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Could the world go PFAS-free? Proposal to ban ‘forever chemicals’ fuels debate
- matthewdgreen 3y agoJust stop putting them in food packaging and consumer items, please. I don't care if it costs a penny more, or if my paper plates get a little more soggy.
- brnt 3y agoI really hate it when a drink is served with a paper straw. They release 95% of the pfas in the drink. There's no better way of introducing the stuff to my body. Why is nobody thinking of this? Perfectly good bamboo straws exist!
- putnambr 3y agoOr stainless steel, or BPA-free plastic, or plant-fiber cellulose plastic, or silicone, or...
- beanjuice 3y agoI've had a drink or two which came with some sort of large pasta straw.
- wahnfrieden 3y agoIt's cheaper. More profit. That's it
- gruez 3y ago>They release 95% of the pfas in the drink source?
- justusw 3y agoStudy finds plant-based straws containing PFAS https://www.foodpackagingforum.org/news/study-finds-plant-based-straws-containing-pfas https://www.foodpackagingforum.org/news/study-finds-plant-ba...
- gruez 3y agoFrom the article: >Thirty-six of the investigated brands contained detectable PFAS, among which perfluorobutanoic acid (PFBA; CAS 375-22-4), perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA; CAS 335-67-1), and perfluorohexanoic acid (PFHxA CAS 307-24-4) were the most frequently detected species. That's not the same as "They release 95% of the pfas in the drink".
- tw04 3y agoLet me preface this with: I'm not advocating for continuing to use pfas. That being said, why are we still calling them forever chemicals? Didn't we come up with a way to break down the majority of existing pfas already? https://www.verywellhealth.com/cleaning-pfas-from-water-6500768 https://www.verywellhealth.com/cleaning-pfas-from-water-6500...
- chmod600 3y ago"Forever" is understood to be an exaggeration. And even if we are finding new artificial ways to break it down, the fact remains that there's a lot of it out in nature now and natural processes take a long time to break them down.
- mjhay 3y agoPFAS exists everywhere in the biosphere. It's impossible to clean all that up.
- themaninthedark 3y agoMercury exists everywhere in the biosphere, it is impossible to clean up. Lead exists everywhere in the biosphere, it is impossible to clean up. Freon exists everywhere in the biosphere, it is impossible to clean up. Plastic exists everywhere in the biosphere, it is impossible to clean up. CO2 exists everywhere in the biosphere, it is impossible to clean up. If we declare the situation hopeless then nothing will change.
- dmm 3y agoI think they were explaining the "Forever chemical" name, not giving up.
- abeppu 3y agoThat article specifically discusses water filtration plants that are handling concentrated PFAS after filtering them away from drinking water. That the small fraction of them flowing through water treatment facilities can be broken down with special handling (which that article also says will not be ready for the market for some time) does not negate the fact that in the environment / our bodies, they are extremely slow to break down. I think it's obvious even to laypeople that the label is not literally true (nothing lasts forever), but it's still an apt descriptor. Even if municipal water can filter them out and break them down, these chemicals will be literally in our bodies and environments for the rest of our lives.
- zucked 3y agoI hope this becomes a reality - we really made an mistake introducing these, I think. The hard part, I suspect, will be regulating all the different forms of "forever chemicals" and not having it be a perpetual game of whack-a-mole where chemists figure out ways to slightly tweak the structure of the chemicals so that they effectively replicate the function of PFAS without triggering the definition of PFAs. We're already pretty hooked on the usefulness of PFAs for all sorts of stuff (clothes, containers, etc) so going cold turkey is going to require some sacrifice.
- rgrieselhuber 3y agoHow is this even debatable? Nobody wants these chemicals anywhere near them.
- delecti 3y ago> Nobody wants these chemicals anywhere near them. Don't we? I've got a bunch of non-stick pans that I love cooking on (I checked the brand I use most, and their pans are coated in PTFE, a PFAS). I've also got a roll of PTFE tape for plumbing around the house (basically ubiquitous for that purpose), and some PTFE tubing for hobby use (PTFE tubing is in the majority of 3D printers).
- tracker1 3y agoI think the bigger risks are in anything resembling disposable. Also, maybe getting people to understand how to care for their cookware better so it lasts 10+ years instead of 3-5 or so. I actually prefer stainless steel myself, my SO prefers non-stick. Before I was with my SO, I had a single 8" non-stick I would use just for eggs. I'm as or more concerned about the plastics in food packaging myself. Hard to avoid with so much processed food in most grocery stores though. Wouldn't mind taking a few steps back. Considering we grow well more than enough food to actually feed the world at this point.
- codyb 3y agoYa, was even thinking the other day that I should just toss a few glass containers in my backpack when I'm going out to restaurants. I usually carry a backpack anyways, I'm not sure there's much value in me carting away leftovers in disposable containers. The amount of plastic everywhere is staggering when you start to take it into account every time you toss a piece of it out.
- OtherShrezzing 3y agoYour tape and tubing scenarios make sense. I'm not sure anyone can seriously require a non-stick pan though. Cooks managed without them for thousands of years by just paying more attention to their eggs, and comparably unsticky materials existed before the invention of non-stick coatings. The long-term negative impacts of teflon just doesn't seem to be worth the incredibly slight convenience they offer.
- chmod600 3y agoThere's a lot of space between a ban and "just don't use it everywhere".
- debacle 3y agoAnd what about the next forever chemicals?
- chickenuggies69 3y agoYes "what about"
- fHr 3y agoThey always ban some specific PFAS structures and then 1 of 3 consulting firms that is in the game is just again going to suggest they should modify the structure and add an H or O somwhere to make it slightly different from the banned specified structure and it's legal again for another 10 years. Happening all the time.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y agoNot sure I agree with the prohibition of these substances... but legislation doesn't have to be written quite so naively as that. You can ban unnamed, similar chemicals at the same time. They already do this for Schedule I drugs (not that I agree with that either). They finally got fed up with adding new designer drugs to the schedule, and there's an entry that says something like "any similar chemical substance that causes the same pharmaceutical effects as a Schedule I drug or is used for such effects or has a similar chemical structure". I definitely don't agree with that clause when it comes to drug enforcement, but if a good case could be made that PFAS should be banned, then adding that clause to preemptively block PFAS-alikes that are just a couple atoms away from the original formula doesn't seem excessive to me. And, if somehow it should be excessive (the change fixes all the problems we might have with PFAS substances), then let them argue that to Congress. Exemptions for producing small amounts for research, obviously. If Congress didn't do this, if they're not doing that... then they're just bad at the one thing they're supposed to be doing: writing effective legislation.
- drewcoo 3y ago> legislation doesn't have to be written quite so naively as that It will be written by think tanks behind lobbyists for industry interests that donate to campaigns. > the one thing [Congress is] supposed to be doing . . . is getting reelected. We do not elect them because of competency in law-writing or even in voting for their constituencies' interests. We elect them because they spend lots of money to tell us how monstrous "the other choice" is.
- kube-system 3y ago> and there's an entry that says something like "any similar chemical substance that causes the same pharmaceutical effects The problem is that these PFAS chemicals do things that are useful, and banning any future useful inventions isn't nearly as desirable.
- Knee_Pain 3y agoCan someone explain where the (suspiciously) scary nomenclature of "forever chemicals" comes from? Google neutered their normal search engine, so in order to search by date I went to Google Scholar and I have found no use of such term well into the 2000s. It looks like a journalistic invention, does anyone have am origin story pointing to a scholarly source?
- Etheryte 3y agoYou'll easily find the answer if you search for forever chemicals wikipedia, what's the source of the confusion?
- ravenstine 3y agoNo it isn't. There's no "forever chemical" page on Wikipedia, so I'm not sure where you're getting this idea from. Disregarding any nomenclature, in just focusing on the terminology in isolation, water could be considered a forever chemical. This is an example of why use of the term "forever chemical" comes off as a scare tactic or disingenuous. Of course, for dying media institutions, PFAS can't just be a pollutant. It has to be literally forever! EDIT: Way to go missing the entire point, all of you.
- Etheryte 3y agoYou're fighting strawmen, I didn't say "search for forever chemicals on wikipedia", I said "search for forever chemicals wikipedia". The first result on Google is the article about per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances which includes the source of the term.
- esafak 3y agoWP's autocomplete returns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Per-_and_polyfluoroalkyl_substances https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Per-_and_polyfluoroalkyl_subst...
- sjsdaiuasgdia 3y agoWater occurs in nature without human intervention. I don't think the same can be said for PFAS. For a big chunk of the industrial age we've operated on the assumption that the global environment is big enough and capable enough to just eat or neutralize just about anything we dump into it. I think there is utility in defining a category of human-produced things that we have been able to determine the global environment can't eat or neutralize, and also that cause harm when people are exposed to them. You could give this category a lot of potential names, but "forever chemicals" conveys the idea pretty effectively IMO.
- qchris 3y agoI was visiting my family a few weeks ago in my childhood town, and the topic of our small local river came up. It's about three minutes away, and both the streams that feed it and the larger river it feeds into were fairly big parts of my childhood, including fishing, crayfishing, exploring, and generally playing on the banks. It turns out that there's a fishing advisory in effect this year, advising folks not to eat any fish caught in that river. The reason is PFAS pollution, where the levels in the water table now indicate the potential for bioaccumulation above the recommended level for human toxicity. The people living in that area are now denied access to clean water and not having to worry about eating toxic fish, and I'm sure the otters and herons in the area haven't gotten the notice. Millions of state tax dollars have now been allocated to try to just estimate the contamination level in drinking water wells throughout the state as well. Frankly, the producers and users of these chemicals have proven to be, at the minimum, so grossly negligent and potentially actually malicious, that they can not be considered to be acting in good faith, and "reasonable compromises" should be looked at with extreme suspicion. I feel the responsible organizations fined for both remediation and damages, the individuals responsible made criminally liable for the harm they've caused, and once that example has been made, we can talk about compromises once the "free market" has factored in the actual cost of using these chemicals when they can't just dump risk onto the public. [1] https://ctmirror.org/2021/08/29/how-widespread-are-pfas-chemicals-ct-officials-are-about-to-inspect-more-than-2400-locations/ https://ctmirror.org/2021/08/29/how-widespread-are-pfas-chem...
- RajT88 3y agoPFAS is one of the most common causes of fish advisories by me as well. The story changes a little when you get to Lake Michigan, which is more heavy metals, fecal coliform, etc. The heavy metals coming from the steel refineries who periodically have oopsies and dump a few tons of waste into the lake.
- zucked 3y agoLast I looked, the entire Green Bay side of Lake Michigan (from Green Bay up to Escanaba/Garden area) was under a PFAS advisory, as was the south western 1/3 of Superior (from Duluth to the Keeweenaw). The stuff is everywhere. At least the raw sewage overflows from Milwaukee/Chicago mostly dilute and turn less toxic in the matter of months versus generations as is the case with PFAS.
- all2 3y agoDark Waters is a relevant movie about a town in Pennsylvania that suffered from poisoning by the Dupont corporation.
- legitster 3y agoI'm generally pretty pro-chemical in moderation. I haven't fried a decent egg on cast iron yet, and I enjoy breathable waterproof fabrics. I understand the concern, but I guess I don't understand the risk yet. My understanding from chemistry class was that PF- compounds are so useful because of how inert they are. Their indestructibility is what makes them mostly harmless - if you eat a pile of (room-temperature) Teflon, it just goes right through your body.
- mrob 3y agoYou need other, more dangerous, short-chain PFAS to make those inert PFAS polymers. Costs would greatly increase if manufacturers weren't allowed to release any to the environment. I think enforcing this and increasing prices is a better idea than a ban.
- legitster 3y agoI suspect then the reason seafood is becoming the chief source of PFAS is that most of this is made in China and lax environmental rules means most of it is getting dumped down the Yangtze. Getting a $20 Teflon pan instead of a $15 one but they actually dispose of the chemicals properly seems like a no-brainer here.
- cmclaughlin 3y agoFried eggs on Teflon pans are rather soggy in my opinion… My preferred pan for fried eggs is stainless steel. With plenty of butter the eggs crisp up and release from the pan with no stick at all. The only real trick is to not flip too soon.
- bilsbie 3y agoMy uncle said the Replacements for pfas are actually worse. What’s the final word on that?
- burnished 3y agoThere aren't any replacements for them, and its unclear what you mean by worse, less efficacious or more environmentally damaging? If the former then yeah, theres a reason those products took off
- polski-g 3y agoWe used to wrap products in paper or cloth. We could go back to that.
- hedora 3y agoThe regulators have taken a whack-a-mole approach to banning this class of chemicals in the past. The result is that the popular ones that are well-understood get banned, and then replaced with ones that haven't been studied. There's no reason to think the replacements are better or worse, though they are often worse. The organization in the article is proposing banning production of the entire family of chemicals (~ 12,000 of them) instead of doing it one at a time.
- mistrial9 3y agotwenty five years ago there were similar "news items" .. called Green Chemistry and Body Burden at that time..
- Zigurd 3y agoAfter our civilization collapses and is forgotten, scientists thousands of years from now will wonder at what kinds of planetary scale maniacs we were: A layer of lead covering the planet, so we could have cars. A globe-spanning layer of americium-241 from when we tested nuclear bombs in the open air. Etc.
- rcMgD2BwE72F 3y agoThis has a name: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropocene#Stratigraphy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropocene#Stratigraphy
- nemo44x 3y agoBut won't they also look at skeletons and see that life expectancies also increased during this entire time?
- manzanarama 3y agoAre these forever chemicals an actual big deal? Do we have any numbers on how many people or animals they injure or kill every year? How about projections into the future? What kind of benefit do they allow manufacturers?
- polski-g 3y agoThey act as sex hormone disruptors. Probably the number one cause of plummeting fertility across the entire world. Korea is projected to have a 95% reduction in population within three generations.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- elil17 3y agoBased on https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9215707/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9215707/ and https://www.epa.gov/sdwa/and-polyfluoroalkyl-substances-pfas https://www.epa.gov/sdwa/and-polyfluoroalkyl-substances-pfas >Are these forever chemicals an actual big deal? Do we have any numbers on how many people or animals they injure or kill every year? One study estimates about 30,000 to 120,000 people killed in America per year, with many more in the rest of the word. The EPA thinks reducing PFAS exposure now could save thousands of human lives per year and prevent tens of thousands of cases of human illnesses. >How about projections into the future? We really don't know. However, the numbers seem to have gone down significantly in recent years, perhaps due to a change in which PFAS people are exposed to. >What kind of benefit do they allow manufacturers? Calling PFAS miracle chemicals would be an understatement. Short chain PFAS (the dangerous kind) enable us to make PTFE, which makes surfaces almost friction-less, is compatible with almost every chemical, is largely bio-compatible, and lets water vapor through while keeping out liquid water (useful for things like waterproof jackets which don't trap sweat). They have a wide variety of other applications as well.
- elil17 3y agoThere are a lot of uses for PFAS, but banning flourosurfactants from consumer products should be a no-brainier. They aren't needed for safety reasons and they are obviously causing health problems.
- ordinaryradical 3y agoMy father and his colleague developed a scalable process to manufacture Teflon without the use of PFAS back in the previous century; they had both been recruited heavily by DuPont which made it relatively easy to sell the patents, at which point they immediately disappeared and were never acted upon. One of the interesting side effects of free markets is that when there are no consequences for mass poisoning / polluting, you will ignore opportunities to manufacture without doing so because there is often zero or negative economic consequences to change your process. In DuPont’s case, it was more valuable in the near term for the shareholders to ignore this manufacturing innovation and not disrupt supply than to reconfigure with a new process. No doubt there were massive risks involved in trying a new process that made it a “safer” and wiser decision economically to continue to use PFAS. I think about this every time someone tells us on HN how a freer market will solve our problems.
- tredre3 3y ago> My father and his colleague developed a scalable process to manufacture Teflon without the use of PFAS back in the previous century How is that possible? PTFE (teflon) is itself a PFAS, no? Did they "only" get rid of other PFAS used during the manufacturing of teflon?
- ordinaryradical 3y agoI just asked him. “Teflon is a high molecular weight polymer made using perfluoronated surfactants. Technically, PTFE is a fluorine-containing material but it is not the PFAS pollutants of recent concern. In the conventional synthesis, the real source of PFAS pollution is primarily those surfactants used in its manufacture. Our process made the use of those surfactants unnecessary.” Why do you DuPont never acted on your patents? “It was a cost of business decision because they had already invested so much capital in making Teflon with those surfactants.”
- OtherShrezzing 3y agoIs your dad forbidden from recreating this technology with DuPont in control of those patents? There's probably a tonne of VC money out there for an environmentally friendly disruptor to teflon.
- aantix 3y agoInteresting that there's a correlation between PFAS levels and weight gain.
- amelius 3y agoWe need warning labels. If people knew there are pfas in their pizza boxes and popcorn bags, they wouldn't accept it.
- rcMgD2BwE72F 3y agoThen, put warning labels and ban it. If you want people not to accept it so we don't pollute our environment, just prevent the pollution directly. Also, I may not buy things with PFAS but there are millions of situation where PFAS could jeopardize my health (e.g food containers at restaurants, schools, hospitals… neighboring factory producing PFAS, etc).
- volkl48 3y agoMaybe (or maybe not - how much attention does the average person pay to California Prop 65 warnings?), but warning labels on consumer products won't do much of anything to curb their use in industry and non-consumer facing products.
- aequitas 3y agoWe have warning labels and even graphic pictures of diseases on smoking packages but still people choose to smoke.
- dang 3y agoRelated. I've tried to stick to the major discussions; have I missed any? 3M reaches $10.3B settlement over PFAS contamination of water systems - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36660751 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36660751 - July 2023 (333 comments) USGS estimates at least 45% of U.S. tap water contain forever chemicals - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36617822 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36617822 - July 2023 (169 comments) Nearly half of the tap water in the US is contaminated with ‘forever chemicals,’ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36616841 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36616841 - July 2023 (174 comments) Water heavily polluted with PFAS in 15 km radius around Dordrecht chemical plant - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36520610 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36520610 - June 2023 (44 comments) Show HN: PFAS.report – Measure the forever chemicals in your blood via Quest - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36509752 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36509752 - June 2023 (150 comments) Eating microwave popcorn increases the level of PFAS in body (2022) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36440911 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36440911 - June 2023 (414 comments) 3M heads to trial in ‘existential’ $143B forever-chemicals litigation - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36259163 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36259163 - June 2023 (250 comments) Three companies agree to pay $1B to settle 'forever chemical' claims - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36196884 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36196884 - June 2023 (75 comments) Many soft contact lenses in US made up of PFAS, research suggests - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35955706 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35955706 - May 2023 (109 comments) America’s first high-volume ‘PFAS Annihilator’ is up and running in W. Michigan - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35821128 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35821128 - May 2023 (168 comments) Engineers develop water filtration that removes “forever chemicals” - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35764476 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35764476 - April 2023 (226 comments) Compostable fast-food packaging can emit volatile PFAS - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35411919 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35411919 - April 2023 (155 comments) PFAS ban affects most refrigerant blends - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34997937 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34997937 - March 2023 (100 comments) PFAS can suppress white blood cells’ ability to destroy invaders - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34909058 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34909058 - Feb 2023 (207 comments) Magnetic method to clean PFAS contaminated water - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34487079 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34487079 - Jan 2023 (181 comments) PFAS found at high levels in freshwater fish - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34411713 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34411713 - Jan 2023 (41 comments) 3M to end 'forever chemicals' output - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34076685 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34076685 - Dec 2022 (413 comments) Pollution cleanup method destroys toxic “forever chemicals” - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34047047 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34047047 - Dec 2022 (80 comments) Possible breakthrough to destroy PFAS using sodium hydroxide - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32517444 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32517444 - Aug 2022 (33 comments) Simple mix of soap and solvent could help destroy ‘forever chemicals’ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32515511 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32515511 - Aug 2022 (233 comments) It’s raining PFAS: rainwater is unsafe to drink even in Antarctica and Tibet - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32451024 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32451024 - Aug 2022 (433 comments) Study finds link between 'forever chemicals' in cookware and liver cancer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32438368 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32438368 - Aug 2022 (394 comments) Rainwater everywhere on Earth unsafe to drink due to ‘forever chemicals’ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32365736 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32365736 - Aug 2022 (72 comments) US water contains more ‘forever chemicals’ than EPA tests show - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32004036 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32004036 - July 2022 (21 comments) 3M’s PFAS Crisis Has Come to Europe - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31809445 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31809445 - June 2022 (94 comments) Regular blood donations can reduce “forever chemicals” in the bloodstream: study - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31123477 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31123477 - April 2022 (204 comments) PFAS Contamination in the U.S - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28744886 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28744886 - Oct 2021 (44 comments) Toxic ‘forever chemicals’ contaminate indoor air at worrying levels - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28367524 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28367524 - Aug 2021 (144 comments) Study finds alarming levels of ‘forever chemicals’ in US mothers’ breast milk - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27139371 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27139371 - May 2021 (107 comments) Forever chemicals are widespread in U.S. drinking water - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25887385 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25887385 - Jan 2021 (258 comments) Chemicals called PFAS and PFOS are in the blood of virtually every person - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25557113 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25557113 - Dec 2020 (226 comments) PFAS “forever” chemicals found in hundreds more everyday products - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25288978 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25288978 - Dec 2020 (25 comments) U.S. drinking water widely contaminated with 'forever chemicals': report - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22116696 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22116696 - Jan 2020 (391 comments) Toxic ‘Forever Chemicals’ in Drinking Water Leave Military Families Reeling - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19233284 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19233284 - Feb 2019 (110 comments) Scientists cut the tolerable intake of PFAs by 99.9% - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19070754 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19070754 - Feb 2019 (112 comments) 3M Knew About the Dangers of PFOA and PFOS Decades Ago, Internal Documents Show - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17680589 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17680589 - Aug 2018 (151 comments) Troubling chemicals found in wide range of fast-food wrappers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13541466 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13541466 - Feb 2017 (69 comments)
- BiteCode_dev 3y agoWhat debates is there to be? It's making us all sick. Slowly but surely.
- justinator 3y agoPFAS are used in lubricants for nuclear weapons [0] we'll never get rid of nuclear weapons ergo, we'll never get rid of PFAS [0] https://patelder.weebly.com/pfas--nuclear-weapons.html https://patelder.weebly.com/pfas--nuclear-weapons.html
- mihaic 3y ago> Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) defined as: Any substance that contains at least one fully fluorinated methyl (CF3-) or methylene (-CF2-) carbon atom (without any H/Cl/Br/I attached to it). It sounds at least like they're not going the terrible US route of allowing substances until proven toxic. Perhaps we've hit enough technological development that any new chemical actually needs to have approval before it can be mass produced (of course giving labs freedom to experiment in developing new materials).
- bwb 3y agoThank god for the EU leading the way. Make the rules and the market will find alternatives.
- mensetmanusman 3y agoLipitor, Prozac, Flonase are all PFAS as well as about a third of pharmaceuticals being developed. The best solution is regulated waste management, but nimbyism sends the issue to China.
- coryrc 3y agoI thought your post was wrong, but this article says you're mostly right: https://www.bu.edu/sph/news/articles/2022/is-there-a-right-definition-of-pfas/ https://www.bu.edu/sph/news/articles/2022/is-there-a-right-d...
- hilbert42 3y agoI recall some years ago a discussion we had with an environmentalist at a time when the rules governing the use of PVC insulation in household power wiring were being changed in that PVC was being replaced with another plastic that was usable but not nearly as good as the PVC. During the discussion the environmentalist said to the effect "we're working towards eliminating (banning) chlorine from the planet". We were so shocked at what she said that we decided never to mention the element by name again and only referred to it as element 17. This experience was a salient lesson what can happen when ignorance and popular notions mix. No doubt PFAS-type chemicals have been grossly abused as were CFCs and they need tight regulation but as we saw with the Montreal Protocol simply banning most CFCs outright rather than introducing strict regulation caused many problems. This led to certain chemicals becoming unavailable that had no effective but 'safer' equivalents and this has been problematic. Even now, I know of people who still have drums of CFCs which they almost guard with their lives—they won't even part with an ounce of the stuff for love nor money because when gone it's the end of the line. It doesn't end there, in recent years we've seen certain CFCs being released to the atmosphere from illegal manufacturing in countries where monitoring isn't strictly controlled. Like illegal drugs, if there's sufficient demand people will supply them. Banning over 12,000 chemicals outright without a full and detailed investigation is certainly to cause similar problems. We should learn from the CFC experience and take a carefully measured approach. Careful and strict regulation is likely a much better way of dealing with the problem.. I wonder how long it will be before we'll have to start whispering 'element 9' in hushed tones for fear of those who would wish it banned from the planet.
- Reptur 3y agoTitle should be "Could the world go back to PFAS-free? Proposal to ban ‘forever chemicals’ fuels debate".
- exabrial 3y agoPFAs just needs to be regulated, not banned. We absolutely should/must be able to buy an outdoor jacket that lasts decades, provided you traded that last one in to be recycled (sort like mandatory battery core recycling). Long lasting goods are far better for the environment then short-lived "recyclable" ones. Do you fast fashion Nikes or bicycle chain lube need PFAs? No. The hysteria surrounding PFAs is going to be a net harm, and some politicians need a wedge issue to vault themselves forward in the media spotlight to buy votes. Reading the HN comments today is sad. I thought this was a science based community.
- hnav 3y agoRight, it all begins with studying where they're coming from since they're in everything from fire suppression foam to floss. I'd imagine companies like DuPoint are dumping insane amounts of them as byproducts of industrial processes, and would love for us to go all plastic straw on goretex shoes to let them squeeze a couple more billion of profits out of their established processes. RE: HN, it has grown and been redditified a bit, rash downvoting, sarcastic non-sequiturs all abound.
- JPws_Prntr_Fngr 3y ago> We absolutely should/must be able to buy an outdoor jacket that lasts decades There is no possible way a durable water repellent (DWR) coating will last decades on a jacket, with or without PFAS. Modern outdoor apparel simply isn't designed for long term durability - it's designed for flashy marketability, because the externalities don't have to be priced in. There are a few exceptions (e.g. "true" softshells like Buffalo jackets) that have never, and will never, see mainstream adoption.
- greenie_beans 3y agoyeah my first thought was, "have you ever resealed tent seams?
- gravism 3y ago[dead]
- happytiger 3y agoIt's not technological progress if it kills or sickens large numbers of people and we should recognize and roll back mistakes and misadventures as fast as introduce them. The world will go on. We will find alternatives that don’t cause pain and suffering.
- cultofmetatron 3y agoit doesn't have to be all or nothing. how about we eliminate it from single use items? would probably get us 80% of the way there without any major dent in the average person's quality of life.
- the-alchemist 3y agoHere's some good news: there's a non-plastic, non-forever-chemical, really-compostable plastic straw on the market! https://www.phadeproducts.com/# https://www.phadeproducts.com/# https://www.amazon.com/stores/phade/page/7B9D4729-8EDF-4FAE-B9AA-5DFFAF17EC49?maas=maas_adg_22D83C7350699D90E7587926D86CB7A0_afap_abs&ref_=aa_maas&ref_=ast_bln https://www.amazon.com/stores/phade/page/7B9D4729-8EDF-4FAE-... 6,000 regular sized straws for $55, so about a penny each. https://www.amazon.com/phade-Eco-Friendly-Sustainable-Biodegradable-Compostable/dp/B08YZ85ZD9?ref_=ast_sto_dp&th=1&psc=1 https://www.amazon.com/phade-Eco-Friendly-Sustainable-Biodeg...
- lokar 3y agoThe whole concept of limited liability need to be rethought. The goals were good and it has produced great wins for humanity. But the way it allows one sided bets (the most I can loose is my investment) is outdated. When it was introduced there was not really a way for a limited liability entity to fail in a way that imposed massive costs on others who were not voluntarily involved (employees, suppliers, investors, lenders, customers, etc). Perhaps limited liability should not apply to negligent harm caused by the entity to non-involved people. investors, officers and directors should be fully personally liable for the harms.
- seltzered_ 3y agoSee also recent discussion on 3M PFAS settlement: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36660751 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36660751
- bogdan0s 3y agoDebate? Do we even need to discuss it?