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90% of “eco-friendly” paper straws contain traces of toxic forever chemicals
- stop50 3y agowhy should stainless steel require pfas?
- conse_lad 3y agoTo provide additional resistance to corrosion/staining.
- yetanotherloser 3y agoThat sounds unlikely. It's not how stainless steel works; to bond a coating to the surface of the stainless you have to fight the stainlessness pretty hard.
- galangalalgol 3y agoOne of the best indicators for not so stainless stainless steel is a coarse texture to aid in that bonding. Even some fairly expensive brands of vacuum flask exhibit this. Only way to be sure that I know of is a knife.
- bornfreddy 3y agoYou mean by scraping it and seeing if it rusts, or something else?
- jdietrich 3y agoGenerally, the easiest way is with a magnet. The most corrosion-resistant of the common stainless steels are austenitic. These steels are not ferromagnetic, or very weakly ferromagnetic if they have been cold worked. Cheaper and less corrosion-resistant ferritic stainless steels are strongly ferromagnetic. Martensitic stainless steels are less corrosion resistant than austenitic steels and are ferromagnetic, but they're used for good reason. Unlike other types, martensitic steels are hardenable through heat treatment, making them the only suitable choice for many sharp-edged tools or parts subject to severe abrasion. Stainless steel cutlery is most commonly an 18/0 ferritic grade, but premium cutlery may be an 18/10 austenitic. Kitchen knives are invariably martensitic, because ferritic or austenitic grades wouldn't hold a sharp edge.
- xenonite 3y agoWell there wasn’t any PFAS with the stainless steel straws.
- c4mpute 3y agoStainless steel is expensive, roughly a factor of 10 compared to plain steel. The reason is that Chromium is expensive. You can use low-chromium not-so-stainless steel if you then coat it with transparent paint containing among other things, PFAS, and save a ton of money on the material. Edit: the prototypical stainless steel is Cr/Ni 18/10 with 18% chromium and 10% nickel, aka V2A or 1.4301
- ThunderSizzle 3y agoSounds about right. Most grills out here are $200-400, but will rust and fall apart within a couple years in my climate (humidity is insane here). For $2000-4000, you can buy real stainless steel grills that are warrantied to last 15+ years, not 1 year.
- Forgeties79 3y agoHard to sell people on spending 10x the cost when they can just buy, abuse, replace after 3-5 years what they already have.
- ThunderSizzle 3y agoCertainly. Especially when they load the cheap stuff with all the useless Bluetooth/wireless smart phone app crap. I guess people think a crappy grill with flashy widgets and an app is the next best thing. Or maybe it's what companies think people want.
- Forgeties79 3y agoI mean I have a pretty standard $250 or so Weber. No bells and whistles, no apps. It takes propane and has enough surface for me to do 8 patties comfortably and has a small rack above it for things that just need to be warmed up more or less. I like having things that last but it's going on idk...year 4 now? And I just need to replace grates at this point. I just can't see myself buying a $1000+ grill because I don't grill every day/week and the $250 has done perfectly well for me. I don't think it's safe to assume tons of folks want bluetooth for their grill and that's what drives them to go cheap.
- yetanotherloser 3y agoWhere did someone suggest it did?
- wahnfrieden 3y agoThe article suggested it is a concern, and then resolved the concern.
- tomxor 3y agoSome pretty nasty accidents have already happened with stainless steel straws... doesn't take much imagination.
- swores 3y agoSee also 86 comments a day ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37256484 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37256484
- wahnfrieden 3y agoConsumer solutions for saving the planet result in greenwashing (distraction from actual meaningful change), new poisons, and growing waste through growing demand. Ecology isn't simply making correct purchasing decisions even if they feel good.
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- scotty79 3y agoDid anybody check paper cups?
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- wahnfrieden 3y agoHot liquid paper cups are lined with PFAS and also can't be recycled
- iancmceachern 3y agoI think those pasta straws are the answer, assuming we cook and eat them after.
- WildGreenLeave 3y agoEven if we don't I assume they would be healthier and better biodegradable right?
- newaccount74 3y agoThere's a small risk that raw pasta might be contaminated with E. Coli or Salmonella, but I assume that this risk is miniscule compared to the health risks of frequently consuming sugary drinks (with or without straws).
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- yieldcrv 3y agoAs long as it comes with a single use plastic cup
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- moron4hire 3y agoWhy does every drink need a straw, anyway?
- wahnfrieden 3y agoConsumers demand it, and we chose a society that mostly freely provides goods for consumer demands. So is your issue with the free market, or is it toothless consumer elitism (I don't mean this reply to be a defense of the market either. I'm asking you to evaluate what is core to your criticism)
- timeon 3y ago> Consumers demand it, and we chose a society that mostly freely provides goods for consumer demands. Except for Ad industry and marketing.
- wahnfrieden 3y agoOnly because they are outbid. Individual consumers won't pay as much as advertisers will to keep ad space empty.
- akira2501 3y agoThe presumption that all advertising is merely crass mass manipulation in order to force consumers to do things they otherwise wouldn't want to do is, I fear, continued elitism. And in the context of this discussion, you might be asked to prove that straws are used purely because of the manipulations of marketers.
- kwhitefoot 3y agoSo why do advertisers do it?
- akira2501 3y agoThere are tons of reasons. New location just opened. New product is available. Improvement to old product was released. Inventory clearance sale is about to happen. Seasonal businesses that are just entering the season. New consumers who might not be familiar with the products available to them. I work in a business that serves a lot of local advertisers. We do take national and agency client business, but the majority of our work is with local businesses. They do it because it works. People hear the ad and foot and digital traffic to their locations increases. Advertising is just a market. "Advertisers" are just people with a business who want to reach consumers. I'd be far more comfortable with the case that, as a market, it should be policed by some administrative agency, and like most administrative agencies over the past few decades they're likely asleep at the switch and so the market shows obvious signs of abuse. This is why I, and the other poster, take some umbrage to what seems to be a very simplistic elitist take from you. This is a market. It has benefits, and it has the potential for abuse. Rather than looking at this as a social problem that simply needs basic agency actions to be solved to defend those benefits, the rather radical idealism of destroying the market entirely gets bandied about a little too comfortably.
- 01100011 3y agoFrom the paper(https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19440049.2023.2240908 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19440049.2023.2...): > PFAS were detected in almost all paper-based straws, with highly variable concentrations between brands, ranging from < LOQ(level of quantification) to 7.15 ng/g (Figure 1). PFOA was the most frequently detected component. Specific concentrations can be found in Supplementary Table A3. In the other types of straws, more often all PFAS were below the LOQ. In bamboo straws, PFAS were detected in the range < LOQ to 3.47 ng/g in four out of five brands. In glass straws two brands showed concentrations above the LOQ, ranging from < LOQ to 6.65 ng/g, while the concentrations for the other brands were found to be below the LOQ. In the stainless steel straws, no PFAS concentrations above the LOQ were observed in any of the brands. Finally, three out of four plastic straw brands contained quantifiable PFAS concentrations, ranging from < LOQ to 0.924 ng/g. There was a significant variation in PFAS profiles between straws from the same materials. This variation, in combination with the relatively small dataset, made it impossible to compare statistically the materials and continent of origin (CO) for each PFAS individually. Therefore, we used the ΣPFAS concentrations instead. Is this a lot? What do these levels mean? "Detectable" isn't really a useful threshold for many chemicals. Also, how much of these chemicals am I likely to ingest? Does it depend on the type of drink, it's temperature and chemistry?
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- SapporoChris 3y agoIn March 2023 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released, for public comment, proposed MCLs of 4 ng/L. Source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412023003069 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016041202...? maximum contaminant level [MCL]. Straw weighs around .42 grams. I am not to concerned about the upper end of 7.15 ng/g contamination. By all means worry about PFAS if you wish, but straws really don't look like the problem.
- bsuvc 3y agoI'm sure someone probably feels strongly about this, but I will ask anyway: Do we as a society even need straws? I never use a straw at home. The only time I would consider wanting one would be for a milkshake maybe, due to its thickness making it hard to sip otherwise. I am not anti-straw, just think it is sort of a weird thing for our society to use when I stop to think about it.
- kragen 3y agomostly they're important for people who are disabled with neurological issues or immune deficiency
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- guerrilla 3y agoYes, many disabled people need straws. Specifically soft ones, if they have movement disorders.
- bsuvc 3y agoGreat point. Now that you mention it, I did work with a person who had a condition that extremely affected his ability to move and yes, straw usage was essential for him.
- paulproteus 3y agoWhen people wear lipstick and are drinking something, a straw helps keep it on. If society's going to have lipstick and people go out, I think society sorta has to have straws! See e.g. https://stylecaster.com/beauty/makeup/468366/how-to-make-lipstick-last-through-eating/ https://stylecaster.com/beauty/makeup/468366/how-to-make-lip...
- bsuvc 3y agoAh makes sense. I didn't think about that scenario.
- kragen 3y agoi think the bigger issue is probably that the paper straws are about an order of magnitude higher in mass, virtually 100% organic chemicals, and so represent about an order of magnitude higher resource consumption the bigger issue than that is that disposable straws, even after that order-of-magnitude increase in impact, are an absolutely insignificant issue in ecological terms and yet have somehow become a political issue and spawned new laws and ridiculous greenwashing marketing
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- audunw 3y agoTo me it doesn’t seem that paper straws is about the resource consumption or oil used or anything like that. I think you have completely misunderstood the purpose. Even with the order of magnitude increase in resources used it’s still insignificant, as you touch on. What’s not insignificant is that in the contexts where straws are used.. fast food and coffee shops and such, they’re all too likely to be just thrown out into nature rather than being properly disposed of. Any material in that category needs to be biodegradable. That’s just a hard requirement in my opinion. So plastics is just not a suitable material. Yes, there are other sources of plastic pollution that are much worse in volume. Though they tend to end up in other places. We need to work on all the sources of plastic pollution in parallel. (Unless we go the other route and do massive bioengineering of microorganisms to let them break down plastics)
- kragen 3y agofrom my point of view, it depends on how much of it there is and what effect it has on the environment sand, glass, metal, and rust aren't biodegradable either, but i don't think we should ban mountains because they throw sand out into nature when they erode plastic straws are generally polypropylene, which is photodegradable to relatively nontoxic materials
- dddssddd 3y agoDidn't realize Mountains were pollution until you pointed it out. Thanks for your meaningful and on discussion contribution!
- psychphysic 3y agoAll this stuff sold to us as eco alternatives are horrendous. They are harmful imo as they detract from the ideal and usually attainable solution of reducing consumption.
- ben_w 3y agoSome of it is, but not all. > usually attainable solution of reducing consumption. Hell no. I'm a real life example of this "unicorn" — someone so utterly uninterested in acquiring material things that I spent an average of €1131 per month on everything combined in the last six months. Rent, travel, food, new laptop… and I'm not even trying to be frugal, this is with a lot of eating out and organic groceries. If everyone did what I did, not only would we still have wasteful straws (why were they in my mango lassis?), but also the economy would collapse immediately. If everyone cuts back as far as I can when I last tried seriously, the economy breaks much harder.
- Closi 3y agoEdit: Misread and assumed 1100 euros / 6 months. Have removed comment
- ben_w 3y agoI think you may have misread something; €1131 per month, of which €468 is rent and utilities (in Berlin, so still a good rate). €7.6 euros per week for food is doable, I think, but last time I really tried to optimise that I was at university, in the UK, and it was 2003. (£0.50/day: Lidl instant noodles that they don't even sell any more, Quaker oats packs that aren't sold here, skimmed milk, dried fruit in the oats; I don't recommend reproducing this, it was a game to see how little I could spend without going hungry).
- Closi 3y agoApologies I did misread - removed original comment.
- someguy7250 3y agoAll I can say is.. Garbage collection, and memory management ("recycling"), are hard, lol.
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- hinkley 3y agoThe only ones of these I actually want to entertain are the straws made of actual straw. And those are not fit for blended drinks.
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- wouldbecouldbe 3y agoThe paper coffee cups are around 100%. Paper is just not very good at resisting water.
- kragen 3y agoyou can use paraffin wax, beeswax, carnauba wax, or linseed oil (ideally without heavy-metal catalysts) there are probably a lot of other alternatives that i'm not thinking of fluorocarbons work better, are less toxic, and consume less resources because you can use less of them, but they aren't essential
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- tenken 3y agoMy uncle has Parkinson's disease attributed (in part) by Veterans Affairs due to Agent Orange exposure in Vietnam. He can only drink out of a cup using a straw due to the trembling and shakes. Also, straws are fun.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- therealdrag0 3y agoMaybe Buy him some metal straws with rubber mouth pieces.
- jayd16 3y agoWhy are aluminum cans cheap and disposable but we can't have cheap aluminum straws?
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- willis936 3y agoThis begs the question: why do we use straws at all? I'd be happier with a disposable sippable lid. Obviously a paradigm where we are rewarded for using our own containers would be best, but I am constraining to the baby steps that everyone is fond of.
- pierat 3y agoWhats worse is those arent just aluminum cans.... Soda cans are aluminum cans with a LAYER OF PLASTIC inside. We literally can't get far enough away from plastic. That shit's everywhere. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIVONw9Pr4w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIVONw9Pr4w Solution: We used to have bottling plants everywhere, and the loop was "local city glass bottling-> sold drinks-> return bottle -> sanitize bottle -> repeat". Low waste, no plastic crap, and REUSE (of the 4 R's). But nope, it's cheaper to consume new material and throw it "away" AKA: our children or their children to deal with. Its not like they can vote to stop us.
- alamortsubite 3y agoYeah, maybe aluminum straws wouldn't need to be lined with the same epoxy or polymer that aluminum cans are, since they wouldn't have to contain liquid long enough that oxidation is an issue?
- c22 3y agoAn aluminum straw with the wall thickness of an aluminum can would be pretty flimsy (try cutting the top and bottom off a can).
- jbb67 3y agowhen I see the words "forever chemicals" in some writing I assume the use of emotive language is simply there to try to manipulate me and so whatever the opposite of what the article says is likely the truth
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- gcau 3y agoWhat utensils/containers should I be using to avoid all forever chemicals and microplastics?
- xwdv 3y agoGlass. Metal.
- shmde 3y agoAdd ceramic/clay.
- ianai 3y agoCeramic, as a glass, is valid too. Pottery I’m thinking as well but maybe with some caveats such as non-leaded paint. Edit-I wish store items could be bought in reusable containers made from such materials. It would make groceries heavy and the cost of the containers might need to be “leased” some way (like old milk jugs were perhaps). But I’d do it.
- dwighttk 3y agoA few big companies have tried to start packaging reuse programs with plastic containers and that didn’t work on a large scale because of all the cost and inconvenience… add in the weight and fragility of glass and you’re even farther from a cost-effective system.
- ianai 3y agoHadn't seen them myself. I do figure that if it were to work, it would require the customer side to be involved in the financing of it. Kind of like buying a growler for a local brew pub. That probably wouldn't scale to every item a person buys in a store perfectly - hence the "lease" term above. Need some flexibility on the corners.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- sirmike_ 3y agoAny place which serves paper straws (in my area) gets an automatic no-go. Not interested in a business virtue signaling to superficial ecology preservation. It is akin to anti-gunners betting all in on stopping made up categories of firearms (assault weapons) which make up a tiny portion of murders. Whereas if they were serious they would focus on restrictions of hand-guns. The two stats of crime committed with both are NOT the same levels.
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- decremental 3y ago[dead]
- znite 3y agoJust stop using straws, simple
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- brnt 3y agoWhich brands? Cant get at the supplementary materials. I bought a set of those IKEA bamboo straws, said to be 100% natural, and indeed I don't see why pfas would be needed on those; solid bamboo.
- teekert 3y agoBamboo also has its issues [0]. I think mainly because it is kept in shape by bad stuff. Could be that your straws are really 100% bamboo, but some products are something like ground bamboo in some polymer. [0] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-9-2020-000642_EN.html https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-9-2020-00064...
- brnt 3y agoThe ones I have are just drilled out bamboo sticks (they vary in size and have visible bamboo structure), not reconstituted. I've never seen other types of bamboo straws (everything appears to be paper around here, once I had a pasta-straw), so I'm really curious.
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- Aachen 3y agoBut so does our drinking water afaik. The real news is that > PFAS are sometimes used as a water-resistant coating [on "paper" straws] Surprised Pikachu that paper isn't water resistent (though then why do they melt in your mouth? Are those straws the pure paper variant?). What we need is for people to be able to reuse the things. Return the reusable straw to any McDonald's worldwide for dishwashing and reuse, for example, if we can't get people to bring it from home (the latter is my solution atm). Single use paper straws isn't more greenhouse gas efficient than single use thin plastic straws anyway, that was never going to be the answer even if it alleviates a decimal of a fraction of plastic trash issues
- shyn3 3y agoThe corporate world has decided paper straws are better.
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- teekert 3y agoIs this just because these chemicals are just everywhere? Or are PFAS actually used in the production of straws?
- evolve2k 3y agoPFAS are used to add a water resistant coating to paper products, so I’d imagine straws to be worse than most paper cutlery as they literally needs to be designed to be submerged in water. The article linked out to this related article: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jan/26/water-resistant-products-toxic-pfas-study https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jan/26/water-re...
- Tokkemon 3y agoPaper straws are terrible.
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- hristov 3y agoThis smells like astroturfing in favor of plastic. The fact that something contains "traces" of PFAS is not that much of a revelation. Unfortunately, thanks to tragically insufficient environmental regulation, PFAS have gotten everywhere nowadays, so most naturally sourced ingredients will contain traces of PFAS. It is important to know how much PFAS they contain, whether those amounts are higher than the wood feedstock (i.e., are PFAS being added), whether the amounts are medically relevant, and whether the amounts are more than the alternative. (And lets not kid ourselves, stainless steel straws are not a viable alternative.)
- baybal2 3y ago[dead]
- nerdponx 3y agoMaybe they're not a complete replacement in all cases, but for getting an iced latte from the local coffee shop, the metal straws are just fine. There are also reusable plastic ones.
- yyyk 3y agoI'm not so sure this is the case regarding paper straws/cups. At least regarding paper cups, they do not involve paper alone but some addition of plastics (extra hardness and plasticity, avoiding water soaking). I suspect it's the same for straws as the same reasons apply. So this measurement is likely a result of production and not outside pollution.
- xdennis 3y agoThis is one of the few issues where I feel I'm the only sane person on the planet: you can just drink from the cup. We survived the first 600 million years of multicellular life without straws, and we can last a few more. People are at each other's throats over nothing. We could've been a type 2 civilization by now if we spent as much time researching energy extraction as we do talking about straws. </hyperbole>
- Gigachad 3y agoI always chuck the paper straw out at restaurants. I find they often have a weird effect of rapidly decarbonating the drink. Agreed that straws are just not useful for 99% of drinks. Only required for thick drinks.
- johnnyanmac 3y agofar from the first time people argued to death over what is ultimately a slight convenience. But for the sake of devil's advocate: putting your lips directly against a piece of plastic or glass is one of the easiest ways to expose oneself to a myriad of germs and bacteria. a wrapped straws solves many problems about cups in public outings that you cant fully control. and it leaves non-disposable cups just a bit cleaner. It's also a big factor for the elderly or disabled to prevent spills or worse.
- KETpXDDzR 3y agoPaper straws are the perfect example of human hypocrisy. It sounds so convincingly good for the nature and makes everyone forget that the oceans are polluted with fishernets. Effectively, paper straws are really really bad when it comes to recycling. Since paper doesn't have the right qualities for a straw (it will soak up all the liquids pretty fast), they are usually coated inside. That makes it problematic for recycling since you somehow need to reverse that coating. Besides, recycling paper costs a lot of water. Plastic on the other hand doesn't need coating and is pretty easy to recycle (a bit harder if it's colored). The reason why this doesn't happen is simply that new plastic is much cheaper than recycled one. I'm afraid with the de-icing of Greenland this trend will continue with all the new sources of oil.