past, not PFAS). I find it shocking that these things can happen within the EU.
  - the-dude 6y ago
    Perhaps it is a feature, not a bug. The EU is a tradeblock, the rest is facade. Case in point : the COVID response.
keeganjw 6y ago
I bought a pack of Elixir guitar strings the other day and noticed on the back it said they're made by W.L. Gore as in the people who make Gore-Tex. Turns out the strings are all coated in PFAS to keep them from corroding. I guess I knew they were coated but I just never really thought with what...
- bozzcl 6y ago
  Oh man. I have been using them nearly exclusively since 2010. Time to look for new strings, I guess.
  - keeganjw 6y ago
    Yeah it sucks and I don't think they're alone. It seems to be all coated strings. I've switched to D'Addario NYXL's for electric now.
    - bozzcl 6y ago
      That's gonna be a problem for me... I use coated strings because my sweat is on the acidic side, to the point steel or nickel strings last barely a month or two before rusting completely. Maybe I need to get better at cleaning my strings, I have to admit I do miss the twang of Ernie Balls.
- nate_meurer 6y ago
  No, Elixir strings are coated with PTFE, not PFAS. These are two entirely different substances. PTFE is a polymer, often referred to by its most well-known brand name Teflon. Over decades of use, there is zero evidence of any health effects whatsoever from PTFE, the only exception being when it's heated to around 500 deg F. In everyday use it is completely inert and harmless. PFAS is a generic term describing a family of fluorinated chemicals. Evidence is piling up that many of these have serious and long-lasting health effects. Some PFAS chemicals are used as the monomers for making PTFE, but once the PTFE is made, the constituent monomers cannot be released except by extreme heat. All that to say, your coated guitar strings are completely safe. Certainly safer than the teflon-coated pans I cook on every day.
  - brnt 6y ago
    Not on your guitar obviously, but on the furnace or in the oven, 500 F or 260 C isn't very unusual.
    - nate_meurer 6y ago
      Very true. It's alarmingly easy to overheat a nonstick pan.
      - blockmeifyoucan 6y ago
        I bought a forged iron pan years ago because i got tired oft buying new teflon pans every x months. It's brilliant! Used only for frying (no tomato sauces etc) and with high initial heat it eventually non-sticks better than teflon and e.g. pancakes turn out perfect.
        Ductapemaster 6y ago
        Yeah I dumped my Teflon cookware years ago, with the exception of one nice nonstick baking sheet I have. Cast iron requires a bit of care but it’s really not that hard. Plus if you screw it up, just strip it down and start over! For acidic foods I use an enameled cast iron Dutch oven, or a SS sauce pot.
iforgotpassword 6y ago
And yet we wonder why people get Alzheimer's and Parkinson's left and right. We look back at leaded gas and think "holy hell were people stupid back then, and man, BP knowingly preferred that over less hazardous solutions just because they already had a patent on it" when nothing has changed today. I threw out all Teflon pans years ago. When the dishwasher finishes I do an extra 15 minute water-only run, same with laundry. Im torn between thinking it might make things a little bit better for my health, and feeling like a sad clown in need for a tinfoil hat. Assuming a lot of soil is already contaminated and thus food that I eat, what I do is probably irrelevant. Also > President-elect Biden has promised fast action. But he also placed Michael McCabe, who oversaw DuPont’s successful effort to dodge regulation of PFOA and introduce a similarly toxic replacement PFAS compound, on his EPA transition team. Really disappointing. I guess for the people, Biden is still the better outcome than Trump, but the Democrats would have deserved another slap in the face.
- the_only_law 6y ago
  I’ve been watching some videos as of late on several disasters from radiation poisoning, to contamination from industrial waste and I can’t help but thinking just how much of mess some of this stuff is.
- buckminster 6y ago
  I don't want to detract from your comment, but it wasn't BP, it was Standard Oil, General Motors and DuPont.
- ceejayoz 6y ago
  > And yet we wonder why people get Alzheimer's and Parkinson's left and right. I don't know that you can conclude this. Both diseases predate the use of PFAS by at least decades, and the ancient Greeks documented Alzheimers'-like symptoms.
  - iforgotpassword 6y ago
    Sorry, I didn't mean that PFAS (specifically, exclusively) causes Alzheimer's and Parkinson's (specifically, exclusively), let alone that it created them. PFAS is just one of the many things where evidence is finally piling up that it's bad for you and the environment. Look at how many Parkinson's related deaths there were per year per 100k over the last 50 years, it's been ever increasing, same with cancer. When I have to pick between "this is complete coincidence and out of our control" and "this might be because of some chemical we started using excessively for a dozen different things during the last century" I know what my choice will be. And I do see the problem that there are too many possibilities here to make an educated guess, and it's possible that PFAS and whatever is in detergent ultimately doesn't cause any significant harm to you, but my choice has simply been to change my everyday behavior in minor ways where it might have a positive impact in the best case, and worst case is placebo for peace of mind and will cost me a bit of time and convenience. Hope that cleared things up.
jabl 6y ago
This is part of a long series of articles on PF* chemical pollution (yes, linked in the article): https://theintercept.com/collections/bad-chemistry/ https://theintercept.com/collections/bad-chemistry/ Worth reading.
themmes 6y ago
Similar discussion a few months back when Robert Gore passed away https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24534406 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24534406
TurningCanadian 6y ago
Quirks and Quarks (podcast here https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-51-quirks-and-quarks https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-51-quirks-and-quarks) did an awesome 3-part series on these https://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/nov-7-fast-radio-bursts-in-our-galaxy-monkeys-with-a-puberty-switch-and-more-1.5789388/forever-chemicals-can-have-far-reaching-consequences-need-more-regulation-in-canada-scientists-say-1.5789395 https://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/nov-7-fast-radio-bursts-in-o...

113 points by mimixco 6y ago

tda 6y ago

Quite scary to read. Known poisonous and long lasting chemical substances are used in a very wide range of products. In the Netherlands all earth movement was temporarily prohibited last year when it was found that many sites had too high concentrations of PFAS. So nearly all soils were considered hazardous material. Of course this was "solved" by changing the threshold of allowed PFAS to something much higher...

themmes 6y ago
And if we (I'm also Dutch) can't change the regulation for some reason we simply drive a bit further and dump it in Eastern Germany (has happened for other types of soil pollution in the past, not PFAS). I find it shocking that these things can happen within the EU.
- the-dude 6y ago
  Perhaps it is a feature, not a bug. The EU is a tradeblock, the rest is facade. Case in point : the COVID response.

keeganjw 6y ago

I bought a pack of Elixir guitar strings the other day and noticed on the back it said they're made by W.L. Gore as in the people who make Gore-Tex. Turns out the strings are all coated in PFAS to keep them from corroding. I guess I knew they were coated but I just never really thought with what...

bozzcl 6y ago
Oh man. I have been using them nearly exclusively since 2010. Time to look for new strings, I guess.
- keeganjw 6y ago
  Yeah it sucks and I don't think they're alone. It seems to be all coated strings. I've switched to D'Addario NYXL's for electric now.
  - bozzcl 6y ago
    That's gonna be a problem for me... I use coated strings because my sweat is on the acidic side, to the point steel or nickel strings last barely a month or two before rusting completely. Maybe I need to get better at cleaning my strings, I have to admit I do miss the twang of Ernie Balls.
nate_meurer 6y ago
No, Elixir strings are coated with PTFE, not PFAS. These are two entirely different substances. PTFE is a polymer, often referred to by its most well-known brand name Teflon. Over decades of use, there is zero evidence of any health effects whatsoever from PTFE, the only exception being when it's heated to around 500 deg F. In everyday use it is completely inert and harmless. PFAS is a generic term describing a family of fluorinated chemicals. Evidence is piling up that many of these have serious and long-lasting health effects. Some PFAS chemicals are used as the monomers for making PTFE, but once the PTFE is made, the constituent monomers cannot be released except by extreme heat. All that to say, your coated guitar strings are completely safe. Certainly safer than the teflon-coated pans I cook on every day.
- brnt 6y ago
  Not on your guitar obviously, but on the furnace or in the oven, 500 F or 260 C isn't very unusual.
  - nate_meurer 6y ago
    Very true. It's alarmingly easy to overheat a nonstick pan.
    - blockmeifyoucan 6y ago
      I bought a forged iron pan years ago because i got tired oft buying new teflon pans every x months. It's brilliant! Used only for frying (no tomato sauces etc) and with high initial heat it eventually non-sticks better than teflon and e.g. pancakes turn out perfect.
      - Ductapemaster 6y ago
        Yeah I dumped my Teflon cookware years ago, with the exception of one nice nonstick baking sheet I have. Cast iron requires a bit of care but it’s really not that hard. Plus if you screw it up, just strip it down and start over! For acidic foods I use an enameled cast iron Dutch oven, or a SS sauce pot.

iforgotpassword 6y ago

And yet we wonder why people get Alzheimer's and Parkinson's left and right. We look back at leaded gas and think "holy hell were people stupid back then, and man, BP knowingly preferred that over less hazardous solutions just because they already had a patent on it" when nothing has changed today. I threw out all Teflon pans years ago. When the dishwasher finishes I do an extra 15 minute water-only run, same with laundry. Im torn between thinking it might make things a little bit better for my health, and feeling like a sad clown in need for a tinfoil hat. Assuming a lot of soil is already contaminated and thus food that I eat, what I do is probably irrelevant. Also > President-elect Biden has promised fast action. But he also placed Michael McCabe, who oversaw DuPont’s successful effort to dodge regulation of PFOA and introduce a similarly toxic replacement PFAS compound, on his EPA transition team. Really disappointing. I guess for the people, Biden is still the better outcome than Trump, but the Democrats would have deserved another slap in the face.

the_only_law 6y ago
I’ve been watching some videos as of late on several disasters from radiation poisoning, to contamination from industrial waste and I can’t help but thinking just how much of mess some of this stuff is.
buckminster 6y ago
I don't want to detract from your comment, but it wasn't BP, it was Standard Oil, General Motors and DuPont.
ceejayoz 6y ago
> And yet we wonder why people get Alzheimer's and Parkinson's left and right. I don't know that you can conclude this. Both diseases predate the use of PFAS by at least decades, and the ancient Greeks documented Alzheimers'-like symptoms.
- iforgotpassword 6y ago
  Sorry, I didn't mean that PFAS (specifically, exclusively) causes Alzheimer's and Parkinson's (specifically, exclusively), let alone that it created them. PFAS is just one of the many things where evidence is finally piling up that it's bad for you and the environment. Look at how many Parkinson's related deaths there were per year per 100k over the last 50 years, it's been ever increasing, same with cancer. When I have to pick between "this is complete coincidence and out of our control" and "this might be because of some chemical we started using excessively for a dozen different things during the last century" I know what my choice will be. And I do see the problem that there are too many possibilities here to make an educated guess, and it's possible that PFAS and whatever is in detergent ultimately doesn't cause any significant harm to you, but my choice has simply been to change my everyday behavior in minor ways where it might have a positive impact in the best case, and worst case is placebo for peace of mind and will cost me a bit of time and convenience. Hope that cleared things up.

jabl 6y ago

This is part of a long series of articles on PF* chemical pollution (yes, linked in the article): https://theintercept.com/collections/bad-chemistry/ https://theintercept.com/collections/bad-chemistry/ Worth reading.

themmes 6y ago

Similar discussion a few months back when Robert Gore passed away https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24534406 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24534406

TurningCanadian 6y ago

Quirks and Quarks (podcast here https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-51-quirks-and-quarks https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-51-quirks-and-quarks) did an awesome 3-part series on these https://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/nov-7-fast-radio-bursts-in-our-galaxy-monkeys-with-a-puberty-switch-and-more-1.5789388/forever-chemicals-can-have-far-reaching-consequences-need-more-regulation-in-canada-scientists-say-1.5789395 https://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/nov-7-fast-radio-bursts-in-o...