8 ms·

Men in their 50s may be aging faster due to toxic 'forever chemicals'

88 points by jb1991 8mo ago

bonsai_spool 8mo ago
This is about a journal article titled "Emerging PFAS contaminants PFNA and PFSA amplify epigenetic aging: sex- and age-stratified risks in an aging population" https://doi.org/10.3389/fragi.2025.1722675 https://doi.org/10.3389/fragi.2025.1722675 . The OP says mentions a report from a US Academy but the paper is published in a different journal—this wasn't clear to me at first so I thought I would share the original work.
shablulman 8mo ago
[flagged]
gryzzly 8mo ago
So hard to believe all the skiers and snowboarders were putting PFAS as wax just until couple years ago. Also in Germany, you can buy "permanent baking paper" that is pure PTFE without a problem, which is insane to me.
- cannonpr 8mo ago
  The problem is most data shows PTFE as having significant pyrolysis after 400-500c in reality it starts to break down enough to poison you around 260c. In general though under those temperatures it’s not particularly problematic, ofcourse ideally we should just never make the stuff to begin with as it’s manufacture and its eventual breakdown are both horrible for everyone.
- ifwinterco 8mo ago
  Teflon pans are still legal in every country in the world and used in every restaurant and food preparation industry. It's basically impossible to avoid this stuff unless you cook all of your meals from scratch and never eat out anywhere
  - tonyedgecombe 8mo ago
    > It's basically impossible to avoid this stuff unless you cook all of your meals from scratch and never eat out anywhere Which is pretty much what you should do if you are concerned about your health at all.
    - pibaker 8mo ago
      You can absolutely care about your health and still enjoy some unhealthy things every once in a while, be it dinning out, a grill party, a glass of wine or a motorcycle ride. Thinking that you must optimize every single bit of your health 100% of the time or you do not care about your health at all is just pathological black and white thinking. What a miserable way to spend the mere decades you have on this planet.
      - tonyedgecombe 8mo ago
        >You can absolutely care about your health and still enjoy some unhealthy things every once in a while, be it dinning out, a grill party, a glass of wine or a motorcycle ride. Isn't this the message we get from the food companies marketing departments every day. Sure you can eat that thousand calorie desert once in a while as part of a healthy diet. Then before you know it we are in an obesity epidemic and what is genuinely healthy looks extreme to the majority.
        pibaker 8mo ago
        There is food advertisements everywhere in Japan and yet no one is fat. Maybe the real reason Americans are fat is instead of taking responsibility of their own health they prefer to blame it on le marketing departments instead. Shrug.
      - ifwinterco 8mo ago
        Yeah I definitely agree with this. Also at the end of the day it is ultimately largely down to fate/probability/deity of your choice. You have control over some parameters, but you're just tweaking inputs to a huge RNG that is spinning 24/7 365 days a year and there's always a chance your numbers will come up
- simonsarris 8mo ago
  I mean, did you know most dental floss has PFAS? You have to go out of your way to get PFAS free Do you know what "countertop sealer" is made of? It's PFAS! Lots and lots of people rub PFAS on their food surfaces on purpose! The stuff is everywhere even if you think you are avoiding it.
  - ChoGGi 8mo ago
    I use a water flosser, and walrus oil for my cutting board.
hurubaw 8mo ago
People born before the 1980 are also of significantly lower IQ up to a 7-8 points due to leaded gas use. The boomers and gen X really did a number on themselves with environmental hazards.
- nickdothutton 8mo ago
  1901 Oldsmobile curved dashboard was the first mass produced car. Lead was introduced to gasoline around 1920. You want the "Lost Generation", born 1883-1900.
- fnordpiglet 8mo ago
  Gen X also gave you the web, google, facebook, YouTube, twitter, and additive algorithmic brain rot. So who got the better deal?
- perch56 8mo ago
  In countries that phased out lead later, even early Millennials faced similar or worse childhood exposure. It’s a global generational story, just with different timelines by country. As a personal example, Romania only phased out leaded gasoline at the end of 2004.
  - ehnto 8mo ago
    Some places still allow it in civil aviation too.
    - MSFT_Edging 8mo ago
      The US is one. If you live by a small airport frequented by personal aircraft, you're getting bombarded by lead. Now just imagine living next to a teaching airport that does aerial laps around the neighborhood.
      - rkhassen9 8mo ago
        Why the hate on the gens? Most of this stuff was not widely known. There was no internet, so you only got info from 3 tv channels and a newspaper, magazines and conversation. Blame it on the corps.
amelius 8mo ago
There's this theory that you can dilute the chemicals by doing frequent blood donations.
- seethishat 8mo ago
  I've been told that is beneficial for men with cardiovascular disease too, but I am not sure if that is true.
- medi8r 8mo ago
  Is the leech back?
  - amelius 8mo ago
    If you are scared of needles you can have the leech. Donation is generally more useful though.
  - SkyBelow 8mo ago
    Did it ever leave? I thought it was still preferred in certain medical procedures. I think something about after reattaching parts of the body it was one of the best options to ensure blood flow in the area, but it has been years since I last read about it.
  - JKCalhoun 8mo ago
    (Had to delete my comment in deference to your beating me by an hour.)
  - MagicMoonlight 8mo ago
    People mocked the leechers, they called them mad. And now look who’s crawling back. It turns out leeches really do cure diseases.
- FrustratedMonky 8mo ago
  Is there any studies quantifying it? It seems to make sense. Wonder if anybody has measured.
HardwareLust 8mo ago
If this were true, would we not see a corresponding drop in life expectancy?
- Retric 8mo ago
  Dead people are easy to see, the issue is trying to differentiate one cause from everything else. Smoking for example wasn’t believed to be particularly deadly for a surprisingly long time.
- Cthulhu_ 8mo ago
  My armchair scientific answer to that is: eventually, maybe. The problem we / science / medical / life expectancy has right now is that so much has and is changing as we speak. PFAS and microplastics only really became a thing after WW2, so while on the one side we banned asbestos, leaded fuel, smoking (and more recently drinking) got out of fashion, on the other there's microplastics everywhere, PFAS, vaping, various radiations, and by the looks of it the effects of a lot of these things will only slowly become apparent and statistically significant / measurable and discernable from other possible causes over a long period (30-50 years I'd guess, maybe longer), by which time there will be other factors at play too.
9999_points 8mo ago
I assume a lot of people 50+ were exposed to a lot more lead and cigarette smoke than younger people.
- steveBK123 8mo ago
  Yes, for those under 30 you have no idea how normalized smoking was right thru the 90s. Restaurants reeked of it, bars more so. A ridiculous percent of men smoked. I have memories of being quite young sitting in a relatives lap at a baseball game while they smoked. Or my coach in little league smoking a pipe in the dugout filled with 11 year olds.
  - Goronmon 8mo ago
    Every vehicle came with an electric lighter and plenty of ash trays. One of the more common crafts kids used to do was making ash trays for their parents.
  - seidleroni 8mo ago
    I was explaining this to my elementary school aged kids just a few days ago. We were eating in a restaurant and I told them that when I was their age most restaurants had a smoking and non-smoking section. Of course the smoke did not respect the invisible barrier. The idea that people could just smoke indoors and it was normal really blew their minds.
    - steveBK123 8mo ago
      High school boys bathroom was basically a de-facto smoking lounge. It was banned but kids still did it. They occasionally cracked down, but the smell was permanent. There was also an unwritten understanding that it was preferred the boys went out back to a certain door to smoke outside there instead and wouldn't get in trouble if caught.
    - JKCalhoun 8mo ago
      "…had a smoking and non-smoking section" You're younger than me if you don't remember before there was even that distinction.
OutOfHere 8mo ago
Consuming fiber daily, e.g. psyllium husk, is another way to lower some types of PFAS from the body, although not all types of PFAS are going to mix into bile to facilitate this excretion. The way this works is that some PFAS dissolves in bile which binds to psyllium which is excreted. Remember, 5g psyllium should be taken with 20 fl oz water, mixed and consumed immediately before it gels. Do not take it two hours before or after any medicine, and do not take it if having swallowing difficulty.
- zendist 8mo ago
  Source?
  - Cthulhu_ 8mo ago
    Here's one, googling is probably faster than asking for a source: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12940-025-01165-8 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12940-025-01165-8
  - OutOfHere 8mo ago
    Anything that binds bile is going to help excrete PFAS, e.g. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-11-pfas-body-faster-medicines.html https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-11-pfas-body-faster-medi...
- lm28469 8mo ago
  > psyllium husk If you can source clean psyllium, the bulk of it comes from India and let's say they have different standards when it comes to lead/pesticides and regulations in general
  - OutOfHere 8mo ago
    I get the USDA Organic one which should handle the pesticides issue. I have asked the vendor to ensure the vendor test for heavy metals. Note that psyllium is unique in that not only does it not absorb, but it also binds to everything on the way out, so the risk is low. Fwiw, I have had blood and urine tests for lead twice. Finally, it's not as if the US is great with pesticides. We literally deliberately include PFAS in our pesticides.
casey2 8mo ago
Men aged 51, 53, 58[1] may be aging faster due to toxic 'forever chemiclas' [1] born in June (** p < 0.01)

88 points by jb1991 8mo ago

This is about a journal article titled "Emerging PFAS contaminants PFNA and PFSA amplify epigenetic aging: sex- and age-stratified risks in an aging population" https://doi.org/10.3389/fragi.2025.1722675 https://doi.org/10.3389/fragi.2025.1722675 . The OP says mentions a report from a US Academy but the paper is published in a different journal—this wasn't clear to me at first so I thought I would share the original work.

shablulman 8mo ago

[flagged]

gryzzly 8mo ago

So hard to believe all the skiers and snowboarders were putting PFAS as wax just until couple years ago. Also in Germany, you can buy "permanent baking paper" that is pure PTFE without a problem, which is insane to me.

cannonpr 8mo ago
The problem is most data shows PTFE as having significant pyrolysis after 400-500c in reality it starts to break down enough to poison you around 260c. In general though under those temperatures it’s not particularly problematic, ofcourse ideally we should just never make the stuff to begin with as it’s manufacture and its eventual breakdown are both horrible for everyone.
ifwinterco 8mo ago
Teflon pans are still legal in every country in the world and used in every restaurant and food preparation industry. It's basically impossible to avoid this stuff unless you cook all of your meals from scratch and never eat out anywhere
- tonyedgecombe 8mo ago
  > It's basically impossible to avoid this stuff unless you cook all of your meals from scratch and never eat out anywhere Which is pretty much what you should do if you are concerned about your health at all.
  - pibaker 8mo ago
    You can absolutely care about your health and still enjoy some unhealthy things every once in a while, be it dinning out, a grill party, a glass of wine or a motorcycle ride. Thinking that you must optimize every single bit of your health 100% of the time or you do not care about your health at all is just pathological black and white thinking. What a miserable way to spend the mere decades you have on this planet.
    - tonyedgecombe 8mo ago
      >You can absolutely care about your health and still enjoy some unhealthy things every once in a while, be it dinning out, a grill party, a glass of wine or a motorcycle ride. Isn't this the message we get from the food companies marketing departments every day. Sure you can eat that thousand calorie desert once in a while as part of a healthy diet. Then before you know it we are in an obesity epidemic and what is genuinely healthy looks extreme to the majority.
      - pibaker 8mo ago
        There is food advertisements everywhere in Japan and yet no one is fat. Maybe the real reason Americans are fat is instead of taking responsibility of their own health they prefer to blame it on le marketing departments instead. Shrug.
    - ifwinterco 8mo ago
      Yeah I definitely agree with this. Also at the end of the day it is ultimately largely down to fate/probability/deity of your choice. You have control over some parameters, but you're just tweaking inputs to a huge RNG that is spinning 24/7 365 days a year and there's always a chance your numbers will come up
simonsarris 8mo ago
I mean, did you know most dental floss has PFAS? You have to go out of your way to get PFAS free Do you know what "countertop sealer" is made of? It's PFAS! Lots and lots of people rub PFAS on their food surfaces on purpose! The stuff is everywhere even if you think you are avoiding it.
- ChoGGi 8mo ago
  I use a water flosser, and walrus oil for my cutting board.

hurubaw 8mo ago

People born before the 1980 are also of significantly lower IQ up to a 7-8 points due to leaded gas use. The boomers and gen X really did a number on themselves with environmental hazards.

nickdothutton 8mo ago
1901 Oldsmobile curved dashboard was the first mass produced car. Lead was introduced to gasoline around 1920. You want the "Lost Generation", born 1883-1900.
fnordpiglet 8mo ago
Gen X also gave you the web, google, facebook, YouTube, twitter, and additive algorithmic brain rot. So who got the better deal?
perch56 8mo ago
In countries that phased out lead later, even early Millennials faced similar or worse childhood exposure. It’s a global generational story, just with different timelines by country. As a personal example, Romania only phased out leaded gasoline at the end of 2004.
- ehnto 8mo ago
  Some places still allow it in civil aviation too.
  - MSFT_Edging 8mo ago
    The US is one. If you live by a small airport frequented by personal aircraft, you're getting bombarded by lead. Now just imagine living next to a teaching airport that does aerial laps around the neighborhood.
    - rkhassen9 8mo ago
      Why the hate on the gens? Most of this stuff was not widely known. There was no internet, so you only got info from 3 tv channels and a newspaper, magazines and conversation. Blame it on the corps.

amelius 8mo ago

There's this theory that you can dilute the chemicals by doing frequent blood donations.

seethishat 8mo ago
I've been told that is beneficial for men with cardiovascular disease too, but I am not sure if that is true.
medi8r 8mo ago
Is the leech back?
- amelius 8mo ago
  If you are scared of needles you can have the leech. Donation is generally more useful though.
- SkyBelow 8mo ago
  Did it ever leave? I thought it was still preferred in certain medical procedures. I think something about after reattaching parts of the body it was one of the best options to ensure blood flow in the area, but it has been years since I last read about it.
- JKCalhoun 8mo ago
  (Had to delete my comment in deference to your beating me by an hour.)
- MagicMoonlight 8mo ago
  People mocked the leechers, they called them mad. And now look who’s crawling back. It turns out leeches really do cure diseases.
FrustratedMonky 8mo ago
Is there any studies quantifying it? It seems to make sense. Wonder if anybody has measured.

HardwareLust 8mo ago

If this were true, would we not see a corresponding drop in life expectancy?

Retric 8mo ago
Dead people are easy to see, the issue is trying to differentiate one cause from everything else. Smoking for example wasn’t believed to be particularly deadly for a surprisingly long time.
Cthulhu_ 8mo ago
My armchair scientific answer to that is: eventually, maybe. The problem we / science / medical / life expectancy has right now is that so much has and is changing as we speak. PFAS and microplastics only really became a thing after WW2, so while on the one side we banned asbestos, leaded fuel, smoking (and more recently drinking) got out of fashion, on the other there's microplastics everywhere, PFAS, vaping, various radiations, and by the looks of it the effects of a lot of these things will only slowly become apparent and statistically significant / measurable and discernable from other possible causes over a long period (30-50 years I'd guess, maybe longer), by which time there will be other factors at play too.

9999_points 8mo ago

I assume a lot of people 50+ were exposed to a lot more lead and cigarette smoke than younger people.

steveBK123 8mo ago
Yes, for those under 30 you have no idea how normalized smoking was right thru the 90s. Restaurants reeked of it, bars more so. A ridiculous percent of men smoked. I have memories of being quite young sitting in a relatives lap at a baseball game while they smoked. Or my coach in little league smoking a pipe in the dugout filled with 11 year olds.
- Goronmon 8mo ago
  Every vehicle came with an electric lighter and plenty of ash trays. One of the more common crafts kids used to do was making ash trays for their parents.
- seidleroni 8mo ago
  I was explaining this to my elementary school aged kids just a few days ago. We were eating in a restaurant and I told them that when I was their age most restaurants had a smoking and non-smoking section. Of course the smoke did not respect the invisible barrier. The idea that people could just smoke indoors and it was normal really blew their minds.
  - steveBK123 8mo ago
    High school boys bathroom was basically a de-facto smoking lounge. It was banned but kids still did it. They occasionally cracked down, but the smell was permanent. There was also an unwritten understanding that it was preferred the boys went out back to a certain door to smoke outside there instead and wouldn't get in trouble if caught.
  - JKCalhoun 8mo ago
    "…had a smoking and non-smoking section" You're younger than me if you don't remember before there was even that distinction.

OutOfHere 8mo ago

Consuming fiber daily, e.g. psyllium husk, is another way to lower some types of PFAS from the body, although not all types of PFAS are going to mix into bile to facilitate this excretion. The way this works is that some PFAS dissolves in bile which binds to psyllium which is excreted. Remember, 5g psyllium should be taken with 20 fl oz water, mixed and consumed immediately before it gels. Do not take it two hours before or after any medicine, and do not take it if having swallowing difficulty.

zendist 8mo ago
Source?
- Cthulhu_ 8mo ago
  Here's one, googling is probably faster than asking for a source: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12940-025-01165-8 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12940-025-01165-8
- OutOfHere 8mo ago
  Anything that binds bile is going to help excrete PFAS, e.g. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-11-pfas-body-faster-medicines.html https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-11-pfas-body-faster-medi...
lm28469 8mo ago
> psyllium husk If you can source clean psyllium, the bulk of it comes from India and let's say they have different standards when it comes to lead/pesticides and regulations in general
- OutOfHere 8mo ago
  I get the USDA Organic one which should handle the pesticides issue. I have asked the vendor to ensure the vendor test for heavy metals. Note that psyllium is unique in that not only does it not absorb, but it also binds to everything on the way out, so the risk is low. Fwiw, I have had blood and urine tests for lead twice. Finally, it's not as if the US is great with pesticides. We literally deliberately include PFAS in our pesticides.

casey2 8mo ago

Men aged 51, 53, 58[1] may be aging faster due to toxic 'forever chemiclas' [1] born in June (** p < 0.01)