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What's the deal with PFAS, a.k.a. 'forever chemicals'?
- dools 2y agoJerry Sciencefeld: What's the deal with PFAS?
- A_non_e-moose 2y agoYou have read my mind!
- ericpauley 2y agoBania!
- RadixDLT 2y agoYou ever notice how everyone's always talking about getting their daily dose of something? 'I need my daily dose of vitamin C.' 'I need my daily dose of coffee.' But have you ever heard anyone say, 'I'm telling you, I need my daily dose of toxic chemicals'?
- aeonik 2y agoI think you might be talking about alcohol or cigarettes.
- KerryJones 2y agoThis long-form article feels like it should be a short-form article. tl;dr: - PFAS/forever chemicals have a lot of science saying they're harmful to health - Government regulation is the best long term solution - Short term solution: buy non-PFAS pans, take your own to-go containers, using water filters that filter PFAS
- slowmovintarget 2y agoAvoid plastics and choose glass or porcelain that doesn't come from China (they have high lead content, especially in their porcelain glazes). For cookware, stainless steel or cast iron; try to avoid coatings, especially Teflon.
- GuB-42 2y agoPart 1 (the science) is best left long-form. That's because it is actually quite a complex topic. It is not like many of the recognized harmful substances that have very obvious effects. Lead poisoning has been known since the antiquity, smoking can increase the risks of cancer by several times, asbestos causes diseases that are otherwise extremely rare, etc... Here we are talking about things like a 15% increase in the risk of diabetes, with a confidence interval that still leaves chance as a possibility. Acute poisoning is almost unheard of, except with free radicals, making it hard to evaluate toxicity as if it was a typical poison. The article mentions how scientists are struggling, especially when we consider that there is not a single PFAS. The article also links to several studies, something I wish to see more often, traditional newspapers often don't link a single study. So yeah, in essence a lot of science is saying PFAS are harmful to health, but the real take is that we don't really know, but it doesn't look good. And because they are "forever chemicals", it may be a good idea to try to limit usage right now, even if we don't know much, by precaution.
- lazide 2y agoAdditional note on the ‘there is not one single PFAS’ - there are several million distinct PFAS compounds. Some are in wide use, some unclear, some unused. With a wide variety of elements in the various compounds. It is like saying ‘plastic bad’. Which plastic? What is the definition of bad? Yeah don’t eat plastics, but the difference between styrene, PTFE, and HDPE on any axis one would care to define is crazy big.
- patwater10 2y agoVery much a big deal in the water world!
- ein0p 2y agoThe only answer I want from this research is whether I should throw away my teflon skillets. Best I (and GPT4) can tell the article does not say.
- amluto 2y agoMy advice would be: continue to use them, carefully, if they’re in good shape. Teflon skillets are coated with PTFE, which is a perfluorinated polymer — it’s plastic, not a soapy soluble substance. It’s very inert, and it seems to be mostly harmless, but it has a couple of nasty properties: 1. Manufacturing involves using heavily fluorinated surfactants, and those are genuinely nasty chemicals. Only trace amounts should remain in the pan, but I wouldn’t want to be around the factory or its waste stream. 2. It starts to decompose, slowly, at temperatures at which it’s still solid. This is obnoxious for manufacturing. It also means that if you get it too hot at home, it decomposes. I think the results of the decomposition are mostly gasses, and they seem to be especially toxic to birds. Don’t overheat it! This can be challenging, especially on some stoves (ones with big gas flames that hit the sides of the pan or crappy electric stoves with terrible temperature control). 3. It’s soft and easily damaged. Try to avoid scratching it off and eating the pieces. Eww! You can buy “ceramic” coated pans instead. “Ceramic” in this context appears to be almost meaningless, and there are patents for “ceramic” coatings that involve fluorinated silicone compounds. This sounds worse than PTFE to me. There are now a few brands selling explicitly PFAS-free nonstick pans, both “ceramic” and polyester-based. I’d go for the former — do you really want to eat the inevitable bits of polyester that will burn or scratch off into your food?
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