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This article is not great, it reads too much like scaremongering. But the underlying problem of PFOA/PFOS is real. The article fails to mention that most chemic
by erostrate 6y ago
This article is not great, it reads too much like scaremongering. But the underlying problem of PFOA/PFOS is real. The article fails to mention that most chemical companies have been phasing out these chemicals for several years.
There is a pretty good movie about this topic, Dark Waters. The movie is well informed, largely accurate, and more factual than this article. The main protagonist of the movie is actually Robert Billott, the author of this article.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Waters_(2019_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Waters_(2019_film)
- forgotmypw17 6y agoScaremongering?! How much fucking scarier can it get than carcinogens, mutagens, and birth defect causing chemicals being spread througout our entire food and water supply while any attempts to inform about it are systematically supressed? If you are not scared, you must be blessed with not having seen anyone in your life get cancer.
- s1artibartfast 6y agoIt was definitely scaremongering, not to be confused with informing the public. The article lacked all of the basic information that would be of use to the reader. E.g What is the primary route of ingestion? Is it more or less dangerous than eating BBQ? Is usage already being curtailed?
- wolfretcrap 6y agoI used to be bothered by it too, now I grow my own food so I don't care what rest of the world is adding to their food.
- adrianN 6y agoUnless you happen to live in an off-world colony, growing your own food will not protect you.
- irjustin 6y agoFeels like you didn't read the article (the NYTimes one is way better). This is Teflon before 2016. If you were close enough, it was in drinking water... water you would have used for growing your own food. Organics would have provided zero protection.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- boudin 6y agoUnless you live in a totally closed eco-system, you share the same water, air, fauna and flora as anybody. So you should be concerned as well.
- smabie 6y agoYou grow all of your own food? You don't eat any food grown by any person except yourself?
- Guthur 6y agoWell there was this hyperbolic gem So now, as we struggle to live through a once-in-a-century pandemic... This is just so categorically false, there has been both the HIV/AIDs pandemic and the Asian Flu in the 60s both were/are way more deadly.
- collyw 6y agoHeart disease and cancer are still killing significantly more people than covid. And are still pretty much ignored.
- dm319 6y agoGod I keep hearing this. Most heart disease can be prevented or delayed by decades by smoking cessation. Some cancers similarly. We spend huge amount of man power and money on cancer research so I don't know how that is ignoring it.
- saiya-jin 6y agoNo smoking, better(also less) eating and more physical activity would cure probably 80-90% of these... for some reason, that's too much to ask for from so many folks because some blah blah excuses, like anybody would care about those. And its not about perfection, any sustained attempt will bring almost immediate massive benefits in quality of life and happiness. One day our descendants will be looking at us as primitive stupid self harming apes
- shrimp_emoji 6y agoThe cardiac, pulmonary, and endocrine disease burden tied to air pollution throws a monkey wrench in that, and air pollution kills many times more people per year than even COVID-19 has[0][1]. Humans suck at assessing dangers soberly. Another example: the Department of Homeland Security and the TSA in the U.S. exist solely because 3,000 people died one day. Significantly less is being done as 3,000 people now die per day. 0: https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerpielke/2020/03/10/every-day-10000-people-die-due-to-air-pollution-from-fossil-fuels/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerpielke/2020/03/10/every-da... 1: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/12/03/pand-d03.html https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/12/03/pand-d03.html
- mihaaly 6y agoCarcinogenicity alone means nothing. Sunshine is carcinogenic too for god's sake as many naturally occurring thing in the environment. “the dose makes the poison” We should not load ourselves unnecessarily but be realistic still not overusing strong scaring tactics regardless of circumstances as we will be powerless handling more serious cases presenting themselves. There is difference between going hysterical and being cautious.
- Technically 6y agoWhat do you mean by "unnecessarily"? How are you quantifying the risk and what is the certainty where it becomes worth addressing across 7+ billion people? You haven't demonstrated that this is "hysteria" and your own blasé attitude is worth imitating.
- mihaaly 6y agoWhat will constitute unnecessary load was not the topic here, obviously, but the overusing of strong and scary style for an already very serious topic. The side comment - in favor of the comment replied btw. - about avoiding adverse effect if possible is a side comment only. What is unnecessary load is highly context dependent, obviously, to be a comment space enough to discuss reliably, depending on the situation, please do not stress this derailment of issue. Also demonstrating if the level of hysteria reached, really? : ) Come on! Do you know some scientific method to accurately and objectively measure it so it will not be an individual/group human perception? I don't think so. Consider this as it really is: a strong perception from the public. Thank you.
- stevehawk 6y agoAre carcinogens still scary? I mean, at this point I've been told that everything is carcinogenic, even if the amount I have to be exposed to is so large that it'd never cause cancer. How many Prop 65 signs do you see in California just walking around in public? Warning: This post contains chemicals known to the state of California to cause cancer and birth defects blah blah Prop 65
- njarboe 6y agoGot a Prop 65 text from AT&T when my new internet modem was installed. What a joke.
- yellowapple 6y agoA Prop 65 sign is what I used to give my quarterpanel window some rigidity when I "replaced" it with copious amounts of clear Gorilla Tape. It shall forever commemorate that San Francisco (the location where said window got broken, all for a defective jump starter) is known to the State of California to cause cancer.
- px43 6y agoThe "bad" part of the word "scaremongering" is the "mongering" part. It's fine to be scared of things, and talking about scary things, but when you intentionally work to scare people for profit, that's a pretty shitty thing to do. At that point, you're no longer informing the public, you're trying to provoke a disproportionate and often irrational response for your own financial gain.
- ironmagma 6y agoIsn’t it only a bad thing to do if the person has no reason to be scared? If there is a fire in the building, I want someone to tell me, not shut up because of a desire to avoid scaremongering.
- px43 6y agoIt's pretty easy to tell people about a fire in the building without trying to make money in the process. That's what "mongering" means. Fearmongering means trying to make money by selling fear.
- ironmagma 6y agoIt is a fallacy however to assume that because someone is telling you something and getting paid to do so, that the being paid part is the only reason they are doing it. If you already believed that a car is the most valuable asset a person in America is likely to need, you would be more likely to become a car salesman than someone who is fundamentally opposed to the idea of cars. So the set of car salesmen is probably skewed toward the people who really believe in cars and would be preaching car stuff even if they weren’t paid to do it. But if you are passionate about something, and can get paid to do it, why would you not take it as your job, since it makes you more effective at doing the thing and also lets you do it full time.
- juancn 6y agoDude, hot water is a known carcinogenic. It is scaremongering unless backed by hard stats that point to the urgency. Cancer is the default disease, it amounts to a cell copying error, if something else doesn't kill you, you eventually develop it. It's basic statistics. Life expectancy has never been higher, I'm not saying we shouldn't watch out for dangerous substances in the environment, but there will always be some, and the relative risk is usually quite small. It's not if suddenly, life expectancy went down by 10 years and we cannot explain it. This is more like: "mhhh interesting, we should take a closer look at it". Alcoholic beverages or going out in the sun are probably bigger health risks.
- nevinera 6y agoYou should be outraged, not scared. But what he's saying isn't that there's nothing to be scared of, just that this particular type of BS is just as often written about things that actually aren't real problems. This is the exact same tone the anti-vaccination crew consume constantly - it holds no numbers, and threatens us with words like "poison", "unique properties", and "have confirmed links", without specifying how strong those links are, or how much actual impact they have. With a good study, you can have a statistically significant outcome of "increases the odds of rectal cancer over a lifetime by 0.0001%", but that shouldn't really motivate much change, since you can say that about bananas. It's attention-inducing alarmism: "scaremongering". Most of the country consumes 'science' only through the lens of journalism, and journalists have been doing an increasingly awful job of helping readers distinguish between real problems, potential problems, and non-issues. Fear sells a lot better than science does.
- lallysingh 6y ago> Frankly, I was shaken to the core by what was exposed, yet I understood why the stakes were sky high for those seeking to hide the truth. Writing like this belongs on Taboola headings, not in an article about genuinely scary shit.
- adrr 6y agoCancer rates are at historic lows except for colon cancer and skin cancer. Birth defects are also at historic lows. Almost everything is a mutagen.
- mrfusion 6y agoWhy colon?
- adrr 6y agoMy guess is our diet has changed to include more meat. https://osher.ucsf.edu/patient-care/integrative-medicine-resources/cancer-and-nutrition/faq/animal-protein-cancer-risk https://osher.ucsf.edu/patient-care/integrative-medicine-res...
- LargoLasskhyfv 6y agoWhy not? Most of what we take in, goes through there. Another point would be the bladder, and associated drainage systems. Liver and kidney slightly less so.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- NiceWayToDoIT 6y agoI am getting annoyed by people using "scaremongering" word more and more frequently. Each time someone raises serious issue especially against gov or big corporation, s/he is scaremongering?! It is like a super powered dismissive term to stop all conversation. I guess tobacco industry is also using scare mongering when people were raising voice because so many of cancer cases. Someone being scared depends on so many things and it is subjective. On the other hand being paralyzed by our mind projections or being prepared to do something about is different thing. Flight of fight response... Personally I would rather know, whatever information is, and how bad it is, than choosing alternative to bury my head into the sand when ever says something that is bad. You can act only if you have information, and only way to propagate information (unfortunately) in our society is if it shocking. Good news simply do not sell papers. Just imagine, in IT projects, someone finds a back door or Zero-day exploit, and you alarm the company and they answer, "nah it is all ok, stop scaremongering users" ?! I am trying to imagine doctor that says to the colleague, this man has serious heart failure or cancer, but I should not tell him as that may scared him. Trying to remember the movie scene/motivation speech where narrator says "Fear is good it keeps you alive." Fear is good prevent us doing stupid things...
- yellowapple 6y ago> Each time someone raises serious issue especially against gov or big corporation, s/he is scaremongering?! No. What is scaremongering is spending 2/3rds of an article playing up how teflon poisoning our blood is some tightly-guarded secret by nefarious actors twirling their mustaches and laughing at birth defects. That is: this particular article in question is written in a way that puts scaremongering over actual actionable information, to the point where it ends up crossing into unintentional comedy by reading like the crazed ramblings of someone taking "dihydrogen monoxide" pranks at face value.
- NiceWayToDoIT 6y ago> scaremongering is spending 2/3rds of an article playing up how teflon poisoning our blood is some tightly-guarded secret by nefarious actors Issue is - it was tightly-guarded secret by nefarious actors, and still is because "informing" as you say does not do anything. I do not know how you call the people who poison other people for the sake of profit, but historically if you do it on small scale they call you murderer and you end up behind the bars. I would like to avoid quoting Stalin here. By many country law, for instance if you see crime in progress (rape, murder, robbery...) and you do not do anything about it you are defined as accomplice, in DuPont no one said anything, they had mortgages, families to feed, salaries and investment to protect. So, DuPont knew all along that their product is not safe because they paid for the tests, and they hid the results. Their explanation was and still is that Teflon is too valuable and it is American product. So, lets scale this down, let's say I make a alcohol beverage, and it has poisons levels of methanol, and I know about it I know it is deadly, but I serve you that drink never the less because my excuse is, "I would be too ashamed and I will lose profit", so my question to you is what I am doing criminal is it evil and wicked? Now, what if you scale that same beverage to the entire planet, and you do not tell anyone, because business is booming? People are poisoned slowly ... "In 2019, DuPont led the Toxic 100 Water Polluters Index.[34] The film Dark Waters dramatized a legal case against DuPont related to contaminating a town in West Virginia with unregulated toxic chemicals which poisoned thousands of individuals, this case led to DuPont finally settling all 3,535 cases for $670.7 million." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuPont https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuPont https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Waters_(2019_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Waters_(2019_film) In DuPont case they settled for $670.7 million and no one ended behind bars, and government needed years before reeling finding, while at the same time DuPont was lobbying and using different kind of other tricks to stop the entire case. DuPont for instance delayed the case, and prolong poisoning of all people on the planet, by finding loophole that says that case can be run against them on person bases. The entire battle lasted for 20 years. And you tell me that is not nefarious? How many people do you know that had perseverance to continue battle for 20 years, when you are running out of resources and everyone is abandoning you? And I would like if you could explain me what is "actionable information"? You cannot go to hospital and say, please extract PFAS and PFOS out of me, it is deposited in our bodies, slowly killing us and we cannot do zip about it, only thing we can do is go for DuPont management (as it seems from the 2019 they have not change the way they do business) and shut them down forever and put all connected behind the bars.
- WesolyKubeczek 6y agoIt's done in the typical style of the Guardian. Sometimes I feel like their editors just throw away more balanced articles.
- thaumasiotes 6y ago>> There is a pretty good movie about this topic, Dark Waters. The movie is well informed, largely accurate, and more factual than this article. The main protagonist of the movie is actually Robert Billott, the author of this article. I think there's a place for running articles by major figures as-is. And Robert Bilott would seem to qualify as a major figure in this context.
- archi42 6y agoAs others pointed out, it's explicitly marked as an opinion. By someone who campaigns to solve the problem. It is not a journalistic article. Think of it more like an extensive comment on HN, by someone well-informed and a strong opinion on the subject.
- Dirlewanger 6y agoIt is not like a comment on HN. The Guardian editorial staff wouldn't agree to publish it (and pay the author) if they didn't agree with it on some level.
- hourislate 6y agoPeter Attia covered this in bottle mineral water and apparently some of the brands had more than he was comfortable with. Below is a good list if you like mineral water. Seems Perrier is the safest. Great Article https://peterattiamd.com/topo-chico/ https://peterattiamd.com/topo-chico/
- abstractbarista 6y agoJust throwing out another related film: The Devil We Know (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Devil_We_Know https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Devil_We_Know)
- garettmd 6y agoI'm curious if you read the article, as the end the article points to the Dark Waters film (pointing out that the author's book was the inspiration for the movie), along with two other resources. This article is obviously an opinion piece meant to alert the general public to this topic, and did a good job - I think - of pointing people to deeper resources.
- downrightmike 6y agoIf you live near a Air force base, these chemicals are constantly running off into the ground water, because the fire crews must practice and they need the PF etc as it covers the jet fuel to put out the fire.
- jvanderbot 6y agoTFA links this movie, since the author made that movie.