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Rainwater everywhere on Earth unsafe to drink due to ‘forever chemicals’
- solstice 4y agoThe paper on which this article is based: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.2c02765 https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.2c02765
- josephcsible 4y ago> But others say that no cause and effect can be proven between these chemicals and poor health. If the health effects of these chemicals are really as bad as it's claimed they are, then shouldn't it be easy to conclusively show some small but nonzero effect?
- superchroma 4y agoSome huge damage to the planet here for very little relative reward. No comment on how the rainwater distributes these chemicals, too. Also no mention of how firefighting drills with modern fire suppressants at airports and military bases have poisoned the earth and local water supplies; it's not just the rain that's a problem.
- Proven 4y ago
- ctack 4y agoThis has been coming for a long time. How are our systems and thinking so blind this kind of thing? If we’re lucky it’ll take years if not decades to as a society stop this contamination. These levels are just the beginning and we’ll look back on them as the good ol days when the levels were ‘low’.
- mistrial9 4y ago> our systems and thinking our systems and thinking have not been blind to it, there have been both serious and emotional objections at every single step. The ugly truth is that there is very little of "we" when it comes to control and making money.
- _spduchamp 4y agoWith a systems view, it appears governments are not able to be responsive enough to known environmental problems. This is a big part of why I advocate for electoral reform (in particular a citizens' assembly on electoral reform) to move to a proportional system where we as individuals have representation and can actually have our votes matter. Without citizens able to control their governments, it just leaves large corporate interests to control them, and blame everything on what people buy. We don't get long term systemic change that favours the well being of people without upgrading the electoral systems first.
- t_mann 4y agoWe really need to adopt an 'unsafe-until-proven-otherwise' mindset for materials, similar to how we view drugs. If you read up on the history of leaded fuel and other products, it defies belief.
- Blackstone4 4y agoProving a negative can be extremely impractical. Maybe a better way would be to introduce a mechanism to have products removed quickly.
- ETH_start 4y agoRemoving forever chemicals can be more practical
- ClumsyPilot 4y agoif they really poisoned all water on earth, and did so knowingly, what we really need is pitchforks amd guilotinnes. We have failed all future generations
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- toomuchtodo 4y agoThere won’t be change until there are consequences.
- eurasiantiger 4y agoI certainly wouldn’t want to be a current or former DuPont, Chemours, BASF or 3M executive right now. Just today I learned that all commercial beverage bottles and cans in the US are treated with fluorinated gases and then leach these same forever chemicals to whatever beverage they contain.
- rawland 4y ago> [...] linked to fertility problems, > increased risk of cancer and developmental > delays in children. All mammals and all animals are exposed...
- mrcartmeneses 4y agoCancer isn’t much of a problem for most other animals due to their shorter lifespans.
- scotty79 4y agoIf they never break down then how do they react in the bodies to produce any effects? Is it because of acidic stomach environment?
- mrcartmeneses 4y agoThere are plenty of chemicals that can cause a chemical reaction to happen without being destroyed themselves. These are known as catalysts and include enzymes, for example. I don’t know what the mechanism is for these chemicals to be carcinogenic but there’s no reason to assume that just because they don’t break down that means they are safe to ingest.
- eurasiantiger 4y agoThese chemicals contain many fluorine ions as a part of their molecular structure. This is what gives them their ability to keep things like water, fat and protein from sticking to them, as well as their ability to lower the surface tension of liquids. In the human body, these properties are unwanted, slightly speaking. These molecules screw up pretty much everything at the cellular level—worse, they tend to accumulate in internal organs, which slowly makes them more and more water-repellent and non-sticky. Imagine having your liver and kidneys try to do their thing with those molecules everywhere interfering with the entire organ structure as well as the movement of fluids.
- agsnu 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Waters_(2019_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Waters_(2019_film) is a great film.
- yuan43 4y ago> Rainwater almost everywhere on Earth has unsafe levels of ‘forever chemicals’, according to new research. And yet the title of the research paper, the journal in which it was published, or even the vaguest description of the experiment that was performed are not mentioned. I've given up ever getting a direct link to a paper, but this takes laziness and cynicism to new extremes. Abysmal science reporting.
- meltyness 4y agoI suspect the root cause is this linguistically unfortunate journal title: "Outside the Safe Operating Space of a New Planetary Boundary for [PFAS]" which you can attempt to review here: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/acs.est.2c02765 https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/acs.est.2c02765 It would seem environmental science wishes to call everything an environment, and discuss the status of the PFAS chemosphere, which would be confusing if you weren't paying close attention. Edit: The abstract was also, maybe geared towards SEO? Discoverability? Here's maybe a clearer rendition "ABSTRACT: It is hypothesized that environmental contamination by [PFAS] [is spreading globally, by clouds and rain in the atmosphere]. This hypothesis is tested by comparing the levels of four selected [PFAS substances] in [rainwater, soils, and surface waters] with [state agency guidelines]. [...] it is concluded that (1) levels [in rainwater] often greatly exceed US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ["Lifetime Drinking Water Health Advisory levels"] and [are] often above Danish drinking water limit[s...] (2) levels [...] in rainwater are often above Environmental Quality Standard for Inland European Union Surface Water; and (3) [the rain contaminates the soil, on a widespread basis] above proposed Dutch guideline values. It is, therefore, concluded that the [rainwater, soils, and surface waters, across the earth, have all been contaminated]. [We also hypothesize] [the soil contamination] are especially poorly reversible because of the high persistence of [the chemicals] and their ability to continuously cycle [...]. Because of the poor reversibility of environmental exposure to PFAS and their associated effects, it is vitally important that PFAS uses and emissions are rapidly restricted."
- schroeding 4y agoYeah, it's frustrating. :/ Direct link to the study: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.est.2c02765 https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.est.2c02765 Cousins et al., Outside the Safe Operating Space of a New Planetary Boundary for Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS), Environmental Science & Technology, 2022
- bergenty 4y agoI don’t get it. How can it be in rain water? Does it have the same boiling point as water?
- mythrwy 4y agoAgree. Was hoping to see the mechanism of how it got in the rainwater. Fluff article.
- frazbin 4y agoDoesn't need to have the same boiling point, just needs to have some partial vapor pressure at 1 atm and be miscible with water. One big mechanism for dispersal is sea spray aerosols, probs because pfas chemicals have fun surface chemistries. Concentration of pfas in sea sprays can be 10,000x concentration in bulk seawater
- eurasiantiger 4y agoSo that nice smell of ocean air is actually poisonous?
- bergenty 4y agoPFAS has a boiling point of 189C. I don’t think many things naturally get this hot so it seems unlikely.
- samus 4y agoIt could also stick to dust particles that happen to float around. Especially in cities, I usually try to avoid exposure to rainwater for the first few hours of rain, because it clears the air of a lot of gunk (heavy metals, exhaust gases, pollen, spores, forever chemicals, ...) that I don't exactly want to have near my body.
- bergenty 4y agoIf this is true then we’re just breathing it in all the time because it’s in the air. Sounds like that should be a bigger headline.
- kderbyma 4y agoIrrelevant
- frazbin 4y agoAh the carbon fluorine bond, truly the most underappreciated 20th century demon. Ya know, nothing in the biosphere can reliably break that bond today! That's some geological epoch boundary shit right there.
- phendrenad2 4y agoNot only is it in rain water, the level often exceeds the US guidelines for lifetime(!) intake. I wonder how cancer rates among tribes and off-grid homes will increase, as those dewllers aren't likely boiling their rainwater. This is probably going to have to get a lot worse before it gets better, like the leaded gas problems of the 1960s.
- gizmo686 4y agoDoes boiling water actually help with chemical contamination. The main benefit is killing microorganisms. The heat can also destroy some toxins, but as far as I am aware PFAS stick around at boiling temperatures.
- jb1991 4y agoBoiling doesn’t help with forever chemicals.
- samus 4y agoOff-griders and preppers are likely able to deal with this, as they can incorporate appropriate filter systems into their setups. If they are aware and care about them of course.
- just_steve_h 4y agoTechnological hubris is a helluva drug. We would each be wise to develop our own capacities for humility.
- leobg 4y agoI find it disconcerting that this has apparently been known since the 1970s. Seems like the Big Tobacco playbook all over again (only with even worse effects). From the book “Exposure” by Robert Bilott, the real-life lawyer portrayed in the “Dark Water” movie: > The internal alarm bells had first been sounded at 3M and DuPont after the publication of a scientific paper by the American Chemical Society in 1976. The paper had a curious impetus: Donald Taves, a University of Rochester toxicologist, had discovered two different kinds of fluoride in his own blood. Finding inorganic fluoride was not surprising—it is routinely put into the public water supply as an aid in preventing cavities. But the other form, organic fluoride, is man-made in industrial labs. What was it doing in his blood? Dr. Taves wanted to find out. So he teamed up with W. S. Guy, a faculty member of the College of Dentistry at the University of Florida. They gathered plasma from blood banks in five cities and tested them for the presence of both kinds of fluoride. They also obtained records of how much fluoride was put into the water of those cities. As expected, the levels of “regular” (inorganic) fluoride in blood correlated with the levels of fluoride in the public water. But the levels of synthetic fluoride (organic) did not. Where was it coming from? Guy and Taves noticed that the compounds found in the blood had a chemical structure consistent with compounds “widely used commercially for their potent surfactant properties.” In their publication of those findings, they hypothesized that the source was industrial fluorochemicals manufactured by 3M.
- fuzzfactor 4y agoIn the mid-70's my first job out of college was at a research chemical place out in the industrial park a few miles from the UF campus, which had actually been founded by one of my professors back in the 1950's. We were fluorine and silicon chemistry leaders, and there was even a bulk tube-trailer of elemental fluorine parked on the site, rendering us un-insurable. One time it was pentafluoropropionic anhydride day. This is some agressive stuff, and had to be handled in a disposable glove bag under an inert nitrogen atmosphere. It had to be flame-sealed into special glass bottles because it would eventually escape from any other type of closure. When it comes into contact with moisture or humidity, it separates into two short-chain PFAS molecules that are still notably acidic and tend to bond to living tissue and not let go. The acidic form was more widely available and was handled in regular drums, and I guess you could say it was quite a bit milder as a bad actor. There was an operator who had left his gloves on top of a drum and a number of grams of fluorinted acid had gotten into them before he put them on again later. There was a delayed reaction but his hands did start burning after a while, fortunately this stuff was mild enough that his hands did not even fully dissolve. But you can't wash it off and it keeps burning for years until you get accustomed to the pain. The scarring alone was painful to look at. Anyway they put a brand new student model mechanical balance into the glove bag with the world's only kilo of the anhydride and weighed it into portions. It was possible to watch the paint peeling off the scale in real time and the corrosion process proceed to destruction. The glove bag and the scale were then discarded. Out in the pit with everything else. The temporary closures were then flame-sealed under a hood, and I get to pick two of the smallest ones for the analytical lab, one to test and the other to hang on to unopened. Well they don't always seal, and upon inversion a couple micro-drops flew out and hit me on the shoulder and the hip, soaking right through the fabric and basically evaporating before long without doing visible damage. It did start to burn after a while but it mostly felt like a couple mosquito bites. Small red spots did show up along with the irritation which faded quite a bit over a few months but it took a few years before it could easily be forgotten. In following decades though, the same red spots would re-appear if I was over-exerting myself and almost feeling like I was going to get heat stroke or something, yep, there they were still. No surprise when I found out that Gainesville industrial park was an EPA Superfund site decades ago. Now it's also been a couple decades or more since one of the most brilliant workers I had in Texas, later moved to an oilfield services group where they were injecting rare kilos of as many different short-chain perfluoroalkyls as they could, and using them as tracers to determine subsurface formation characteristics, when the different compounds could later be detected in the producing wells across a vast field. Perfluoroalkyls are really inert and not acidic at all, but they are forever and they were thought especially good for geological tracing for that reason. My associate became a specialist in a type of fluoride-specific ultra-trace detailed analysis that was more sensitive than what they were doing before. Fluorides are a bitch. Nobody's fault but mine.
- iancmceachern 4y agoThey dismiss the drinking of rain water too readily in the article. In many places, like Hawaii, where you can't drill a water well for whatever reason, and don't have access to filtered surface water, rain catchment is the primary source of water. This is common.
- samus 4y agoIf there exist treatments to remove those chemicals, those places should consider adopting them. I'm curious how water treatment facilities in other places remove these chemicals. I would actually not be surprised if most of them don't, or just process sources that happen to be clean.
- 8bitsrule 4y agoSometimes it seems as though making the Earth uninhabitable to existing lifeforms was the goal of some entity. Hanlon's razor says 'Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity'. But, after 150 years of it, is stupidity truly an adequate explaination for the unending rain of 'better products for better living through chemistry'?
- eatonphil 4y agoWasn't clear to me from the article or this thread how you might avoid forever chemicals. But there are filters for them: https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/local/wisconsin/2022/02/15/what-you-should-know-removing-pfas-your-drinking-water-forever-chemicals/6742264001/ https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/local/wisconsin/2022/02/...