[HN Gopher] Engineers develop water filtration that permanently ...
___________________________________________________________________
Engineers develop water filtration that permanently removes
"forever chemicals"
Author : benguild
Score : 152 points
Date : 2023-04-30 17:03 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nbcnews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nbcnews.com)
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| We really ought to show more care and test more when we are
| creating chemical marvels and new materials. At a certain level
| of scale a lot of the inventions of the last 50 years turned out
| to be quite damaging to our health and environment. We don't seem
| to have the balance right yet comparing freedom to release
| whatever and complete lockdown until something is proved safe and
| we keep damaging people and the biodiversity of the planet on
| which we depend.
| neltnerb wrote:
| Something that blows my mind is that you can get a patent on a
| new "state of matter" (implying intrinsically that it has novel
| properties) but then claim to regulators that it doesn't need
| new safety testing because it's similar to something existing.
| robcohen wrote:
| You could make the argument that we really need better methods
| and technology for determining the health impact of what we put
| into our environment. The problem as I see it (as a total
| layman) is that the health sciences are not good at determining
| the effects of almost anything in the future. The best we can
| do is wide-scale studies that try to control for different
| variables (and largely fail, because the set of variables is
| incredibly large).
|
| I have a feeling we aren't going to solve this problem anytime
| soon, as the simulations required appear to be so large they
| are beyond our reach. I am optimistic that we can massively
| increase the data collected as time goes on, and that will
| increase our accuracy of studies of things that occurred in the
| past.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| Now replace health science with climate science and see how
| it reads.
|
| https://www.tellerreport.com/life/2021-02-23-%0A---%22the-
| fa...
|
| edit: documentary might come back on ARTE in the future but
| in the meantime, if you understand french: https://video.plou
| d.fr/w/4d35ad9a-6eac-4708-aa62-3b754057407... and
| https://archive.org/details/la-fabrique-de-lignorance-
| docume...
|
| It's usually subbed/dubbed in French and German.
| specialist wrote:
| Cites the documentary "La fabrique de l'ignorance". I could
| only find a trailer.
|
| https://boutique.arte.tv/detail/la-fabrique-de-lignorance
|
| Please share if you can find the full video. TIA.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| thephyber wrote:
| I would argue there are enough companies that have continued
| creating these cash cow chemicals even after there was
| sufficient evidence of substantial harm that additional
| testing would be useless, except to class action lawsuit
| plaintiffs to prove what the defendants already know.
|
| Movies that cover this topic: Erin Brockovich, A Civil
| Action, Dark Waters. More recently the talc powder lawsuit
| against Johnson & Johnson.
|
| Hell, the Bay Area is littered with EPA Superfund Sites where
| all of the old chipmakers and their suppliers were. Good luck
| to Chandler, AZ (where the new American chip fans are being
| built). I hope you learn at least a little something from the
| SF peninsula's mistakes of the 1960s-1990s.
|
| A former naval base in my area has been decommissioned for
| years but still hasn't cleaned up the firefighting chemical
| runoff that has seeped into the ground. Sometimes there
| simply isn't a healthier substitute for a chemical or there
| is no legal method to prevent an organization from screwing
| up the environment (good luck suing the Navy for something
| they did 50 years ago before the harm was known).
|
| I would agree that better testing and health trials could
| have identified these health risks before the companies
| started using these chemicals, but companies don't have
| emotions or ethics. They are sociopaths seeking maximum
| returns and will turn a blind eye (or worse) if their profits
| are threatened. There is a ton of motivated reasoning within
| and around companies that produce and use harmful chemicals,
| especially if they are the only industry in a region.
| scruple wrote:
| There are multi-million dollar homes and a school facility
| built on top of (parts of) the EPA Superfund site near the
| old El Toro MCAS in Irvine. Another set of million dollar
| homes nearby was built on top of a nursery that was founded
| in the early 1900s. In both cases, residents are warned not
| to plant edible fruits or vegetables directly into the
| soil.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| > is that the health sciences are not good at determining the
| effects of almost anything in the future
|
| For this particular case I think the real problem is that no
| one really spent much effort seeing the effects of particular
| PFOAs in cell culture prior to marketing it. We've had cell
| culture for over 100 years, so this lack is basically because
| people either didn't even think about it, or didn't care
| thanks to dollar signs or greater fear of another threat
| (household fires).
| mandmandam wrote:
| I've been hearing about the dangers of Teflon for at least
| a quarter century.
|
| Lawsuits were being settled in the 9-figure range as far
| back as 2001 - they kept making it, and actively covered up
| what they knew, tobacco firm style.
|
| I haven't watched it yet, but 'The Devil We Know'
| apparently goes in depth on this, with very highly rated
| reviews. I don't need to be that angry right now though; I
| know enough about Du Pont for "strong opinions" as it is.
| stephen_g wrote:
| Teflon itself is safe to use as long as you don't heat it
| too much (stay well clear of 260degC/500degF) - it's
| technically a PFAS but polymerised into to molecules that
| have a high molecular weight so have no biological
| activity and it is chemically inert. It's the shorter
| chain PFAS chemicals used in the production process that
| has caused the huge problems - especially to workers and
| to people living near the plants (due to groundwater
| contamination and other environmental release of PFAS)
| bbarnett wrote:
| _Teflon itself is safe to use as long as you don't heat
| it too much_
|
| The problem is, people make mistakes. All it takes is a
| crying child, a burned pot, a mistake in cooking (not
| thinking about it), and you've hit the wrong temp.
|
| And then the pan is dangerous, leeching, trouble.
|
| The whole thought about the approval was "Well, people
| can be trusted to not let a pot get too hot! And to know
| 100% to throw it away if it does!".
|
| Right. Trusted. In a country with warning labels like
| 'coffee is hot' and 'water is wet'.
|
| Edit: my point is, the above means "teflon isn't safe for
| home use". Engineers know, also, to have safety
| tolerances. For something like this, I'd expect the
| 'danger zone' to be 2x the max possible heat a consumer
| could apply by accident.
|
| As burners can get crazy hot, that probably means I'd
| call teflon unsafe, unless it broke down at 2000F.
|
| This is how we can approve things safe or not. Not "trust
| people will constantly monitor how hot their pan got".
|
| Just as an aside, I was at a hotel the other day, and
| someone was trying to put buttered toast in the hotel
| toaster!
| akiselev wrote:
| _> As burners can get crazy hot, that probably means I 'd
| call teflon unsafe, unless it broke down at 2000F._
|
| That seems a bit... unrealistic. Not even cast iron is
| usable at 2000F.
| GavinMcG wrote:
| No, that's the thing: it's unsafe _unless_ it stays safe
| to an "unrealistic" range, since people exceed "normal"
| usage without meaning to.
| elbigbad wrote:
| Not usable, but doesn't cause forever chems to leach into
| food or aerosolize.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| I certainly wouldn't have bought that bottle of
| Scotchguard for my shoes in the late 2000s if it had had
| a warning label on it.
| Axien wrote:
| Or scotchguard my entire car.
| myshpa wrote:
| Or outdoor textiles, or toilet paper, or paper food
| boxes, or furniture with stain repelents, or cosmetics,
| or school uniforms, or breast milk, or microwave popcorn
| bags, or carpet cleaners, or candy wrappers, or pizza
| boxes, or cattle, or agricultural fields and products, or
| houshold dust, or water, or firefighting foams, or dental
| floss, or air ... better to stay away from it all.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Per-
| _and_polyfluoroalkyl_subst...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfluorooctanoic_acid
| [deleted]
| clnq wrote:
| When you're in the mood for some anger towards DuPont,
| check out "Dark Waters" (2019) too. The cinematography,
| acting, and pacing are great -- my favourite DuPont rager
| so far.
| Maursault wrote:
| _A Civil Action_ , 1998, is not directly about DuPont,
| though DuPont did manufacture the same chemical that the
| film concerns itself with, trichloroethylene. Duvall was
| nominated for best supporting actor for his role in this,
| and the film was nominated for best cinematography.
| cde-v wrote:
| Sorry, but more care and testing harm shareholder value.
| Denied.
| mtsr wrote:
| Or, you know, not dump millions of liters of waste water with
| all kinds of chemicals in the rivers at all.
| Tanjreeve wrote:
| I don't think it'll ever be the case. There's an infinite
| number of unknowns and unknown unknowns. It's a lot easier in
| our economic system to solve a bounded problem by throwing
| money at it than for regulations to be enforced politically on
| what would be 99% speculative problems.
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| Because we don't close the loop. We find out asbestos and
| plastics and whatever else is dangerous actually and then go
| "ah shit" and that's all. We don't prosecute the makers of it
| or charge for cleanup. Yeah we have superfunds for
| breathtakingly poor resource and conservation management, but
| with micro pollutants don't have the same kind of knee jerk
| visceral reaction a major radioactive waste site does.
|
| We should have laws that say "if you make something, you own
| its entire lifecycle, including its safe and ecologically sound
| disposal." That would turn the page on wasteful production
| almost overnight.
| ALLTaken wrote:
| What about the BP Oil Spill? How would that go, reparation
| and paying someone money like the government isn't going to
| benefit nobody and especially not the world.
|
| After the Fukushima incident they just dropped the
| radioactive water back into the ocean. yayy ...radioactive
| seafood :/
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Aren't we totally ignoring this with the renewed push for
| nuclear energy? If we insist nuclear waste can safely be stored
| than surely we can safely store PFAS.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| But nuclear waste isn't going to be mass distributed?
| ALLTaken wrote:
| History tells otherwise. Radioactive toothpaste was once a
| product...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doramad_Radioactive_Toothpast
| e
| Chris2048 wrote:
| I said it in current/future tense, why ignore all cotext.
|
| What does 1920s product have to do with a now heavily
| regulated material?
|
| Also, AFAIK the radium in the toothpaste wasn't waste
| from a reactor?
| pkaye wrote:
| We don't use nuclear waste to make non stick pans and water
| resistant jackets.
| [deleted]
| jdiff wrote:
| There's a pretty big difference between the two. Nuclear
| waste is always tracked and treated carefully. PFAS are on
| store shelves and in homes and in landfills and are entirely
| untracked. Nothing's being ignored, it's just an entirely
| differently kind of situation.
| weaksauce wrote:
| look at the one man environmental hazard that was thomas
| midgely jr... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr.
|
| one man was so absolutely prolifically bad to the environment.
| ALLTaken wrote:
| Wow, first time hearing of this.. so terrible.. no money in
| the world is worth the lasting damages he contributed to.
|
| There are few of such people still alive in the world,
| without which we'd have millions of less deaths and people
| left disabled.. Hope someone finds out and the PR stops them
| from continuing somehow :/
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| > Kettering was elected as president with Midgley as vice
| president. However, after two deaths and several cases of
| lead poisoning at the TEL prototype plant in Dayton, Ohio,
| the staff at Dayton was said in 1924 to be "depressed to the
| point of considering giving up the whole tetraethyl lead
| program". Over the course of the next year, eight more people
| died at DuPont's plant in Deepwater, New Jersey. ...
|
| > The risks associated with exposure to lead were known at
| least 150 years before, when Benjamin Franklin wrote about
| his experiences as a typesetter.
|
| Holy cow. I always chocked up leaded gasoline as one of those
| "well how could they know" kind of things but people were
| dropping dead just making it, and Midgley himself was
| sickened from it by researching its production. Absolutely
| fucking evil people.
| akiselev wrote:
| I think we've known about the dangers of lead since Roman
| times so it's even worse. Quoting Vitruvius [1]:
|
| _> Water conducted through earthen pipes is more wholesome
| than that through lead; indeed that conveyed in lead must
| be injurious, because from it white lead [PbCO3, lead
| carbonate] is obtained, and this is said to be injurious to
| the human system. Hence, if what is generated from it is
| pernicious, there can be no doubt that itself cannot be a
| wholesome body. This may be verified by observing the
| workers in lead, who are of a pallid colour; for in casting
| lead, the fumes from it fixing on the different members,
| and daily burning them, destroy the vigour of the blood;
| water should therefore on no account be conducted in leaden
| pipes if we are desirous that it should be wholesome. That
| the flavour of that conveyed in earthen pipes is better, is
| shewn at our daily meals, for all those whose tables are
| furnished with silver vessels, nevertheless use those made
| of earth, from the purity of the flavour being preserved in
| them_
|
| We've known about the danger of the fumes for over two
| thousand years!
|
| [1] https://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_roma
| na/wi...
| gigatexal wrote:
| science might just save humanity
| Frost1x wrote:
| I had a chemistry teacher (retired analytic chemist for what's
| now DOW chemical) in highschool who pointed out something that
| stuck with me:
|
| We tend to act without consideration and have confidence we can
| just engineer ourselves out of our mistakes.
|
| I think she was right. While I never try to underestimate
| humanity's enginuity, there's some arrogance there that we may
| create problems we can't simply engineer around.
| guywithahat wrote:
| To be fair though, in the context of humanity we've never
| encountered a problem we couldn't later engineer ourselves
| out of. And it seems reasonable to think if we can engineer
| ourselves into the problem, we can engineer ourselves out of
| it as well (especially considering the alternative is to say
| we must stop innovating)
| crazygringo wrote:
| 1) You're ignoring everyone killed in the interim, from
| pollution, poisoning, etc.
|
| 2) It's entirely unclear whether we can engineer ourselves
| out of climate change. We've never experienced anything at
| this scale before, or from something (fossil fuels) we rely
| on so much.
|
| The solution to climate change may have to be political
| rather than engineering, and it may be impossible
| politically.
| rhaway84773 wrote:
| > we've never encountered a problem we couldn't later
| engineer ourselves out of
|
| I think this is survivorship bias. There have been several
| civilizations which have basically completely died out in
| human history, who weren't able to engineer themselves out
| of whatever killed them.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| True but with technology that had not advanced beyond
| stone, simple metallurgy, and hand tools. Ultimately
| limited by whatever power could be extracted from human
| and animal effort. Once steam power and then electricity
| were discovered, civilization never looked back.
| fwip wrote:
| We've only had 200 or so years of widespread steam power
| (and closer to 100 for electricity). On an
| anthropological timescale, that's quite short. Egypt was
| ruled by pharaohs for 3,000 years.
|
| The technology we have is bigger now, and so we're also
| making bigger problems.
| djbusby wrote:
| Stopping innovation not the alternative, you're creating a
| false dichotomy.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| Right. _The_ alternative is to engineer in the solution
| at the same time you engineer the innovation, so that
| there 's no problem in the first place.
|
| An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Do we
| gain much by requiring innovators of the future to spend
| their innovation power on solutions to the side-effects
| of past innovations, instead of brand new innovations?
| bwestergard wrote:
| There are thousands of species that went extinct due to
| engineered habitat destruction, pollution, and/or hunting.
|
| We face an ongoing "vulture crisis" in India due to the
| tremendous use of antibiotics on livestock.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_vulture_crisis
|
| See the book "Their Fate is Our Fate" for more examples of
| ecological problems affecting humans, for which birds
| provide early warnings.
|
| Speaking of anti-biotics, we've been so successful in our
| development and manufacture of these medicines that anti-
| biotic resistance is a significant and growing problem.
|
| Stepping away from medicine, consider the ongoing water
| crisis in the Colorado River basin. We engineered our way
| into vast cities and agricultural projects in the desert
| (e.g. California's central valley) and there is now no
| clear path to sustaining all of these projects.
| jmknoll wrote:
| Sure we have. Climate change, radioactivity, and micro
| plastics are three _major_ challenges that we have very
| much engineered ourselves into, and do not appear to be
| able to engineer ourselves out of.
| htag wrote:
| We have tons of oopsies that we haven't fixed, and there is
| no reasonable path towards resolution. It is all a matter
| of the size of the problem we've created. I agree that we
| should continue with technological progress, but it's naive
| to dismiss the risks. Here are some humanity scale problems
| we've created for ourselves.
|
| * Chernobyl is still unsafe to visit. The amount of
| radiation we've leaked into the atmosphere and oceans has a
| measurable negative impact on global health, and often a
| horrendous impact on local environments.
|
| * Air quality/light pollution/noise pollution is
| significantly worse than pre-industrial revolution levels.
| These have measurable negative health impacts.
|
| * We've directly and indirectly caused an uncountable
| number of extinctions.
|
| * Glaciers are melting at an incredible rate.
| Vecr wrote:
| For Chernobyl, what do you mean by "unsafe to visit"?
| Because it's a war zone? I remember a lot of people went
| in 2019 after the show came out and it was fine. They had
| a guide or took a dosimeter and weren't crawling over the
| melted core or anything like that. I don't think the
| radiation from a nuclear reactor meltdown had global
| impacts, can you cite something? Even the fallout from a
| full nuclear exchange at the peak of warhead counts would
| stay in the northern hemisphere.
| specialist wrote:
| > _They had a guide or took a dosimeter..._
|
| A perfect vacation resort. Just don't touch anything or
| disturb the soil.
| htag wrote:
| Chernobyl safety -> "During the Russian invasion of
| Ukraine, Russian forces subsequently captured Chernobyl.
| While there is an increase in radiation in the area, this
| is due to Russian forces disturbing the soil in the Red
| Forest and releasing radioactive dust and not from the
| reactor 4 itself. The New Safe Confinement is reportedly
| unharmed." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_New_Sa
| fe_Confinement...
|
| Atmospheric fallout -> "Because all people in the United
| States who were alive since 1951 received some radiation
| exposure from fallout, some people may have an increased
| risk of cancer from this exposure, in particular, thyroid
| cancer. " https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/radiation/fallout/RF-
| GWT_home.htm
| specialist wrote:
| We can't even mitigate relatively banal problems like
| wild boars and Himalayan black berries.
|
| My go to "oopsie" is the radioactive plume crawling
| towards the Columbia River. Once that breeches, all
| settlements downstream will be uninhabitable. Bye bye
| Portlandia.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| > We tend to act without consideration and have confidence we
| can just engineer ourselves out of our mistakes.
|
| Or the people acting without consideration are not impacted
| by the mistakes and will not be held responsible for
| engineering their way around them.
| markoman wrote:
| Having confidence about engineering ourselves out of our
| mistakes is, after all, the conservative rationale for
| ignoring Climate Change. They're certain that out of the sky
| will fall the technology for combating the runaway warming of
| the earth and it all happen just in time (mind you) before
| any major harm is visited on the earth's populations.
|
| The actions from the Right that are more directly
| disingenuous are where they try to deny scientific
| conclusions and the damage already done. They'll post on
| twitter (implicit denials of sea level rise by) showing 150
| year old pictures of seaside landmarks beside today's version
| with similar sea levels. Yet where are are counter-arguments
| for why the arctic sea ice/ice shelf is in such worse shape
| than it was just 30 years ago?
| gigatexal wrote:
| holy crap -- my pithy comment blew up a bit. I'm really
| digging the discussion.
|
| Why haven't we seen all the amazing properties of graphene
| commercialized yet? like super capacitors made from
| graphene that replace batteries and can insta-charge?
| neurobama wrote:
| Thermal hydrolysis (raising water/sewage to very high
| temperatures and pressures) can also break down PFAS and other
| bad stuff like pharmaceutical compounds. The Washington, D.C.
| Blue Plains water treatment plant uses this technology to safely
| convert septic sludge to fertilizer, sold under the brand name
| Bloom:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Plains_Advanced_Wastewate...
|
| https://bloomsoil.com/faqs/#what-is-bloom
|
| edit: As I Google to double-check my recollection, I'm finding
| mixed but encouraging reports on this technique's effectiveness.
| For instance this 2021 paper:
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S22133...
|
| >To our best knowledge, there are only two studies that have
| evaluated fate of PFAS in sludge before and after HTL. In a
| report presented by Mitroshkov et al. [19], 15 PFAS were
| quantified in five sludge samples before HTL. After HTL,
| concentrations of the majority of these PFAS were below detection
| limit of the GC/MS/MS. However, the authors did not report the
| HTL operating conditions used in this study. In addition, PFSAs
| including PFOS, the commonly recognized most recalcitrant PFAS,
| were not targeted in this work.
|
| >In another study, degradation of five PFAS (i.e., PFOA, 7:3
| FTCA, 8:2 FTUCA, 8:2 FTS, PFOS) in sludge by HTL was conducted
| [35]. Among the five, each spiked at 1000 ug/kg, the first three
| were degraded > 99% at 350 degC for 90 min. Degradation of 8:2
| FTS and PFOS was 34% and 67%, respectively. It was found that
| undegraded PFAS partitioned to the biocrude phase, which may
| negatively impact the quality and use of these biocrude in the
| real world.
|
| >Compared to PFAS in water only, more degradation was observed
| when these PFAS were spiked to sludge. It was speculated that
| metal ions and mineral solids in the sludge might have
| contributed to enhanced PFAS degradation [35].
| soperj wrote:
| Wonder if they also remove carbon nanotubes...
| bilsbie wrote:
| I never could get a straight answer if the activated charcoal
| filters can remove these.
|
| I'm distilling my own water now. Seems about the same price as
| filtering once you factor in the costs of the filters. And you
| know you're getting everything out.
|
| (I add in my own minerals in case that's important.)
| samtho wrote:
| Just curious, why not a reverse osmosis setup?
| [deleted]
| lend000 wrote:
| I don't think distillation actually works for forever
| chemicals, as they may be miscible to a certain degree or also
| vaporize and condense. Don't have the source, but there was a
| story about PFAS in rain recently. Your best bet would be
| reverse osmosis, which is unfortunately a pretty big waste of
| water.
| flangola7 wrote:
| How does reverse osmosis waste water?
| qbrass wrote:
| You need pressure on the feed side to overcome the osmotic
| pressure differential between the dirty and clean sides.
| The dirtier the dirty side gets, the higher pressure you
| need to move water from the dirty side to the clean side.
| Eventually you have to flush the dirty side because the
| concentration of contaminants is too high and nothing will
| go through the filter even though there's still water that
| you could use if you could get it through the membrane.
|
| Under-cabinet RO systems are less efficient because they
| rely on the relatively low-pressure water that's running to
| the tap and are made to work without electricity.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| but do you really care? The "wasted water" is miniscule
| vs how much people use daily. You fix the 90% problem
| before you fix the 3% problem, at least that's been SOP
| in my engineering life.
| delecti wrote:
| You don't get all the water out that you put in. Currently,
| very efficient systems output about half the input as pure
| water, and half as doubly-impure. Less efficient systems
| are more like 1:2 or worse.
|
| I'm not an expert and can't explain it much beyond that.
| This summarizes the math better than I probably could:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_osmosis#Disadvantages
| [deleted]
| bilsbie wrote:
| Interesting. I can't seem to find any information either way
| about distillation removing them.
| ars wrote:
| "Filters containing activated carbon or reverse osmosis
| membranes have been shown to be effective at removing PFAS from
| water supplies"
|
| https://www.health.state.mn.us/communities/environment/hazar...
|
| Some carbon filters make the claim on the label, some don't.
| The only difference is some companies pay to test for it, and
| then they can make the claim on the labeling, there is no
| actual difference in the filters.
| nullc wrote:
| carbon filters remove PFAS but they're relatively ineffective
| so you need an awful lot of carbon to get a substantial
| reduction at least compared to the amount needed to remove
| other things.
|
| RO is effective, as the chemicals in question have fairly high
| molecular weight.
|
| But then RO is usually used with a bladder tank which will
| leach plasticizers so ::shrugs:: (they taste awful at least, so
| the norm is to follow up the tank with RO).
| hgomersall wrote:
| My understanding is reverse osmosis is pretty good for this for
| home use. Under-sink RO filters are pretty easy to source and
| fit.
| justaj wrote:
| Link to the actual paper:
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00456...
|
| Link to a better article: https://news.ubc.ca/2023/03/22/new-ubc-
| water-treatment-zaps-...
| allears wrote:
| Much thanks for the good links! I hate trashy TV news videos.
| PlasmonOwl wrote:
| By the way this is ridiculously sensationalised. Would love to
| see the world rid of nonsense chem journalists. They're operating
| about 200 ppb at lowest conc. usually we're looking to remove
| from a 1 ppb. Low quality journal. The issue with PFAS and them
| bad bois is the accumulation in body. It's already low in the
| environment and doesn't degrade. So this guy will be all good if
| we're sitting at 200 ppb in the environment. If we were at that
| level I reckon we'd be a lot more cancery. Most of top of my
| head, please check what I say. I'm not an encyclopaedia but I did
| research in adjacent areas
| twelve40 wrote:
| if you claim this is sensationalized (ridiculously, too) would
| you care to decipher what this means:
|
| > They're operating about 200 ppb at lowest conc. usually we're
| looking to remove from a 1 ppb
|
| who does "they're operating" refer to in this sentence?
| greenie_beans wrote:
| lol yeah that comment is hard to decipher
| floil wrote:
| My interpretation: the paper describes a system that works
| for a starting concentration of 200 parts per billion, or
| higher. This is unrealistic because, in real world
| contamination scenario, you would expect to see a starting
| concentration of around 1 part per billion.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| My best guess is that the GP is referring to the
| concentration of PFOAs in the test setup. It is possible that
| a technology that is good at reducing higher concentrations
| of PFOAs is not good at further reducing PFOAs concentration
| at lower concentrations.
|
| However, from the link to the paper in another comment (note
| that this is from the introduction; I don't have permission
| to view the full paper):
|
| > After finding the best operating condition, the effects of
| solution parameters such as initial pH, DO, temperature, PFOA
| concentration, and electrolyte concentration in broad ranges
| were determined. PFOA concentration and sulfate dosage were
| chosen to be representative of different aqueous environments
| (e.g., natural waters and brine solutions).
|
| So I'm not sure where GP gets that this 200 PPB number is the
| case for all of the tests.
| gibolt wrote:
| How prevalent are these in water (vs other parts of the
| environment)? Are there some common places where a few well-
| placed filters could have an outsized impact in cleaningup our
| mess?
| empyrrhicist wrote:
| I think a big source is food, because it's bio-accumulating in
| our waste, which we spread on fields.
| bertil wrote:
| I know there was a big scare around PFAS and stick-free pans.
| That confused me because they are actually on most food-wrapping.
| Sure, the heat and scraping don't help the pans, but I can't
| imagine that having it on most things we throw in the trash and
| then burn or put in a landfill helps much.
|
| > The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) currently approves
| more than 90 PFAS in food container materials ranging from paper
| cups, parchment paper, and microwavable popcorn bags to fast-food
| wrappers, pizza boxes, and pet food bags, the Interstate
| Technology Regulatory Council reported in September 2021.
| ALLTaken wrote:
| Oh my god, I didn't know it's on most food wrapping. So when I
| get a coffee to go it's also a PFAS that seals the paper from
| the fluid?
| Teever wrote:
| And it's on the inside of those shitty new papers straws.
|
| Blows my mind, we've replaced relatively inert pieces of
| plastic with paper coated in this PFAS stuff and we're acting
| like it's good for us and the environment.
|
| plastic straws were a rounding error on a rounding error of
| plastic waste.
| timeon wrote:
| Straws should be avoided instead of making alternatives.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| >plastic straws were a rounding error on a rounding error
| of plastic waste.
|
| Not as a percentage of "outrage". We know who pushes for
| this stuff, and for some reason they just keep going with
| it.
|
| I'm pretty convinced things like straw ban are a test to
| evaluate the demographics of "true believers" out there.
| youniverse wrote:
| I came across this book Estrogeneration which covers this stuff
| and more. Haven't read it yet but bottom line he gives this site
| link where he provides products he has researched and likes. He
| does recommend a reverse osmosis machine etc.
|
| [1] https://www.amazon.com/Estrogeneration-Estrogenics-Making-
| Si...
|
| [2] https://www.ajconsultingcompany.com/whatiuse.html
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Looks like that book talks about flax seeds and soy which is a
| red flag for quack territory.
|
| If flax seed and soy are so estrogenic and bad, then let's look
| at the evidence.
|
| Meta analysis of 41 studies:
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33383165/
|
| > Sub-analysis of the data according to isoflavone dose and
| study duration also showed no effect. This updated and expanded
| meta-analysis indicates that regardless of dose and study
| duration, neither soy protein nor isoflavone exposure affects
| TT, FT, E2 or E1 levels in men.
| vjerancrnjak wrote:
| What about hops (beer)? I remember beer having magnitudes
| more than soy or flax seed.
|
| It also turned out that gut bacteria in human keep producing
| the phytoestrogen from beer days after consumption. [0]
|
| [0]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15826034/
| cyberpeach wrote:
| > neither soy protein nor isoflavone exposure affects TT, FT,
| E2 or E1 levels in men
|
| I'm team science, however, I think it's important to point
| out that total testosterone and free testosterone are only
| part of the equation. You also have to look at androgen
| receptor sensitivity.
|
| From the study you quoted:
|
| > there were insufficient data to evaluate the effects of
| isoflavone exposure on androgen receptor (AR) expression
|
| More research is needed.
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