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> if people don't care about PFAS in their tap water People don't? Sounds to me like they need to look at history a bit more. To me, this looks very much like

• alex43578 6mo ago
  Most people don't care. PFAS is only voluntarily being phased out in food packaging, rather than being banned. People cook with teflon-coated pans for the tiny convenience over a nitrided, ceramic, or seasoned cast iron pan. Outdoors enthusiasts want PFAS rain jackets and PFAS ski waxes, rather than the alternatives. I definitely agree they need to look at history, consider what they're being exposed to, and understand how simple and easy some of the substitutions/mitigations could be. There's 0 reason why manufacturers are getting 5+ years to phase out a forever chemical in something like ski wax or dental floss.
  • _zpvl 6mo ago
    I don't think it's that people don't care, I think it's that people are ignorant. I also don't think that's an accident, I think we're in the midst of a multi-decade project to create a populace that's as dumb as possible, because the more aware and educated people are, the less likely they are to allow the kinds of behaviour that are destroying the health of people, animals and the environment. The ideal societal conditions for, say, a petrochemical company that is creating toxins that are genuinely "forever" for all intents and purposes, is a society where people are exhausted from their terrible job (or two jobs, or job + gig economy side hustle) and spend their leisure time glued to their phones, scrolling AI slop on instagram and gambling away their meagre savings on sports betting and prediction markets. These are not people who are going to get educated about chemistry. Scientific expertise is derided as elitism. The president lies constantly by issuing "truths" on his social media platform. Public education gets defunded and IQ scores are declining. Either this is just random societal decay, or this is serving the interests of the rich and powerful. I know where I stand on it. And yes, I'm cranky.
    • billfor 6mo ago
      No it’s because lots of us grew up in the 70s with asbestos, lead, chlordane, ddt, etc… and we are still alive and thriving. We played with radioactive chemistry sets and even made our own plastic animals inside enclosed areas and loved to breath in the vapors : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thingmaker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thingmaker PFAS is the least of our concerns.
  • normie3000 6mo ago
    > tiny convenience over a nitrided, ceramic, or seasoned cast iron pan Or stainless steel?
    • teruakohatu 6mo ago
      Once you go stainless you don’t go back. None of the hassle of cast iron, and eggs don’t stick with just some basic skill. Very easy to clean, no need to be gentle like with cast iron ceramic or non stick pans.
  • andai 6mo ago
    >PFAS in dental floss Jesus Christ. Speaking of which, it occurs to me that my toothbrush is also made of plastic, and that most toothpastes are also mildly abrasive...
    • BenjiWiebe 6mo ago
      Toothbrushes wear down against your teeth anyways.
  • timr 6mo ago
    > People cook with teflon-coated pans for the tiny convenience over a nitrided, ceramic, or seasoned cast iron pan. ...which has absolutely nothing to do with the PFOA that you might reasonably be concerned about. Teflon is chemically inert. It's literally used for human body implants. Teflon-coated pans are not your enemy. Fire-fighting foam, on the other hand -- you probably shouldn't bathe in it. Any test that "detects" teflon in the generic category of "PFAS" is a hopelessly flawed test [1]. Unfortunately, a great many of these papers don't make the distinction, whether intentionally or due to incompetence, or simply because it's far easier to do that, and it gets better headlines. [1] Important aside: historically, several of the major manufacturers of teflon had problems with PFOA contamination around the factories due to manufacturing processes. This is unrelated to your personal use of a Teflon pan, and also, the process has been changed. If you want to argue that the new process is also polluting, fine, make that argument -- but don't assert that the use of the final product is itself unsafe.
    • convolvatron 6mo ago
      the concern is not about immediate effects of using products, but the fact that they are now everywhere in the environment, including water supplies and our own blood streams.
    • hvb2 6mo ago
      Plenty of people will use those pans and Overheat them, which means the stuff gets into the air. Many many pet birds have died of this only because they're more susceptible Use the wrong material in them meaning the start to scratch the Teflon layer. I'm not saying you cannot use them right, but too many people don't and the product isn't safe when improperly used. This is true for many products but in this case plenty of people aren't aware they're holding it wrong.
      • timr 6mo ago
        > Overheat them, which means the stuff gets into the air. Many many pet birds have died of this only because they're more susceptible And again, this has nothing to do with PFAS or PFOA. The principle cause is a complete breakdown of teflon into fluorinated small-molecule gases, such as hydrogen fluoride and tetrafluoroethylene. You're literally burning the coating off. It has as much relationship to PFOA as wood smoke has to wood.
• Zigurd 6mo ago
  Future archaeologists are going to chronicle humankind's stupidity by the lead layer, the atom bomb testing fallout layer, the PFAS layer, etc. All of these were made possible by a misplaced sense of scale. Yes we can poison the whole planet. That little blue dot.
  • awkward 6mo ago
    Geologically speaking it's just one really cool layer.
    • andai 6mo ago
      It's also got my pogs in it!