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Federal study links testicular cancer to ‘forever chemicals’
- toomuchtodo 3y agoStudy: https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/full/10.1289/EHP12603 https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/full/10.1289/EHP12603
- nostrebored 3y agoI’m really curious about the incidence of PFAS in adolescence and the relationship with lower testosterone levels. A relationship with testicular cancer seems to point to some relationship with PFAS and the reproductive system.
- ChatGTP 3y agoIf this turned out to be true it would be pretty fucking huge and terrifying.
- suby 3y agoSperm count has been declining for decades, and evidence suggests that the rate of decline is accelerating. Men today have 50% lower sperm count compared to 1970. In a way it'd be better if this link was true, because at least then we'd be on the right track to reversing the damage. https://archive.ph/4MQSu https://archive.ph/4MQSu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Male_infertility_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Male_infertility_crisis
- ChatGTP 3y agoWe’ll I mean maybe but we’ve still contaminated huge swaths of habitable land with these chemicals. So I guess you’re putting a positive spin on it but it’s still a catastrophic fuck up.
- judge2020 3y ago[dead]
- logicchains 3y ago>Men today have 50% lower sperm count compared to 1970. Sperm count/testosterone level is strongly correlated with body weight; if you account for how much fatter people are nowadays the reduction is much less (e.g. compare a healthy weight person from 1970 to now). Similarly a lot of the reduction in fertility is explained by people nowadays being fatter.
- nonethewiser 3y agoJust to be explicitly clear in case anyone has heard differently, obesity is unhealthy.
- devmor 3y agoI do not believe it is the first occurrence of such a link that I've seen a study shared on HN about. PFAS seem to be regarded as a boogeyman but in actuality may be a lot worse than anyone understands as of yet.
- bhouston 3y agoWell it was already linked to fertility issues: https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/03/24/infertility-pfas-forever-chemicals-may-slash-pregnancy-odds-by-40-per-cent-study-finds https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/03/24/infertility-pfas-fo...
- modeless 3y agoJust another common correlational study with giant confidence intervals that don't convincingly exclude the null hypothesis. Also, "Associations with PFOS in the first/only samples were weak and not statistically significant. Elevated concentrations of perfluorononanoic acid were inversely associated with TGCT, whereas results were null for other PFAS." This study does not merit wide attention.
- cykotic 3y agoThis is how progress is made. It starts out with observations and looking for clues and links. What the study shows is that these chemicals have decidedly not shown to be safe and therefore ought not be used. Further study is warranted and if the number of correlations increase substantially then we will have learned something new. If no new correlations are found then we have learned something new in this case too.
- modeless 3y ago> This is how progress is made. Yes. > Further study is warranted Yes. > What the study shows is that these chemicals have decidedly not shown to be safe and therefore ought not be used. Absolutely not. And the fact that people think that kind of thing after reading sensationalized articles like this causes real problems.
- anonuser123456 3y agoThe study is underpowered. But I sure as shit wouldn't be bathing in this stuff given the results.
- DoingIsLearning 3y agoFar more worrying is the link between male reproductive health and 1st trimester intra-uterine PFAS exposure: https://doi.org/10.1289/EHP10285 https://doi.org/10.1289/EHP10285 If this is true then with bio accumulation we have effectively a steady degradation where for each generation Male offspring present increasingly decaying sperm counts.
- potatoman22 3y agoThat is concerning. Thankfully, if we can slow the lifetime intake of PFAS over the generations, fertility should be able to rise again.
- ChatGTP 3y agoImagine living on the edge like this permanently ? Not the kind of world I think we want to live in ?
- Eric_WVGG 3y agoThat’s the climate crisis, right? Nobody who is serious about the topic thinks it can be turned back at this point, now it’s all about mitigation.
- oezi 3y agoNo, of course we need to act and continue to act. We need to reduce the amount of Co2 emitted to prevent aggravating the crises and then we need to turn it back. The climate crises is one which will take more than one generation to fix. But the fight is worthwhile and not impossible to win.
- ChatGTP 3y agoSure, I don’t want to live in the climate crisis world either?
- milsorgen 3y agoTestosterone and sperm counts have been decimated in modern times. Plus we are already seeing the vast majority of countries heading to births below replacement rate, yes even Africa. This could get deadly serious in terms of sustaining complex systems and ensuring resource production that can maintain relative comfort and security for everyone. I don't understand why this isn't a topic being vigorously discussed, even if it's not to fix things but even just to prepare for a shortage of new workers and tax payers.
- artursapek 3y agoWe be poisoning ourselves in 100 different ways every day
- kickout 3y agoI’ll drink to that!
- et-al 3y agoRachel Carson warned us about this sixty years ago, but here we are.
- milsorgen 3y agoThat's true but if we can work to make it 99 ways soon then we can aim for 98 ways next.
- steve_adams_86 3y agoI agree. But we also need to stop introducing new ways so this doesn’t become a treadmill of needless suffering. We need to review and test the chemicals we allow onto the market far more rigorously.
- pessimizer 3y agoAt least they have to keep paying politicians to do it now. In the early-mid 20th century it was a free for all.
- Gigachad 3y agoIt seems we are still better than peak poisoning a few decades ago with heavy metals, asbestos, arsenic, etc being used in everything.
- carlmr 3y agoMost of these were only revealed 20-50 years after the fact, no? I think we don't know yet in how many ways we're being poisone, because the policy seems to be use random chemicals now, ask questions later. Also maybe add phosphorus and radium to the list.
- ironmagma 3y agoThanks, DuPont.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- abledon 3y agowhether or not this is true, i've put my tinfoil hat on, and am now buying 'toms of maine' dental floss... (PFAS FREE) btw...
- soligern 3y agoI use reverse osmosis well water, all stainless steel cooking utensils, buy my meat from a farm and only buy fresh veggies. I only drink out of glass and use glass containers for storage. That’s about as much as I can handle and I think that covers all major sources.
- aziaziazi 3y agoDoesn’t your food is a potential major source if the farms you go does not use reverse osmosis for their animals/plants ? I see you do as much as you can do but I don’t think anyone is preserved because those chemicals are spreads. Wouldn’t be surprise if animals natality degrades too.
- DoingIsLearning 3y agoSo many questions on the reverse osmosis usage. What kind of flows do you get from it? I get the impression they convert water very slowly so it's not like an instant open tap. For example could you connect to a dish washer or is it only a reservoir for drinking water. What is the water waste like, as in how many liters are you spending in the membrane cleansing versus actual drinking water? What kind of material is used for the tubing and containers it uses? I am a little be sceptical of using flexible tubing (usually flexible because of plasticizers) to then feed and accomulate water into a reservoir.
- soligern 3y agoThere is a reservoir so it is instant on. The flow is reasonable, you can fill a glass of water in 5-7 seconds. I have to replace the membranes every 6 months. Waste water disposal is hidden so I’m not sure how much gets discarded. Flexible tubing seems to be used.
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- caturopath 3y agoI wonder if firefighters have been exposed to any other hazards.
- vimota 3y agoTwo years ago I became really interested in optimizing testosterone levels naturally and one of the things that kept coming up in research was the impact of EDCs (Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals) on fertility, cancer, hormone health and testosterone and just how prevalent they are in all our products (clothes use PFAS as water repellent / stain resistance, soaps and creams use parabens as preservatives, anything that has a scent typically uses pthalates for the smell to last longer, etc) . My girlfriend, who has a background in environmental science and skincare, also got interested in this and ended up starting a personal care brand focused on being 100% free of Endocrine Disruptors / forever chemicals: https://olivercare.co/ https://olivercare.co/. I truly believe as more studies continue to come out strengthening the connection between these chemicals and the long term health and fertility risks, consumers and brands are going to shift to safer alternatives. In fact, there's a chance that "forever chemical" lawsuits end up being bigger than the famous Big Tobacco settlement: https://time.com/6292482/legal-liability-pfas-chemicals-lawsuit/ https://time.com/6292482/legal-liability-pfas-chemicals-laws... .
- colordrops 3y agoI've been a crunchy granola conspiracy nerd for over 20 years now, eating organic foods and avoiding plastic anything, including clothing polymers and food containers for a long while, having taken a lot of heat for being a tin-foil hat wearing nutjob over the years. My sperm is on fire though - my wife and I have to be extremely careful to avoid pregnancy, having multiple kids and making a couple other unplanned mistakes already. I have many friends around me that have difficulty conceiving, and perhaps not coincidentally some of them are ones who criticized me for my "paranoid beliefs".
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- itomato 3y agoCuteness - does it run in your family?
- atomicnumber3 3y ago
- max_ 3y agoIf your interested in this topic, I suggest you watch the movie "Dark Waters" starring Mark Ruffalo
- fnord77 3y agobehold, the great filter. or one of many
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- oneshtein 3y agoAFAIK, body can detect poison or infection in the blood and then reduce reproduction rate, to reduce spread of infection or birth defect rate due to intoxication.
- kridsdale3 3y agoProvide a citation. I've never heard of that.
- meindnoch 3y agoI feel like burning some karma, so here's an unpopular opinion: the recent rise of gender dysphoria can be explained by the increasing endocrine disruptor load of the younger generations.
- verisimi 3y ago[flagged]
- ljf 3y agoGender dysphoria is not about lacking a hormone. People born a man with 100 percent of the testosterone they 'should' have, can still have a total need to transition to Female. Giving them more testosterone won't help.
- hypertele-Xii 3y ago[flagged]
- begett 3y ago[flagged]
- verisimi 3y agoNo. Testosterone in men has drastically declined. It used to be ~50% higher than today. https://testosteronedecline.com/testosterone-levels-100-years-ago/ https://testosteronedecline.com/testosterone-levels-100-year... > As you can see, average testosterone in the USA was something like 625 ng/dl in the 70’s, until the early 80’s. This is reasonably high testosterone. But since then it has been falling steadily. > For the average American man in the period of 2013 – 2016, testosterone was 420 ng/dl. (source)
- nyanpasu64 3y agoThe reason trans people suffer with their natal puberty and hormones is not because they aren't receiving enough hormone, but because they're receiving the wrong hormones which disrupt the brain and/or cause undesired sexual characteristics (including bodily proportions and bone/fat distribution) which cause existential mental distress. Giving extra testosterone to men with low testosterone may help, but giving extra testosterone to trans women forced through a male puberty is psychological and physical abuse.
- nonethewiser 3y agoJust a reminder that Alex Jones was kinda right about Atrizine turning the frogs gay.
- gunapologist99 3y agoIt's actually quite disturbing how often the conspiracy theorists are turning out to be right.
- red-iron-pine 3y agobollocks. this isn't a conspiracy, it was documented science spewed by a demagogue in an inflammatory way. virtually all conspiracy theories are still bunk as hell, and alex jones is a documented fraudster.
- jklinger410 3y ago> virtually all conspiracy theories are still bunk as hell Except all the ones that have and will continue to turn out to be true.
- TimPC 3y agoI think the standard for using a chemical that never breaks down and exists forever is that you to the best of research ability have shown it to be safe. It's crazy that we allowed companies to just make this stuff and we are stuck with it forever. How do you realistically expect to compensate someone who gets some adverse health effect from these chemicals in 2000 years long after the life of whatever company made them? We make it far too easy for companies to create massive negative externalities and it should be harder.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- sparrowInHand 3y agoGenerational guilt. All descendants of shareholders are auto indebted and participate in the guilt of the ancestor.
- ch4s3 3y agoSo like anyone with a pension, 401k or index fund? Everyone in a nation with a sovereign wealth fund?
- anonyfox 3y ago> that we allowed companies to just make Isn’t this the default in America (and more countries, sure)? I prefer the opposite (European) stance the companies have to prove beyond doubt the harmlessness. (Or be strongarmed by the US or Fall to bribery like everywhere else… but at least there is trying)
- gottorf 3y ago> the companies have to prove beyond doubt the harmlessness. There must be a reasonable balance struck somewhere. One cannot prove a negative, after all, and if anything new must be proven beyond doubt that it has no short, medium, or long-term effects on human health, you are not going to have anything new, period. Acetaminophen, for example, has been in use for a century and a half, yet we still don't know how it really works[0]. If we don't know how it works, how are we to know that it won't harm us in some insidious way? [0]: https://medicine.tufts.edu/news-events/news/how-does-acetaminophen-work https://medicine.tufts.edu/news-events/news/how-does-acetami...
- Technetium 3y agoWow, the amount of willful ignorance in some comments here is astonishing. It's so strange to see people argue for the continuance of something harmful to mankind as a whole. It really feels like seeing an argument on behalf of leaded water. What's the next leap? Trying to justify 3M/DuPont/Chemours/Corteva not paying for destroying the environment, even though they're profiting tens of billions a year from doing this? Let's try to stay grounded in factual reality; lawsuits don't happen randomly, and a $1,185,000,000 in damages should be taken VERY seriously! They knew it was toxic for 73 BLEEDING YEARS[0], yet none of the studies come out publicly. They do it for profit, never any other reason[1]. Stock prices won't drop if people think it's safe[2]. They took a page right out of the big tobacco playbook there. It's as ingeniously profitable as it is evil. [0] https://www.ewg.org/research/decades-polluters-knew-pfas-chemicals-were-dangerous-hid-risks-public https://www.ewg.org/research/decades-polluters-knew-pfas-che... [1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/07/pfas-3m-dupont-chemical-industry-health-toxic-study https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/07/pfas-3m-... [2] https://static.ewg.org/reports/2019/pfa-timeline/3M-DuPont-Timeline_sm.pdf https://static.ewg.org/reports/2019/pfa-timeline/3M-DuPont-T... Lawsuit sources: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/02/dupont-pfas-settlement-water-chemical-contamination https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/02/dupont-p... https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news-release/dupont-chemours-and-corteva-reach-4-billion-settlement-forever-chemicals https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news-release/dupont-chemou... https://apnews.com/article/pfas-forever-chemicals-dupont-drinking-water-82516dfef51da45b389e00fa956cf8c5 https://apnews.com/article/pfas-forever-chemicals-dupont-dri...