35 ms·

Seems like the jury is still out. From the second link: "In all honesty, we suspect that the risks with both types of nonstick cookware are low, and you would

Seems like the jury is still out. From the second link: "In all honesty, we suspect that the risks with both types of nonstick cookware are low, and you would probably benefit more from focusing on risks in your drinking water and food supply (for example). "

nosianu 5y ago
Why would you add an additional risk if you can just avoid it to begin with? I think pointing to "we don't know" as if it's equal to "it does not matter" is not good policy. A better one is "better safe than sorry" from my point of view. As someone who has had a (university clinic, lab values supported) heavy metal poisoning diagnosis, I had positive effects of chelation (DMPS, DMSA, some ALA) long after the clinical case was closed, i.e. for measured excretion values way below where a treatment would be started (at the start it was high). My doctor (a researcher mostly) supported me continuing to take them, but he was clear that we had left the area supported by clinical studies. Because now we were in an area where studies were just too hard or even impossible, which didn't mean it was all gone and that the chelators were useless. That's because we have no methods - apart from large-number statistics based studies which only tell you something about populations but don't help any one concrete individual because there is no way to tell which part of the large-number based statistics an individual belongs to - to say for sure what is going on. And when you get a population level result, such as "there is no safe level of lead exposure", you still don't have anything for individuals, such statistics only support big policies but not individual treatments. Of course the jury is still out - like it is for pretty much all long term low level effects of anything, especially in the messy real world. Even if you performed an unethical study and found an effect of one thing by careful exposure of some people to something you still would not know the effect of many things. I once read a study (PubMed), a standard LD (lethal dose) toxicity study of heavy metals on rats, with mercury and lead, where when they were done with each individually they tried combining those two metals. Toxicity shot up through the roof, a tiny fraction of the amount needed to kill half the rats now was enough to kill almost all of them.

nosianu 5y ago

Why would you add an additional risk if you can just avoid it to begin with? I think pointing to "we don't know" as if it's equal to "it does not matter" is not good policy. A better one is "better safe than sorry" from my point of view. As someone who has had a (university clinic, lab values supported) heavy metal poisoning diagnosis, I had positive effects of chelation (DMPS, DMSA, some ALA) long after the clinical case was closed, i.e. for measured excretion values way below where a treatment would be started (at the start it was high). My doctor (a researcher mostly) supported me continuing to take them, but he was clear that we had left the area supported by clinical studies. Because now we were in an area where studies were just too hard or even impossible, which didn't mean it was all gone and that the chelators were useless. That's because we have no methods - apart from large-number statistics based studies which only tell you something about populations but don't help any one concrete individual because there is no way to tell which part of the large-number based statistics an individual belongs to - to say for sure what is going on. And when you get a population level result, such as "there is no safe level of lead exposure", you still don't have anything for individuals, such statistics only support big policies but not individual treatments. Of course the jury is still out - like it is for pretty much all long term low level effects of anything, especially in the messy real world. Even if you performed an unethical study and found an effect of one thing by careful exposure of some people to something you still would not know the effect of many things. I once read a study (PubMed), a standard LD (lethal dose) toxicity study of heavy metals on rats, with mercury and lead, where when they were done with each individually they tried combining those two metals. Toxicity shot up through the roof, a tiny fraction of the amount needed to kill half the rats now was enough to kill almost all of them.