[HN Gopher] Could the world go PFAS-free? Proposal to ban 'forev...
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Could the world go PFAS-free? Proposal to ban 'forever chemicals'
fuels debate
Author : mfiguiere
Score : 251 points
Date : 2023-08-01 16:33 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| exabrial wrote:
| PFAs just needs to be regulated, not banned. We absolutely
| should/must be able to buy an outdoor jacket that lasts decades,
| provided you traded that last one in to be recycled (sort like
| mandatory battery core recycling). Long lasting goods are far
| better for the environment then short-lived "recyclable" ones.
|
| Do you fast fashion Nikes or bicycle chain lube need PFAs? No.
|
| The hysteria surrounding PFAs is going to be a net harm, and some
| politicians need a wedge issue to vault themselves forward in the
| media spotlight to buy votes.
|
| Reading the HN comments today is sad. I thought this was a
| science based community.
| JPws_Prntr_Fngr wrote:
| > We absolutely should/must be able to buy an outdoor jacket
| that lasts decades
|
| There is no possible way a durable water repellent (DWR)
| coating will last decades on a jacket, with or without PFAS.
| Modern outdoor apparel simply isn't designed for long term
| durability - it's designed for flashy marketability, because
| the externalities don't have to be priced in. There are a few
| exceptions (e.g. "true" softshells like Buffalo jackets) that
| have never, and will never, see mainstream adoption.
| hnav wrote:
| Right, it all begins with studying where they're coming from
| since they're in everything from fire suppression foam to
| floss. I'd imagine companies like DuPoint are dumping insane
| amounts of them as byproducts of industrial processes, and
| would love for us to go all plastic straw on goretex shoes to
| let them squeeze a couple more billion of profits out of their
| established processes.
|
| RE: HN, it has grown and been redditified a bit, rash
| downvoting, sarcastic non-sequiturs all abound.
| bilsbie wrote:
| My uncle said the Replacements for pfas are actually worse.
| What's the final word on that?
| hedora wrote:
| The regulators have taken a whack-a-mole approach to banning
| this class of chemicals in the past. The result is that the
| popular ones that are well-understood get banned, and then
| replaced with ones that haven't been studied. There's no reason
| to think the replacements are better or worse, though they are
| often worse.
|
| The organization in the article is proposing banning production
| of the entire family of chemicals (~ 12,000 of them) instead of
| doing it one at a time.
| polski-g wrote:
| We used to wrap products in paper or cloth. We could go back to
| that.
| burnished wrote:
| There aren't any replacements for them, and its unclear what
| you mean by worse, less efficacious or more environmentally
| damaging? If the former then yeah, theres a reason those
| products took off
| Zigurd wrote:
| After our civilization collapses and is forgotten, scientists
| thousands of years from now will wonder at what kinds of
| planetary scale maniacs we were: A layer of lead covering the
| planet, so we could have cars. A globe-spanning layer of
| americium-241 from when we tested nuclear bombs in the open air.
| Etc.
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| This has a name:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropocene#Stratigraphy
| nemo44x wrote:
| But won't they also look at skeletons and see that life
| expectancies also increased during this entire time?
| happytiger wrote:
| It's not technological progress if it kills or sickens large
| numbers of people and we should recognize and roll back mistakes
| and misadventures as fast as introduce them.
|
| The world will go on. We will find alternatives that don't cause
| pain and suffering.
| aantix wrote:
| Interesting that there's a correlation between PFAS levels and
| weight gain.
| chmod600 wrote:
| There's a lot of space between a ban and "just don't use it
| everywhere".
| mistrial9 wrote:
| twenty five years ago there were similar "news items" .. called
| Green Chemistry and Body Burden at that time..
| manzanarama wrote:
| Are these forever chemicals an actual big deal? Do we have any
| numbers on how many people or animals they injure or kill every
| year? How about projections into the future? What kind of benefit
| do they allow manufacturers?
| polski-g wrote:
| They act as sex hormone disruptors. Probably the number one
| cause of plummeting fertility across the entire world. Korea is
| projected to have a 95% reduction in population within three
| generations.
| [deleted]
| elil17 wrote:
| Based on https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9215707/
| and https://www.epa.gov/sdwa/and-polyfluoroalkyl-substances-
| pfas
|
| >Are these forever chemicals an actual big deal? Do we have any
| numbers on how many people or animals they injure or kill every
| year?
|
| One study estimates about 30,000 to 120,000 people killed in
| America per year, with many more in the rest of the word. The
| EPA thinks reducing PFAS exposure now could save thousands of
| human lives per year and prevent tens of thousands of cases of
| human illnesses.
|
| >How about projections into the future?
|
| We really don't know. However, the numbers seem to have gone
| down significantly in recent years, perhaps due to a change in
| which PFAS people are exposed to.
|
| >What kind of benefit do they allow manufacturers?
|
| Calling PFAS miracle chemicals would be an understatement.
| Short chain PFAS (the dangerous kind) enable us to make PTFE,
| which makes surfaces almost friction-less, is compatible with
| almost every chemical, is largely bio-compatible, and lets
| water vapor through while keeping out liquid water (useful for
| things like waterproof jackets which don't trap sweat). They
| have a wide variety of other applications as well.
| elil17 wrote:
| There are a lot of uses for PFAS, but banning flourosurfactants
| from consumer products should be a no-brainier. They aren't
| needed for safety reasons and they are obviously causing health
| problems.
| mihaic wrote:
| > Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) defined as: Any
| substance that contains at least one fully fluorinated methyl
| (CF3-) or methylene (-CF2-) carbon atom (without any H/Cl/Br/I
| attached to it).
|
| It sounds at least like they're not going the terrible US route
| of allowing substances until proven toxic.
|
| Perhaps we've hit enough technological development that any new
| chemical actually needs to have approval before it can be mass
| produced (of course giving labs freedom to experiment in
| developing new materials).
| qchris wrote:
| I was visiting my family a few weeks ago in my childhood town,
| and the topic of our small local river came up. It's about three
| minutes away, and both the streams that feed it and the larger
| river it feeds into were fairly big parts of my childhood,
| including fishing, crayfishing, exploring, and generally playing
| on the banks. It turns out that there's a fishing advisory in
| effect this year, advising folks not to eat any fish caught in
| that river.
|
| The reason is PFAS pollution, where the levels in the water table
| now indicate the potential for bioaccumulation above the
| recommended level for human toxicity. The people living in that
| area are now denied access to clean water and not having to worry
| about eating toxic fish, and I'm sure the otters and herons in
| the area haven't gotten the notice. Millions of state tax dollars
| have now been allocated to try to just estimate the contamination
| level in drinking water wells throughout the state as well.
|
| Frankly, the producers and users of these chemicals have proven
| to be, at the minimum, so grossly negligent and potentially
| actually malicious, that they can not be considered to be acting
| in good faith, and "reasonable compromises" should be looked at
| with extreme suspicion. I feel the responsible organizations
| fined for both remediation and damages, the individuals
| responsible made criminally liable for the harm they've caused,
| and once that example has been made, we can talk about
| compromises once the "free market" has factored in the actual
| cost of using these chemicals when they can't just dump risk onto
| the public.
|
| [1] https://ctmirror.org/2021/08/29/how-widespread-are-pfas-
| chem...
| tracker1 wrote:
| I think if we actually did more of the latter portion of your
| statements things could actually change for the better. Hold
| companies fiscally responsible for cleanup and actually
| criminally charge the decision makers for cases of negligence.
| Similar for the railway disasters like East Palestine.
|
| The protections provided to corporations are intended to shield
| hands-off investors, not executives and board members that
| drive profit above safety and common sense. I'm not in favor of
| a lot of heavy handed regulation, but I'm all for corporate
| liability.
| tomxor wrote:
| > Hold companies fiscally responsible for cleanup
|
| 3M is filing for bankruptcy due to PFAS litigation, and even
| then they can't cover the costs [0] This doesn't work, the
| damage is already done, and the profits have been pocketed.
| What's worse with PFAS for environmental pollution is that no
| mechanism for clean up currently exists.
|
| > criminally charge the decision makers for cases of
| negligence.
|
| Might work as a weak extrinsic motivator, but there's plenty
| of "hot potato" going in this kind of work. It's also hard to
| prove negligence when the "decision makers" are ignoring the
| environmental costs through either wilful ignorance, burring
| their own research, or through optimistic interpretations
| which give them plausible deniability - combine that with
| shared responsibility and it gets hard to point the finger at
| individuals unless you were in the room. It's hard to pin
| down a "decision" of inaction.
|
| We either need some kind of intrinsic motivators, i.e make it
| in the interest of corporations to protect the environment.
| Or really heavy legislation that requires extensive proof of
| ecological safety for every new chemical dumped into the
| environment rather than the current "we'll figure it out
| later" model.
|
| [0] https://news.bloomberglaw.com/environment-and-
| energy/3m-head...
| mrguyorama wrote:
| What about the owners and C level execs, are they reduced
| to zero personal assets yet? This infatuation with letting
| rich companies go with a slap on the wrist because of some
| "prove willful negligence" is silly. Certain actions,
| including polluting the entire world, should be proof
| enough on their own. You shouldn't get away with something
| just because you CHOSE not do enough research beforehand to
| be aware of dangers.
|
| >We either need some kind of intrinsic motivators, i.e make
| it in the interest of corporations to protect the
| environment.
|
| You do this by deleting any company that shows itself to be
| poor stewards of the environment, and making sure it really
| really really hurts, financially, for the ones who profited
| from it, including high level management. "Just doing my
| job" shouldn't suffice when your job is overseeing a
| chemical of unknown danger.
|
| When involving yourself in an unethical company means you
| lose your fortune, the incentives will be aligned. If that
| means rich people do extensive due diligence before
| involving themselves in anything, surely that's a good
| thing right?
| gruez wrote:
| > What about the owners and C level execs, are they
| reduced to zero personal assets yet? This infatuation
| with letting rich companies go with a slap on the wrist
| because of some "prove willful negligence" is silly.
| Certain actions, including polluting the entire world,
| should be proof enough on their own. You shouldn't get
| away with something just because you CHOSE not do enough
| research beforehand to be aware of dangers.
|
| That seems like a nightmare in from a regulatory
| compliance point of view. You could do all the required
| research that the government wants you to do, and still
| get _personally_ punished a few decades later if it turns
| out the product was harmful.
| MildRant wrote:
| > 3M is filing for bankruptcy due to PFAS litigation, and
| even then they can't cover the costs [0] This doesn't work,
| the damage is already done, and the profits have been
| pocketed. What's worse with PFAS for environmental
| pollution is that no mechanism for clean up currently
| exists.
|
| Are you suggesting that 3M should continue to operate as if
| they didn't poison the world? I'm fine with them being
| bankrupted by the lawsuits. Let it be a warning for the
| next company.
| zucked wrote:
| History has shown that it is difficult to hold parties liable
| because they find creative ways to eschew the obligations via
| spin-offs, bankruptcy, or both.
| filoeleven wrote:
| See for example Chemours, who was spun off from DuPont
| essentially so that when the lawsuits start to hit, they
| can go bankrupt and DuPont can keep marching on.
| dopidopHN wrote:
| We manage to do it for poor people and students.
|
| I wish we could do it for officier of corporations. Now
| that they enjoy free speeches privileges.
| rolandog wrote:
| I always like to come up with human analogies for the
| mental gymnastics that Big Business tries to pull off:
|
| "Wait a minute your honor, here's my newborn child; he's
| the legal owner of that truck, and therefore he's the one
| that should be locked up for running over the old lady."
| mrguyorama wrote:
| It's basically the sovereign citizen movement, but judges
| and politicians take it seriously because it enriches
| them and their cohort and friends and family and economic
| class.
|
| If you gently poisoned millions of people, entirely on
| accident, as a private citizen, you would never see the
| outside of a prison. If you incorporate and claim it's a
| standard part of your business, you won't even lose your
| private mansion. Judges have significant leeway in
| piercing the corporate veil and depriving bad actors of
| their ill gotten gains, but they don't. The US DOJ has
| significant leeway to go after companies aggressively and
| really push for seizing assets of criminals, a cop
| literally doesn't even need a real justification to do
| it, but they haven't since Enron.
|
| We've had forty years of the only "punishment" for doing
| anything wrong as a company being a 1% of ill gotten
| gains fine, even though none of the actual underlying
| laws have changed to cause this reduction in punishment.
| This has been an entirely internal choice. Of course this
| results in companies largely not giving a fuck about
| anything that isn't profit.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| US feds steal more than burglars do, by dollar value.
| State and local police do too, but we don't have accurate
| oversight numbers for these departments.
| zucked wrote:
| Laws are only as defensible as the lawyers we sic on
| them. Turns out, we have some really creative lawyers in
| our ranks.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Statist and capitalist society is built on rules for thee
| but not for me. Good luck voting and waiting to solve
| this.
| Aunche wrote:
| Substantial fines to domestic businesses create resentment
| from voters who lose their jobs due to such fines. That's why
| governments does this to foreign companies (e.g. US fining VW
| and EU fining big tech). I wonder if there is a way to
| structure these penalties such that doesn't cripple the
| domestic economy such a forcing companies to issue new shares
| that immediately get acquired by the government.
| softfalcon wrote:
| I'm all for corporate liability.
|
| Unfortunately, even what happened in East Palestine was just
| a slap on the wrist compared to the damage it caused to the
| affected communities.
|
| Corporate liability needs to be ratcheted up several orders
| of magnitude before we'll see any actual change. As it
| stands, most governments have no teeth against corporate
| greed and exploitation.
| emn13 wrote:
| For corporate liability to really mean something we almost
| certainly need to reconsider the very foundational concept
| of what a corporation is. Because at it's heart, in
| granting the legal concept of a corporation we assume that
| it's a good idea to give a large group of people the
| ability to act with limited liability, for reasons of
| economic efficiency.
|
| What you see in industries such as mining where corporate
| liability is technically far less forgiving is that this
| concept of limited liability implies that a network of
| corporations can play musical chairs with hard-to-predict
| risks - essentially abusing bankruptcy and the general
| difficulty in enforcing liability via the courts even in
| the best of times to achieve not merely limited liability,
| but intentionally reduced liability. Since much of this is
| just a bunch of man-made rules, of _course_ we 're all
| going to game them to find the particularly profitable
| loopholes; this is inevitable. If it's not pollution, it's
| lobbying. If it's not lobbying, it's privatizing
| infrastructure at exploitative cost. If it's not physical
| infrastructure, it's owning social infrastructure, i.e.
| platforms. If it's not platforms, it's an incomprehensible
| spaghetti designed to evade or avoid taxes.
|
| Regarding corporations as equivalent to natural persons for
| many legal questions was a huge mistake, and _needs_ to be
| reversed. I 'm not particularly hopeful we'll get there
| without a literally bloody revolution, or by losing a war,
| or some similarly horrifying discontinuity of modern life.
|
| Allowing people to cooperate under some legal entity is a
| great idea; allowing capitalist incentives to optimize
| those a reasonable idea with some risks (but hopefully
| manageable ones). But doing all of that at essentially no
| cost, little oversight, lots of loopholes, very little
| transparency, very limited liability, legally not just
| unrestricted but even protected "speech" and with arbitrary
| nesting has to be one of the most idiotic things we've come
| up with in centuries.
| gruez wrote:
| >Unfortunately, even what happened in East Palestine was
| just a slap on the wrist compared to the damage it caused
| to the affected communities.
|
| Isn't it a bit early to make that conclusion, especially
| since all the legal action hasn't concluded?
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| I'm almost to the point where I think the law shouldn't
| allow the government to fine corporations in criminal
| cases, they have to prosecute the officers.
|
| Perhaps fines should be levied against those that held
| voting rights.
| tracker1 wrote:
| A lot of that comes from prosecutors being a largely
| political office, beholden to contributors for getting
| elected. It's almost the worst of every angle in terms of
| how a justice system should work.
|
| As an aside, I sometimes think public defenders and
| prosecutors should come from the same pool of attorneys,
| held to account for striking balance instead of just W's to
| one side or the other.
| rtkwe wrote:
| Another issue is even when companies are held liable
| they're able to nickel and dime the people they've harmed
| and just drag their feet through the process because the
| company can survive but the people they've hurt have
| usually lost some significant portion of their livelihood
| and can't fight the company for half a decade. So people
| are forced by necessity to take a lower payout than they
| actually should get because they just can't afford to
| fight any more. For a small infuriating sample post-
| Valdez Exxon argued against many tour and fishing
| businesses' claims saying there's no indication that
| those industries wouldn't have collapsed on their own in
| the absence of the spill so the court shouldn't take into
| account previous seasons' revenues for the calculation of
| damages.
|
| It's arguments like that where I wish judges and the
| court system as a whole could do something like finding
| that an argument was in complete bad faith and fine the
| companies and lawyers just for having the gall to make
| it. ( I know it's a pretty bad idea in reality but that
| and some of the lies told to get mergers through are just
| infuriating)
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Quite simply, any conclusion of this saga that doesn't end with
| 3M and fellow companies utterly erased and their assets sold
| off to more responsible stewards to pay for remediation and
| cleanup efforts, including piercing the corporate veil for a
| lot of the owners, is a miscarriage of justice. You cannot be
| allowed, as a private entity, to knowingly pollute....
| everything, and still be allowed to conduct business. You have
| made it abundantly clear that you will harm others for profit,
| and we should be aggressively destroying any company that does
| so.
|
| You have no natural right to a profit at other's expense, and
| we should stop pretending that these companies are following
| the rule of the law with these settlements. No part of any law
| says you have to let malicious companies continue to operate
| because they are big and have a lot of money. Bankruptcy is an
| important and necessary part of a healthy market.
| paiute wrote:
| Counter argument: selling off products to smaller businesses
| creates more limited liability. I.e less to lose more to gain
| by being bad stewards. A bigger company in fear of hurting
| their brand has incentive to be good.
| amelius wrote:
| > You have no natural right to a profit at other's expense
|
| Another thing is that the stock market doesn't work here. It
| promotes shortsighted trading without an eye for long term
| side effects. In principle shareholders should be accountable
| too. If you owned stocks of a company that caused damage
| during the period when that damage occurred, you should be
| accountable and at least you should not be able to profit
| from it. The stock market should be retrofitted with an
| accountability system. This is the only way shareholders will
| start caring about our future.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Projecting your wants onto power aside, why would this ever
| happen? What would drive our government to do that?
|
| If there's no incentive, it's empty desire or based on some
| fantasy that government would suddenly operate in terms of
| what's best for society rather than a serious consideration
| of how power works. Why look to government to do that?
|
| Are examples of government pollution controls effective, or
| examples of greenwashing? For instance a lot of the Quebec
| forests that burned already contributed to those CO2
| offsets by having someone say they wouldn't burn them, and
| yet...
| amelius wrote:
| Governments are implementing accounting mechanisms for
| CO2 emissions too, e.g. CO2 certificates, CO2 tax. So why
| not think of other accounting systems that can help make
| people accountable for their actions?
|
| Plus, I like to think that IT can save the world :)
| lokar wrote:
| The issue is not the public stock corporation, it is the
| entire class of limited liability entities.
|
| It allows a one sided bet. Things go well, I'm rich. They
| go very very badly all I can loose is my investment.
| gruez wrote:
| >Another thing is that the stock market doesn't work here.
| It promotes shortsighted trading without an eye for long
| term side effects.
|
| You assert this without elaboration. What makes you think
| that? Maybe the average wall st trading firm doesn't care,
| but institutional investors (eg. pension funds, university
| endowments, family offices, sovereign wealth funds) would
| very much care if their holdings go up in smoke a few
| decades from now.
| amelius wrote:
| I feel like it's kinda obvious that the burden of proof
| is not on me here, so I'm not going to explain it
| further, sorry.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| The major end user and polluter is usually the public
| government. People can absolutely sue the government, but they
| just end up paying for it themselves.
| ethanbond wrote:
| > The major end user and polluter is usually the public
| government.
|
| Why is that?
| quasse wrote:
| At least in my city, the Air Force is the major source of
| PFAS pollution in our waterway, because they dumped
| firefighting agents into it for decades at their airbase.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Most of the contamination is from firefighting foams.
| Government agencies decided that the pollution was an
| acceptable cost for their added benefit to saving lives and
| property.
|
| PFAS firefoam is still widely used, as governments still
| deem it necessary. However, training with real PFAS
| fireform is now more restricted than it once was.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Ah yes, it's totally the fault of the occasional use of
| firefighting foam, and not the fault of literally every
| single food package being covered in the stuff.
|
| Do you have numbers to back up your assertion?
| TylerE wrote:
| Food _packaging_? Do you have a citation for that?
| Cookware yes, but packaging?
| jokoon wrote:
| Maybe it could move to "banned by default" for anything that is
| sold to the public, and authorized for very very narrow and
| particular applications that have little risk to contact the
| environment, although it's hard to study which application,
| maybe as long as the quantities produced are small enough that
| they're not a danger.
|
| For example, if it's for space satellite parts, or for nuclear
| energy application, etc, when alternatives don't exist as long
| as the quantity are small and as long as they're being disposed
| of safely.
|
| So in short: if it's a sector that is high value enough, where
| quantities are small and where safe disposal is mandatory.
| rngname22 wrote:
| It's not considered alarming to publicly state you believe
| those guilty of murder should face capital punishment - that is
| - to be executed by the state. Certainly not a view held by all
| but it's within the Overton window to state you hold the view.
|
| I believe it should be normalized that we speak about the most
| egregious, permanent, impossible to reckon with environmental
| pollution in the same way - that is - it ought to be a crime to
| pollute in the most serious ways and that crime out to be
| punished with state executions.
| zug_zug wrote:
| I agree. If somebody from Iraq did this to a US river, it
| would a catastrophic act of bioterrorism, an act of war
| warranting death by drone without trial.
|
| Maybe calling it corporate bioterrorism (though a bit
| hyperbolic) could shift the overton window into somewhere
| closer to reality.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| This is a somewhat one-sided perspective. The end polluter
| is often the US government itself. Do we hold the
| government officials to that same standard? How about the
| citizens that elected them?
| mrguyorama wrote:
| If it is a horrific crime to produce the pollution in the
| first place, the US government could not buy that product
| on the open market. I don't care who WANTS to buy bad
| shit, it is on you as a company to not make that bad
| shit.
|
| For some reason, even though plenty of people are ready
| and willing to buy and sell murder, we still don't allow
| it.
|
| Both can be bad and disallowed.
| rngname22 wrote:
| I think the only real answer we can have is, yes. Unless
| something really fundamental changes, where egregious
| forms of pollution of forever chemicals is seen the same
| way things like incest, rape, or murder, then nothing
| will change.
| TylerE wrote:
| The problem is the GOP has spend the last 40 years trying
| to kill the EPA (Which, ironically, was created by
| Nixon).
|
| When Congress continually undermines and rolls back the
| agencies rules, who actually is to blame? The regulator?
| Congress? The voters?
| gruez wrote:
| The difference is intent. Killing someone _unintentionally_
| attracts much less ire than premeditated killing. If you
| can demonstrate you took reasonable care (eg. someone
| jumping in front of you while on the highway) you won 't
| even be punished.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Thinking of it this way just as an exercise also leads you
| directly into how constructed the entire idea of crime even
| is.
|
| All these articles in mainstream papers the last few years
| fomenting a panic about rising crime, calling it crime waves,
| etc. They are not talking about this. Because they don't
| _mean_ this. We don 't, for the most part, consider these to
| be crimes. _Sometimes_ we may use that word, but you don 't
| see the same flood of op-eds and public official press
| conferences calling for retributive justice.
|
| Similar shit elsewhere. Shoplifting is a crime but hundreds
| of millions in wage fraud is just bad accounting, etc etc.
| cortesoft wrote:
| I am also curious if it wasn't also toxic back when you were a
| kid, and people just didn't realize it and were eating
| contaminated fish.
| dopidopHN wrote:
| Your point about the real cost of those chemical is so crucial.
|
| Maybe I would have more respect to whatever free market
| proposal if the real cost were factored in.
|
| And yes, it's including not polluting or cleaning up fully
| after yourself if you do.
|
| If you pollute in a non cleanable way, you either pay a lot, or
| it's illegal.
|
| Kinda tired of freeloaders.
| RajT88 wrote:
| PFAS is one of the most common causes of fish advisories by me
| as well.
|
| The story changes a little when you get to Lake Michigan, which
| is more heavy metals, fecal coliform, etc. The heavy metals
| coming from the steel refineries who periodically have oopsies
| and dump a few tons of waste into the lake.
| zucked wrote:
| Last I looked, the entire Green Bay side of Lake Michigan
| (from Green Bay up to Escanaba/Garden area) was under a PFAS
| advisory, as was the south western 1/3 of Superior (from
| Duluth to the Keeweenaw).
|
| The stuff is everywhere. At least the raw sewage overflows
| from Milwaukee/Chicago mostly dilute and turn less toxic in
| the matter of months versus generations as is the case with
| PFAS.
| selectodude wrote:
| Chicago almost never dumps sewage into the lake anymore.
| Haven't yet this year even with all the major storms.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnel_and_Reservoir_Plan
| trillic wrote:
| Unfortunately that's not true. While not entirely raw
| sewage, Chicago opened the locks at Navy Pier in July of
| this year...not all the water in the city can flow to
| those reservoirs unfortunately, there was just so much
| rain around 4th of July this year.
|
| Swimming advisories were only in effect for a few hours
| after the lock was open for nearly 8. Things are getting
| better but we still have work to do.
| blackbeans wrote:
| Here in The Netherlands, a large DuPont/Chemours factory has
| been dumping waste products for over 30 years.
|
| The maximum safe concentration of PFAS/PFOA has been reduced
| in the past years, due to better understanding of health
| concerns.
|
| As a result and due to more public attention, water surfaces
| are now seen as harmful up to 10 miles away from the factory.
| The factory is located right between a medium sized city and
| a national park. Within a radius of a mile around the
| factory, people are advised not to grow vegetables.
|
| I think many countries have similar stories and clean up
| costs are going to be huge.
| m463 wrote:
| This is corrupt all the way down.
|
| Consumers cannot determine if they have "forever chemicals" in
| their products and vote with their wallet.
|
| I've tried for ages to find cookware that is healthy, and time
| and time again the cookware I've bought has these chemicals
| hidden behind corporate lies.
|
| Even consumer's reports has finally realized:
|
| _Because CR's tests and research show that even products made
| without PFOA may contain the compound because of how they're
| manufactured, we have decided to no longer display "PFOA-free"
| in our ratings of nonstick cookware. Such claims may not be
| reliable for PTFE-coated products._
|
| happily there is hope:
|
| _A California law that will go into effect in 2023 will ban
| companies from claiming in online sale listings that a cookware
| product is free of any one PFAS--like PFOA--if it contains any
| other PFAS, like PTFE. Those claims will have to be removed
| from packaging by 2024, when a similar law will go into effect
| in Colorado._
|
| I wonder if "online sale listings" will just use geoip and
| ignore the rest of the country.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Lipitor, Prozac, Flonase are all PFAS as well as about a third of
| pharmaceuticals being developed. The best solution is regulated
| waste management, but nimbyism sends the issue to China.
| coryrc wrote:
| I thought your post was wrong, but this article says you're
| mostly right: https://www.bu.edu/sph/news/articles/2022/is-
| there-a-right-d...
| gravism wrote:
| [dead]
| amelius wrote:
| We need warning labels. If people knew there are pfas in their
| pizza boxes and popcorn bags, they wouldn't accept it.
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| Then, put warning labels _and_ ban it.
|
| If you want people not to accept it so we don't pollute our
| environment, just prevent the pollution directly. Also, I may
| not buy things with PFAS but there are millions of situation
| where PFAS could jeopardize my health (e.g food containers at
| restaurants, schools, hospitals... neighboring factory
| producing PFAS, etc).
| volkl48 wrote:
| Maybe (or maybe not - how much attention does the average
| person pay to California Prop 65 warnings?), but warning labels
| on consumer products won't do much of anything to curb their
| use in industry and non-consumer facing products.
| the-alchemist wrote:
| Here's some good news: there's a non-plastic, non-forever-
| chemical, really-compostable plastic straw on the market!
| https://www.phadeproducts.com/#
|
| https://www.amazon.com/stores/phade/page/7B9D4729-8EDF-4FAE-...
|
| 6,000 regular sized straws for $55, so about a penny each.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/phade-Eco-Friendly-Sustainable-Biodeg...
| all2 wrote:
| _Dark Waters_ is a relevant movie about a town in Pennsylvania
| that suffered from poisoning by the Dupont corporation.
| legitster wrote:
| I'm generally pretty pro-chemical in moderation. I haven't fried
| a decent egg on cast iron yet, and I enjoy breathable waterproof
| fabrics.
|
| I understand the concern, but I guess I don't understand the risk
| yet. My understanding from chemistry class was that PF- compounds
| are so useful _because_ of how inert they are. Their
| indestructibility is what makes them mostly harmless - if you eat
| a pile of (room-temperature) Teflon, it just goes right through
| your body.
| Eumenes wrote:
| I make eggs every morning on a stainless steel pan - I find it
| just as easy to clean as Teflon. Most restaurants use stainless
| steel.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Stainless still is only hard to clean if you suck at doing
| dishes. After you cook something, let them soak (really just
| let them sit with water and dish soap in them) for like an
| hour and you can almost just rinse them out. Even dishwashers
| with modern soaps have little problem with them once you soak
| them.
| projektfu wrote:
| I use stainless steel and it works fine.
|
| I hate frying eggs on cast iron. I need to wait so long for it
| to come up to a reasonable temperature, it always seems to
| overcook the whites and leaves the yolks cold. Every time I
| mention having trouble with cast iron, people jump out to tell
| me I'm holding it wrong and it's so easy, but it's really a
| finicky way to cook.
|
| However, a seasoned stainless steel skillet is a lot like an
| aluminum teflon skillet except that it doesn't care if you heat
| it too hot, in my opinion.
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| Cast iron on the gas stove is fine (by me). Cast iron on the
| electric with a cast iron tops is PITA for making something
| fast-and-once like fried/scrambled eggs. With something which
| takes a long time to make (like a stack of pancakes) you
| manage, mostly because they are made at the max tdeg anyway,
| but quick things suffer.
| adrr wrote:
| If you care about your health, you wouldn't use a cast iron.
| Normally seasoned with unsaturated vegetable fats which
| produce polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons at high heat which
| is required for the seasoning process. These compounds are
| carcinogenic.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| But to what level? The seasoning usually don't go into the
| food. Once the process is done, it should stick to the pan
| as a polymer, not as something you eat like overcooked
| food.
|
| And from what I've seen, while charred food is
| carcinogenic, eating an entire course of badly charred food
| is like an order of magnitude less carcinogenic than
| smoking a single cigarette.
|
| Teflon pans are also mostly harmless unless you overheat
| them by a lot (i.e. forget it on the stove, empty and on
| high heat), it is the large scale accumulation of
| manufacturing byproducts in nature that is the problem.
| sirsinsalot wrote:
| I feel like ceramic enamel cookware is underrated.
|
| Non stick, easy to clean, durable, good temperature
| properties.
| legitster wrote:
| Ceramic micro-fractures over time. So while it can stay
| pretty easy to clean, but the non-stick degrades
| drastically over time. Especially the ceramic on steel or
| copper - metals that want to expand under heat.
|
| I have this enameled cast iron pot that I cook just about
| everything in - but it just _destroys_ eggs.
| nlavezzo wrote:
| The 15" version of this pan is magic. It is super easy to
| season (apply some oil / butter, get it really hot a few
| times, wipe it off with a rag, repeat) and is very non stick
| with just a light coating of oil. Of course never clean it
| with soap. Water only if necessary. Afterwards I always just
| pour some oil on and wipe it clean with a paper towel.
|
| https://www.lodgecastiron.com/product/carbon-steel-
| pan?sku=C...
| putnambr wrote:
| > never clean it with soap.
|
| This is a myth. I was struggling with getting a good non-
| stick-ability on my Lodge, until someone pointed out the
| 'patina' is really just burnt carbon and does nothing for
| non-stick. The non-stick seasoning comes from polymerized
| oils, which aren't affected by lye-free soaps. I haven't
| had any sticking issues since I've started washing my pan
| with soap after a messy meal and leaving a microscopic film
| of Crisco on after drying.
| legitster wrote:
| It was years before I understood this and got a good
| patina on mine. Give the pan a good clean and do a lot of
| gentle frying dishes in a row.
|
| The soap myth harkens back to the day when soaps were
| actually pretty caustic - they were lye based formulas
| that you had to use gloves to wash dishes with. That
| stuff _would_ eat through enamel.
| elil17 wrote:
| Long chain like PTFE is fine. The issue is short chain
| fluorosurfactants (think PFOA and GenX) which contaminate the
| environment around the factories that make PTFE, harm the
| workers in those factories, and probably end up in trace
| amounts in the final products as well. These are very
| chemically stable in that they don't react well with most
| things, making them long lasting in the environment, but they
| do interact (but not react) with animal endocrine systems,
| which makes them so dangerous.
| cmclaughlin wrote:
| Fried eggs on Teflon pans are rather soggy in my opinion...
|
| My preferred pan for fried eggs is stainless steel. With plenty
| of butter the eggs crisp up and release from the pan with no
| stick at all. The only real trick is to not flip too soon.
| legitster wrote:
| > The only real trick is to not flip too soon.
|
| Do you manage to get a runny yoke?
|
| I legit went through 2 dozen eggs trying to get a perfect
| fried egg on stainless steel. I tried everything - hot pan,
| cold pan, oil, butter, swirling the pan, a touch of vinegar.
| I could not find any combination that worked - I suspect that
| you either have to have very particular equipment.
| npstr wrote:
| Try more heat. It needs to crisp at the bottom while
| staying runny at the top. Don't let them sit in there once
| done, get them out to stop the heat transfer. I only do one
| side.
| legitster wrote:
| So it only works for a specific type of egg? My wife
| prefers over-easy - that's basically impossible on
| stainless?
| rcme wrote:
| The trick is to let the pan get to the right temperature.
| You don't want it super hot, but you need it hot enough for
| the Leidenfrost effect. You can tell the pan is hot enough
| by splashing water on it. The water should _not_ boil, but
| rather bead up and roll around. It takes a few minutes of
| heat to get the pan to this temperature. Once you reach
| this temp, the pan is basically nonstick as water in your
| food instantly vaporizes and creates a barrier between the
| food and your pan.
|
| Most range levels can get to this point, even medium-low,
| but you need to leave the pan on the heat for some time
| before starting to cook.
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| I would support more heat argument.
|
| SS easily heats but easily cools.
|
| You can cheat with a lid - just seconds the whites would be
| in your preffered condition (ie with/out crust) cover the
| pan, sing aloud 'We all live in the yellow submarine,
| yellow subma' and move the pan off the stove, but don't let
| it rest under the lid too long! In 20-30 seconds it would
| catch to be the nice, yet runny one, but anything longer
| and it would be more thicker, though if you like
| subs/burgers with eggs - it's a way to it.
|
| PS you can sing something more palatable for you, if you
| wish *grin*
| mrguyorama wrote:
| The scrambled eggs my girlfriend cooks on the $10 stainless
| steel, well greased pan blow any eggs I have ever made on any
| "nonstick" or "seasoned" surface so out of the water that I
| no longer consider nonstick pans to be anything more than a
| mild convenience. I have one nice one that I use for general
| cookery and only rinse out, and it has stayed super non-
| stick.
| Zigurd wrote:
| I have used ceramic nonstick pans for eggs and pancakes and the
| like for years. Also, trying to cook completely without butter
| or oil, unless you have highly specific dietary restrictions,
| is unnecessary.
| andersrs wrote:
| Stainless steel pan + butter + a stainless spatula + chainmail
| or steel wool. I cook can egg on stainless everyday and it's
| easy to clean. Teflon pans are not inert. The fumes from a hot
| teflon pan can kill birds.
|
| Don't call for the meme that saturated fats are bad. Butter is
| safer than unsaturated fats which change when heated.
| hnav wrote:
| not to distract from your central point, but while the
| saturated fat in (unclarified) butter doesn't smoke like veg
| oil, the proteins in it do seem to burn up
| tredre3 wrote:
| > The fumes from a hot teflon pan can kill birds.
|
| Thank you, I was unaware of that. Important to note that it
| happens only when the pan is grossly overheated (280C/580F)
| [1]. For reference frying an egg is done at 300F.
|
| Still a concern, it's not that hard to imagine being
| distracted and leaving an empty pan on a coil set to high, it
| will likely reach 600F after a few minutes.
|
| 1. https://vcacanada.com/know-your-pet/teflon-
| polytetrafluoroet...
| codyb wrote:
| I fry a fair amount of eggs over easy on my cast iron and get
| good results so it's definitely doable. I think preseasoned
| cast irons are fairly cheap these days although I picked mine
| up on Craigslist with a set.
|
| For the most part, cleaning the cast iron is two seconds of
| chain mail scraping under the faucet because not much really
| sticks to it and there's just the small leftovers that weren't
| worth scooping, then I put it on the stove for a minute or two
| while I wipe up other things and just let the water evaporate
| off so it doesn't rust.
| burnished wrote:
| I got nicely seasoned cast iron at Target for cheap, was very
| surprising.
|
| I like sticking mine in the oven and letting it preheat to
| dry them, plus it's genuinely pretty convenient to store them
| there when unused anyway.
| mrob wrote:
| You need other, more dangerous, short-chain PFAS to make those
| inert PFAS polymers. Costs would greatly increase if
| manufacturers weren't allowed to release any to the
| environment. I think enforcing this and increasing prices is a
| better idea than a ban.
| legitster wrote:
| I suspect then the reason seafood is becoming the chief
| source of PFAS is that most of this is made in China and lax
| environmental rules means most of it is getting dumped down
| the Yangtze.
|
| Getting a $20 Teflon pan instead of a $15 one but they
| actually dispose of the chemicals properly seems like a no-
| brainer here.
| ars wrote:
| Teflon is not a PFAS anyway, so that's not really the
| issue.
|
| It's waterproofing that's the problem - for example paper
| straws.
| ifaxmycodetok8s wrote:
| staub enameled cast iron are great for eggs and other things
| that usually stick to non-enameled cast irons or stainless
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| Just stop putting them in food packaging and consumer items,
| please. I don't care if it costs a penny more, or if my paper
| plates get a little more soggy.
| brnt wrote:
| I really hate it when a drink is served with a paper straw.
| They release 95% of the pfas in the drink. There's no better
| way of introducing the stuff to my body. Why is nobody thinking
| of this? Perfectly good bamboo straws exist!
| putnambr wrote:
| Or stainless steel, or BPA-free plastic, or plant-fiber
| cellulose plastic, or silicone, or...
| beanjuice wrote:
| I've had a drink or two which came with some sort of large
| pasta straw.
| gruez wrote:
| >They release 95% of the pfas in the drink
|
| source?
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| It's cheaper. More profit. That's it
| tw04 wrote:
| Let me preface this with: I'm not advocating for continuing to
| use pfas. That being said, why are we still calling them forever
| chemicals? Didn't we come up with a way to break down the
| majority of existing pfas already?
|
| https://www.verywellhealth.com/cleaning-pfas-from-water-6500...
| abeppu wrote:
| That article specifically discusses water filtration plants
| that are handling concentrated PFAS after filtering them away
| from drinking water. That the small fraction of them flowing
| through water treatment facilities can be broken down with
| special handling (which that article also says will not be
| ready for the market for some time) does not negate the fact
| that in the environment / our bodies, they are extremely slow
| to break down. I think it's obvious even to laypeople that the
| label is not literally true (nothing lasts forever), but it's
| still an apt descriptor. Even if municipal water can filter
| them out and break them down, these chemicals will be literally
| in our bodies and environments for the rest of our lives.
| chmod600 wrote:
| "Forever" is understood to be an exaggeration. And even if we
| are finding new artificial ways to break it down, the fact
| remains that there's a lot of it out in nature now and natural
| processes take a long time to break them down.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Because it bio-accumulates and doesn't break down, and there's
| no way to remove it from entire aquifers or a huge chunk of
| land and the stuff is still leeching into aquifers?
|
| How are small towns supposed to pay for these treatment
| processes? How are individual home owners, since in many areas
| everyone is on a well?
|
| What are all the marine critters (and everything that eats
| them, and everything that eats those critters, etc.) supposed
| to do?
|
| All so McDonalds can make a Big Mack container that doesn't get
| soggy?
| [deleted]
| mjhay wrote:
| PFAS exists everywhere in the biosphere. It's impossible to
| clean all that up.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| Mercury exists everywhere in the biosphere, it is impossible
| to clean up. Lead exists everywhere in the biosphere, it is
| impossible to clean up. Freon exists everywhere in the
| biosphere, it is impossible to clean up. Plastic exists
| everywhere in the biosphere, it is impossible to clean up.
| CO2 exists everywhere in the biosphere, it is impossible to
| clean up.
|
| If we declare the situation hopeless then nothing will
| change.
| dmm wrote:
| I think they were explaining the "Forever chemical" name,
| not giving up.
| loeg wrote:
| > why are we still calling them forever chemicals?
|
| Because it's a useful political slogan for the anti-PFAS
| advocates.
| zucked wrote:
| As others have alluded to, this works fine for municipal
| drinking water, but we're finding PFAS in our food supply now
| (they're in lakes, streams, rivers, vegetables, meat, etc). We
| cannot feasibly clean all the surface water and soil, so the
| best idea is to stop introducing them in the first place.
| debacle wrote:
| And what about the next forever chemicals?
| chickenuggies69 wrote:
| Yes "what about"
| fHr wrote:
| They always ban some specific PFAS structures and then 1 of 3
| consulting firms that is in the game is just again going to
| suggest they should modify the structure and add an H or O
| somwhere to make it slightly different from the banned specified
| structure and it's legal again for another 10 years. Happening
| all the time.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| Not sure I agree with the prohibition of these substances...
| but legislation doesn't have to be written quite so naively as
| that. You can ban unnamed, similar chemicals at the same time.
|
| They already do this for Schedule I drugs (not that I agree
| with that either). They finally got fed up with adding new
| designer drugs to the schedule, and there's an entry that says
| something like "any similar chemical substance that causes the
| same pharmaceutical effects as a Schedule I drug or is used for
| such effects or has a similar chemical structure".
|
| I definitely don't agree with that clause when it comes to drug
| enforcement, but if a good case could be made that PFAS should
| be banned, then adding that clause to preemptively block PFAS-
| alikes that are just a couple atoms away from the original
| formula doesn't seem excessive to me. And, if somehow it should
| be excessive (the change fixes all the problems we might have
| with PFAS substances), then let them argue that to Congress.
|
| Exemptions for producing small amounts for research, obviously.
|
| If Congress didn't do this, if they're not doing that... then
| they're just bad at the one thing they're supposed to be doing:
| writing effective legislation.
| kube-system wrote:
| > and there's an entry that says something like "any similar
| chemical substance that causes the same pharmaceutical
| effects
|
| The problem is that these PFAS chemicals do things that _are_
| useful, and banning any future useful inventions isn 't
| nearly as desirable.
| londons_explore wrote:
| You wouldn't be banning that... You'd be banning substances
| that have similar harmful environmental effects.
|
| Let industry and the courts argue what exactly harms the
| environment or is too similar. But industry will think
| twice about using anything similar because to do so they'd
| have to take on a court battle to prove whatever they
| decide to use isn't harmful despite being similar.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| And a blanket ban does not prevent you adding a carveout
| in the future if the next PFAS turns out to be a magical
| chemical capable of bending space and time.
| drewcoo wrote:
| > legislation doesn't have to be written quite so naively as
| that
|
| It will be written by think tanks behind lobbyists for
| industry interests that donate to campaigns.
|
| > the one thing [Congress is] supposed to be doing
|
| . . . is getting reelected. We do not elect them because of
| competency in law-writing or even in voting for their
| constituencies' interests. We elect them because they spend
| lots of money to tell us how monstrous "the other choice" is.
| casefields wrote:
| I'm with Gorsuch in thinking the Federal Analogue Act(banning
| designer drugs) is unconstitutional nor is it good policy, but
| if the majority want it why not pass similar legislation?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Analogue_Act
|
| Or instead of outright banning pass onerous taxes so that it's
| only used in applications that absolutely must have it and not
| every throw away piece of clothing and wrapper.
|
| Giving the DEA or another executive agency more authority here
| seems like a terrible idea but sometimes I'm not in the
| majority and I understand that.
| katbyte wrote:
| It's wild so much money and effort go to policing drugs
| people want to voluntarily consume while next to nothing by
| comparison is done to police pollution that entire towns are
| involuntarily affected by, for far longer, and often to far
| worse effect.
| rtkwe wrote:
| It's much easier for companies to influence politicians
| than it is for a diffuse group of people. Companies have a
| much more direct line between lobbying successes and
| increased profits so have an easy time justifying the
| efforts internally where citizen lobbying groups have to
| draw lines between diffuse harms and losses to the
| possibility of preventing those for a larger group of
| people and convince them to support the lobbying
| operations.
| dang wrote:
| Related. I've tried to stick to the major discussions; have I
| missed any?
|
| _3M reaches $10.3B settlement over PFAS contamination of water
| systems_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36660751 - July
| 2023 (333 comments)
|
| _USGS estimates at least 45% of U.S. tap water contain forever
| chemicals_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36617822 - July
| 2023 (169 comments)
|
| _Nearly half of the tap water in the US is contaminated with
| 'forever chemicals,'_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36616841 - July 2023 (174
| comments)
|
| _Water heavily polluted with PFAS in 15 km radius around
| Dordrecht chemical plant_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36520610 - June 2023 (44
| comments)
|
| _Show HN: PFAS.report - Measure the forever chemicals in your
| blood via Quest_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36509752
| - June 2023 (150 comments)
|
| _Eating microwave popcorn increases the level of PFAS in body
| (2022)_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36440911 - June
| 2023 (414 comments)
|
| _3M heads to trial in 'existential' $143B forever-chemicals
| litigation_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36259163 -
| June 2023 (250 comments)
|
| _Three companies agree to pay $1B to settle 'forever chemical'
| claims_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36196884 - June
| 2023 (75 comments)
|
| _Many soft contact lenses in US made up of PFAS, research
| suggests_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35955706 - May
| 2023 (109 comments)
|
| _America's first high-volume 'PFAS Annihilator' is up and
| running in W. Michigan_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35821128 - May 2023 (168
| comments)
|
| _Engineers develop water filtration that removes "forever
| chemicals"_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35764476 -
| April 2023 (226 comments)
|
| _Compostable fast-food packaging can emit volatile PFAS_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35411919 - April 2023 (155
| comments)
|
| _PFAS ban affects most refrigerant blends_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34997937 - March 2023 (100
| comments)
|
| _PFAS can suppress white blood cells' ability to destroy
| invaders_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34909058 - Feb
| 2023 (207 comments)
|
| _Magnetic method to clean PFAS contaminated water_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34487079 - Jan 2023 (181
| comments)
|
| _PFAS found at high levels in freshwater fish_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34411713 - Jan 2023 (41
| comments)
|
| _3M to end 'forever chemicals' output_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34076685 - Dec 2022 (413
| comments)
|
| _Pollution cleanup method destroys toxic "forever chemicals"_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34047047 - Dec 2022 (80
| comments)
|
| _Possible breakthrough to destroy PFAS using sodium hydroxide_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32517444 - Aug 2022 (33
| comments)
|
| _Simple mix of soap and solvent could help destroy 'forever
| chemicals'_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32515511 - Aug
| 2022 (233 comments)
|
| _It's raining PFAS: rainwater is unsafe to drink even in
| Antarctica and Tibet_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32451024 - Aug 2022 (433
| comments)
|
| _Study finds link between 'forever chemicals' in cookware and
| liver cancer_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32438368 -
| Aug 2022 (394 comments)
|
| _Rainwater everywhere on Earth unsafe to drink due to 'forever
| chemicals'_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32365736 - Aug
| 2022 (72 comments)
|
| _US water contains more 'forever chemicals' than EPA tests show_
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32004036 - July 2022 (21
| comments)
|
| _3M's PFAS Crisis Has Come to Europe_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31809445 - June 2022 (94
| comments)
|
| _Regular blood donations can reduce "forever chemicals" in the
| bloodstream: study_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31123477 - April 2022 (204
| comments)
|
| _PFAS Contamination in the U.S_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28744886 - Oct 2021 (44
| comments)
|
| _Toxic 'forever chemicals' contaminate indoor air at worrying
| levels_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28367524 - Aug
| 2021 (144 comments)
|
| _Study finds alarming levels of 'forever chemicals' in US
| mothers' breast milk_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27139371 - May 2021 (107
| comments)
|
| _Forever chemicals are widespread in U.S. drinking water_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25887385 - Jan 2021 (258
| comments)
|
| _Chemicals called PFAS and PFOS are in the blood of virtually
| every person_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25557113 -
| Dec 2020 (226 comments)
|
| _PFAS "forever" chemicals found in hundreds more everyday
| products_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25288978 - Dec
| 2020 (25 comments)
|
| _U.S. drinking water widely contaminated with 'forever
| chemicals': report_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22116696 - Jan 2020 (391
| comments)
|
| _Toxic 'Forever Chemicals' in Drinking Water Leave Military
| Families Reeling_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19233284
| - Feb 2019 (110 comments)
|
| _Scientists cut the tolerable intake of PFAs by 99.9%_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19070754 - Feb 2019 (112
| comments)
|
| _3M Knew About the Dangers of PFOA and PFOS Decades Ago,
| Internal Documents Show_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17680589 - Aug 2018 (151
| comments)
|
| _Troubling chemicals found in wide range of fast-food wrappers_
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13541466 - Feb 2017 (69
| comments)
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| What debates is there to be?
|
| It's making us all sick. Slowly but surely.
| Knee_Pain wrote:
| Can someone explain where the (suspiciously) scary nomenclature
| of "forever chemicals" comes from?
|
| Google neutered their normal search engine, so in order to search
| by date I went to Google Scholar and I have found no use of such
| term well into the 2000s.
|
| It looks like a journalistic invention, does anyone have am
| origin story pointing to a scholarly source?
| Etheryte wrote:
| You'll easily find the answer if you search for forever
| chemicals wikipedia, what's the source of the confusion?
| ravenstine wrote:
| No it isn't. There's no "forever chemical" page on Wikipedia,
| so I'm not sure where you're getting this idea from.
|
| Disregarding any nomenclature, in just focusing on the
| terminology in isolation, water could be considered a forever
| chemical. This is an example of why use of the term "forever
| chemical" comes off as a scare tactic or disingenuous.
|
| Of course, for dying media institutions, PFAS can't just be a
| pollutant. It has to be _literally_ forever!
|
| EDIT: Way to go missing the entire point, all of you.
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| Water occurs in nature without human intervention. I don't
| think the same can be said for PFAS.
|
| For a big chunk of the industrial age we've operated on the
| assumption that the global environment is big enough and
| capable enough to just eat or neutralize just about
| anything we dump into it. I think there is utility in
| defining a category of human-produced things that we have
| been able to determine the global environment can't eat or
| neutralize, and also that cause harm when people are
| exposed to them.
|
| You could give this category a lot of potential names, but
| "forever chemicals" conveys the idea pretty effectively
| IMO.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| Typing "forever chemical wikipedia" into DDG gets you this
| link:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistent_organic_pollutant
|
| into google, gets you this link:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Per-
| _and_polyfluoroalkyl_subst...
|
| "forever chemical" in either Google or DDG gives a lot of
| good links explaining what they are.
| Etheryte wrote:
| You're fighting strawmen, I didn't say "search for forever
| chemicals on wikipedia", I said "search for forever
| chemicals wikipedia". The first result on Google is the
| article about per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances which
| includes the source of the term.
| esafak wrote:
| WP's autocomplete returns
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Per-
| _and_polyfluoroalkyl_subst...
| Zigurd wrote:
| Hey! He's "just asking questions."
| sibane wrote:
| I found a couple of news articles crediting the word to this
| opinion piece (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/these-
| toxic-chemical...) in the Washington Post by Joseph G. Allen,
| an assistant professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of
| Public Health and the director of Harvard's Healthy Buildings
| Program.
| Knee_Pain wrote:
| I wonder if they were pressured by the journalist to come up
| with the buzz word or it was something they used colloquially
| between peers
| sibane wrote:
| Well, we can only speculate. But I would suggest that since
| the writer themselves is choosing to write an op-ed on the
| subject, perhaps they themselves have ample motivation to
| come up with a persuasive word to argue their case? Their
| goal is to educate normal people on these chemicals and in
| the piece they explain that the terminology commonly used
| is so scientific as to be meaningless to the general
| public. Hence the need for a more direct "forever
| chemicals" instead of PFAS/per-and polyfluoroalkyl
| substances, PFOA/Perfluorooctanoic acid or C8/8 carbon
| chain structure.
| justinator wrote:
| PFAS are used in lubricants for nuclear weapons [0]
|
| we'll never get rid of nuclear weapons
|
| ergo, we'll never get rid of PFAS
|
| [0] https://patelder.weebly.com/pfas--nuclear-weapons.html
| hilbert42 wrote:
| I recall some years ago a discussion we had with an
| environmentalist at a time when the rules governing the use of
| PVC insulation in household power wiring were being changed in
| that PVC was being replaced with another plastic that was usable
| but not nearly as good as the PVC.
|
| During the discussion the environmentalist said to the effect _"
| we're working towards eliminating (banning) chlorine from the
| planet"._ We were so shocked at what she said that we decided
| never to mention the element by name again and only referred to
| it as _element 17._
|
| This experience was a salient lesson what can happen when
| ignorance and popular notions mix. No doubt PFAS-type chemicals
| have been grossly abused as were CFCs and they need tight
| regulation but as we saw with the Montreal Protocol simply
| banning most CFCs outright rather than introducing strict
| regulation caused many problems. This led to certain chemicals
| becoming unavailable that had no effective but 'safer'
| equivalents and this has been problematic. Even now, I know of
| people who still have drums of CFCs which they almost guard with
| their lives--they won't even part with an ounce of the stuff for
| love nor money because when gone it's the end of the line.
|
| It doesn't end there, in recent years we've seen certain CFCs
| being released to the atmosphere from illegal manufacturing in
| countries where monitoring isn't strictly controlled. Like
| illegal drugs, if there's sufficient demand people will supply
| them. Banning over 12,000 chemicals outright without a full and
| detailed investigation is certainly to cause similar problems.
|
| We should learn from the CFC experience and take a carefully
| measured approach. Careful and strict regulation is likely a much
| better way of dealing with the problem..
|
| I wonder how long it will be before we'll have to start
| whispering _' element 9'_ in hushed tones for fear of those who
| would wish it banned from the planet.
| lokar wrote:
| The whole concept of limited liability need to be rethought. The
| goals were good and it has produced great wins for humanity. But
| the way it allows one sided bets (the most I can loose is my
| investment) is outdated. When it was introduced there was not
| really a way for a limited liability entity to fail in a way that
| imposed massive costs on others who were not voluntarily involved
| (employees, suppliers, investors, lenders, customers, etc).
|
| Perhaps limited liability should not apply to negligent harm
| caused by the entity to non-involved people. investors, officers
| and directors should be fully personally liable for the harms.
| zucked wrote:
| I hope this becomes a reality - we really made an mistake
| introducing these, I think.
|
| The hard part, I suspect, will be regulating all the different
| forms of "forever chemicals" and not having it be a perpetual
| game of whack-a-mole where chemists figure out ways to slightly
| tweak the structure of the chemicals so that they effectively
| replicate the function of PFAS without triggering the definition
| of PFAs. We're already pretty hooked on the usefulness of PFAs
| for all sorts of stuff (clothes, containers, etc) so going cold
| turkey is going to require some sacrifice.
| ordinaryradical wrote:
| My father and his colleague developed a scalable process to
| manufacture Teflon without the use of PFAS back in the previous
| century; they had both been recruited heavily by DuPont which
| made it relatively easy to sell the patents, at which point they
| immediately disappeared and were never acted upon.
|
| One of the interesting side effects of free markets is that when
| there are no consequences for mass poisoning / polluting, you
| will ignore opportunities to manufacture without doing so because
| there is often zero or negative economic consequences to change
| your process.
|
| In DuPont's case, it was more valuable in the near term for the
| shareholders to ignore this manufacturing innovation and not
| disrupt supply than to reconfigure with a new process. No doubt
| there were massive risks involved in trying a new process that
| made it a "safer" and wiser decision economically to continue to
| use PFAS.
|
| I think about this every time someone tells us on HN how a freer
| market will solve our problems.
| hedora wrote:
| It's been long enough for the patents to expire, so why not
| help a competitor commercialize the technology? Do you have a
| reference to the patent number?
| ordinaryradical wrote:
| This is no doubt correct. I'm almost certain they've expired,
| though I'm not going to include links here and associate my
| real name with my HN acct.
|
| But the reason they haven't been acted upon (that I know of)
| is that economic difficulty of making a competing Teflon has
| to do chiefly with issues of manufacturing scale and large up
| front capital expenditure. This is true across the entire
| chemicals industry for any new product. Rule of thumb costs
| were, the last I heard, roughly 100 Million in development to
| get a single product into baseline commercial viability.
|
| Why compete against an established and "tainted" product like
| Teflon? Can you guarantee the PFAS free process is cheaper at
| any of the initial commercial scales you're likely to
| achieve? Is there a market for an off-brand substitute?
|
| These kinds of risks delimit innovation in physical
| manufacturing far more than the possession of IP.
| tredre3 wrote:
| > My father and his colleague developed a scalable process to
| manufacture Teflon without the use of PFAS back in the previous
| century
|
| How is that possible? PTFE (teflon) is itself a PFAS, no? Did
| they "only" get rid of other PFAS used during the manufacturing
| of teflon?
| ordinaryradical wrote:
| I just asked him.
|
| "Teflon is a high molecular weight polymer made using
| perfluoronated surfactants. Technically, PTFE is a fluorine-
| containing material but it is not the PFAS pollutants of
| recent concern. In the conventional synthesis, the real
| source of PFAS pollution is primarily those surfactants used
| in its manufacture. Our process made the use of those
| surfactants unnecessary."
|
| Why do you DuPont never acted on your patents?
|
| "It was a cost of business decision because they had already
| invested so much capital in making Teflon with those
| surfactants."
| OtherShrezzing wrote:
| Is your dad forbidden from recreating this technology with
| DuPont in control of those patents? There's probably a
| tonne of VC money out there for an environmentally friendly
| disruptor to teflon.
| ordinaryradical wrote:
| I'm going to link to another reply on this and provide
| some additional color:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36961328
|
| Getting a product like this stood up is a $100 million
| endeavor at minimum. That's before customer #1 presses
| "buy."
|
| My father and the colleague I mentioned are both
| successful serial entrepreneurs (large exits, Sequioa
| backed unicorn, etc.). There is close to zero appetite
| from VCs in this.
|
| VCs seem to be allergic to these CapEx intensive
| businesses and I don't blame them--the risks are enormous
| when compared to something like a SaaS.
|
| That said, if you know someone who's dying to throw
| hundreds of millions at this problem, he'd probably take
| the intro. You can email me at super solenoid theory at
| gmail dot com.
| TylerE wrote:
| On the other hand, the capital intensive nature makes it
| a lot harder for a competitor to spin up their version
| overnight and eat your lunch.
| gottorf wrote:
| As pg said, "do things that don't scale".
| at_a_remove wrote:
| One of my patent reform ideas is that patents must be
| _used_. If left fallow (production under a certain
| amount) for too long, bam, it hits the public domain, or
| back to the originator.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Or just make it a couple years. If you can't profit
| handsomely off your idea in a couple years, then it's
| probably more efficient for society as a whole to be
| allowed to work on it.
| mandmandam wrote:
| This remind me of the recent story here, about how tobacco
| companies _knew_ that radioactive polonium in their tobacco
| leaves was causing an insane rate of lung cancer, killing 130
| out of ever 1,000 smokers over 25 years. [0]
|
| They even had a process to remove the radioactivity, but, it
| made the nicotine a little less addictive so they didn't do it.
| Instead, they kept marketing to children with cartoon
| characters for another 20+ years until forced to stop.
|
| These same companies are _still_ marketing cigarettes to kids
| where they can get away with it.
|
| At some point we _need_ to start talking about self defense
| from this shitty system. And I feel like that point was the 60
| 's.
|
| 0 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36925019
| rgrieselhuber wrote:
| How is this even debatable? Nobody wants these chemicals anywhere
| near them.
| loeg wrote:
| I do! These chemicals are extremely useful and my life is
| regularly improved by their presence.
| sirsinsalot wrote:
| Well, nevermind the potential fallout then, if you, the
| individual is happy.
|
| Consumerism really did kill "us" for "me" didn't it.
| loeg wrote:
| I think my experience is representative, rather than
| unusual! PFAS are probably a net good for all of "us," as
| you put it.
| mrob wrote:
| There's no good substitute for PTFE cookware. The modern "non
| stick" alternatives are stickier even when new and degrade
| quickly. There's no good substitute for PTFE in rain clothes
| either. PTFE itself is harmless, but the precursor chemicals
| are dangerous. I'd happily pay a lot more to cover the costs of
| their safe containment and disposal. Despite people calling
| them "forever chemicals", PFAS can be destroyed by processes
| such as supercritical water oxidation.
| zucked wrote:
| We've had perfectly serviceable non-stick cookware for ages -
| carbon steel cookware treated properly easily replicates
| teflon with a little oil or butter.
|
| Before someone claims to the contrary - I basically only use
| TWO pans now for all my cooking - both 14" carbon steel pans
| I initially conditioned that have only gotten more non-stick
| as I've used them. I regularly cook over-easy eggs, scrambled
| eggs, and other foods that are apparently only possible in
| teflon non-stick pans if you believe the literature.
| Zigurd wrote:
| I can't even be arsed to season a pan properly and nonstick
| ceramic is fine. It won't last forever, but it works for
| upwards of 10 years.
| lkbm wrote:
| I've watched so many people scramble eggs every morning
| and leave half the egg stuck to the pan day after day.
| You don't have to live this way!
|
| Before putting in your eggs, heat up the pan and put in
| some oil/butter. A spatula that can scrape well (flat-
| nosed, or moderately flexible plastic/silicon) is also
| helpful.
|
| For a spell some years back, I had a game of "find the
| worst pan in the kitchen and see if I can cook my eggs
| without them sticking". Not quite a 100% success rate,
| but pretty close. (That was mostly scrambled, though.
| Fried eggs and omelettes are more difficult.)
|
| It's true that a non-stick pan makes it much easier a
| beginner, but the downside is that said beginner will
| destroy a non-stick pan within weeks.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Obviously not for non-stick cookware but the best spatula
| I own is a $25-30 Victorinox slotted fish spatula. [1]
| Topped Wirecutter's list too. [2]
|
| [1] https://www.victorinox.com/us/en/Products/Cutlery/Acc
| essorie...
|
| [2]
| https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/victorinox-
| slotte...
| RajT88 wrote:
| > There's no good substitute for PTFE cookware.
|
| There is. Seasoned cast iron.
|
| The problem with cast iron is that it requires work to season
| it properly and maintain it. People are lazy.
|
| > There's no good substitute for PTFE in rain clothes either.
|
| They used to use oil and wax. They were called oilskin coats.
| I'm not sure if it's because they are niche, but now such
| coats are pretty expensive. Problem: Cost.
|
| So you're right in some sense - the alternatives don't
| provide us with the same level of cost and convenience.
| hedora wrote:
| I got a waxed jacket a while back. It was at some trendy
| designer store I haven't heard of, and overseas. It was
| ~$80USD, and lasted 5+ years.
|
| I don't think the issues for the well-known brands have
| much to do with the materials. Instead, I think it's
| because there are a few traditional brands using
| traditional (non-optimized) production techniques, then
| charging large margins.
|
| That's fine if you want to pay for the best of the best,
| but it would be nice if there were a bargain route too.
| e.g., for iron cookware, two good brands are Lodge and La
| Creuset. Heirloom-quality Lodge pans start at $25; La
| Creuset is many times more expensive because of the
| [traditional] ceramic coating.
|
| I don't know of a company that's comparable to Lodge, but
| that makes oiled/waxed outerwear.
| sirsinsalot wrote:
| Barbour is the main one. Then Belstaff.
|
| Barbour traditionally made "oil coats" for fishermen.
| Then later waxed cotton jackets for farmers in the UK.
| They last for generations, you can rewax and repair them.
|
| Belstaff made waxed motorcycle wear.
|
| Both do amazingly high quality, if expensive, modern
| waxed and oiled cotton or canvas jackets and clothing.
| burnished wrote:
| Cast iron really isn't difficult to maintain, at least I'm
| lazy as hell and don't do anything special and mine are
| fine. I think cast iron gets a reputation for being this
| whole thing because some of us turbo nerd on it.
| hedora wrote:
| Yeah; it's hard to screw up cast iron seasoning once you
| know how to treat it, and basically impossible to ruin
| the pan.
|
| The only way I've heard of people screwing up is by to
| using it infrequently. If you season with canola or
| vegetable oil, and use it every time you cook, then the
| patina takes care of itself.
|
| To clean, scrape using chain mail or a plastic scraper,
| such as the ones from pampered chef or lodge, and be
| sparing with the soap. Do not put it in the dishwasher.
|
| If you ignore the above, then scrape off as much of the
| old patina as possible, then coat lightly with oil + bake
| at 300 for an hour.
|
| Compare the above to non-stick, where getting it near
| anything sharp destroys the pan, and you have to buy a
| new set every 1-5 years. Re-seasoning a pan is much less
| effort (and cheaper / more environmentally friendly) than
| shopping for a new one!
| burnished wrote:
| Yeah! You can pick up a plastic scraper at I think pretty
| much any grocery and they are so perfect for cleaning up
| in the kitchen, anytime something gets stuck. I guess the
| soap thing isn't a big deal these days and that advice
| came from a time where the soap was more caustic.
|
| Also non stick burn when they get hot which is an awful
| trait in a pan. I cook some insane fish and beef and it
| is the most braindread process with a cast iron.
| loeg wrote:
| Cast iron is significantly stickier than PTFE cookware.
|
| Oilskin coats are also much heavier and less effective at
| keeping out water. The main problem isn't cost, it's that
| they're much worse as rain wear.
| fullstop wrote:
| I find that I have to use a lot more butter in cast iron.
| I love the skillet, though, it's fantastic.
| adrr wrote:
| So you would trade Teflon for a known carcinogen that's
| linked to lung cancer? Also it's more work to maintain a
| cast iron pan, you can't exactly throw it into a
| dishwasher.
| RajT88 wrote:
| Cast iron pans don't have a link to lung cancer.
|
| Unless you count the workers in the foundry that is
| making them.
| thrashh wrote:
| I usually cook on stainless steel or cast iron but let's
| not be facetious -- there's nothing like non-stick.
| arcticbull wrote:
| In my experience a properly seasoned, oiled, cast iron
| pan isn't materially different than a non-stick for
| cooking eggs (which is one of the stickier things you can
| do). It's much more flexible. You can bring it to
| 450-500F without killing adjacent birds, and you can put
| it into the oven. High heat capacity, better sear on
| meats. And you can use metal utensils. No matter how you
| damage it, an hour in the oven with a thin coat of oil
| and it's good as new.
|
| I cook a lot, and I have no interest in non-stick
| cookware.
| rngname22 wrote:
| Enamel cookware is nonstick.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Tell that to the entire restaurant industry. The vast
| majority of cooking done on a stove in a commercial kitchen
| is done on various sizes of high carbon steel pans, and they
| are just as non-stick as PTFE.
| delecti wrote:
| > Nobody wants these chemicals anywhere near them.
|
| Don't we? I've got a bunch of non-stick pans that I love
| cooking on (I checked the brand I use most, and their pans are
| coated in PTFE, a PFAS). I've also got a roll of PTFE tape for
| plumbing around the house (basically ubiquitous for that
| purpose), and some PTFE tubing for hobby use (PTFE tubing is in
| the majority of 3D printers).
| wkat4242 wrote:
| And gore-tex clothing is a godsend in countries where it
| rains almost every day like Ireland :)
| Zigurd wrote:
| There is a literal canary in the coal mine: People with birds
| don't use PTFE because if they burn a pan it will kill their
| birds.
| hilbert42 wrote:
| Wasn't aware of this, do you have references, instances?
| Zigurd wrote:
| https://wagwalking.com/bird/condition/teflon-poisoning
| https://vcahospitals.com/know-your-pet/teflon-
| polytetrafluor...
| https://www.petinsurance.com/healthzone/pet-health/pet-
| toxin... https://www.ewg.org/research/canaries-kitchen
|
| I know we live in an AI post-search-engine world but...
| the-alchemist wrote:
| I feel this issue is over exaggerated. The study at EWG
| says that toxic chemicals are released in Teflon pans at
| 464 deg (C or F? article doesn't say), versus 680 deg for
| non-Teflon.
|
| I don't think 99% of people ever get their cookware that
| hot.
| coryrc wrote:
| PTFE is not a PFAS. PFAS are used to manufacture it.
| tracker1 wrote:
| I think the bigger risks are in anything resembling
| disposable. Also, maybe getting people to understand how to
| care for their cookware better so it lasts 10+ years instead
| of 3-5 or so. I actually prefer stainless steel myself, my SO
| prefers non-stick. Before I was with my SO, I had a single 8"
| non-stick I would use just for eggs.
|
| I'm as or more concerned about the plastics in food packaging
| myself. Hard to avoid with so much processed food in most
| grocery stores though. Wouldn't mind taking a few steps back.
| Considering we grow well more than enough food to actually
| feed the world at this point.
| codyb wrote:
| Ya, was even thinking the other day that I should just toss
| a few glass containers in my backpack when I'm going out to
| restaurants. I usually carry a backpack anyways, I'm not
| sure there's much value in me carting away leftovers in
| disposable containers. The amount of plastic everywhere is
| staggering when you start to take it into account every
| time you toss a piece of it out.
| jdietrich wrote:
| Not to mention waterproof clothing, non-fogging safety
| goggles, temperature-resistant wire insulation, dielectrics,
| separators in Li-ion batteries and countless biomedical
| applications.
|
| Fluoropolymers and fluorosurfactants have unique properties
| that make them very difficult to substitute. I'm not
| sufficiently informed to comment on the possible health
| impacts of fluorinated hydrocarbons, but I can say that a
| world without them will be poorer in countless small ways.
| That might well be a price worth paying, but we shouldn't
| pretend that it's an easy decision.
| OtherShrezzing wrote:
| Your tape and tubing scenarios make sense. I'm not sure
| anyone can seriously require a non-stick pan though. Cooks
| managed without them for thousands of years by just paying
| more attention to their eggs, and comparably unsticky
| materials existed before the invention of non-stick coatings.
| The long-term negative impacts of teflon just doesn't seem to
| be worth the incredibly slight convenience they offer.
| delecti wrote:
| I wasn't talking about "require", I was talking about
| "want". The subjective experience of cooking on (and
| cleaning) a non-stick pan is an absolute delight in
| comparison. I don't want those chemicals _in_ me, but I
| sure do appreciate them in my kitchen.
| londons_explore wrote:
| The heroin user doesn't require more heroin either... But
| he does want some more...
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| it doesn't have to be all or nothing. how about we eliminate it
| from single use items? would probably get us 80% of the way there
| without any major dent in the average person's quality of life.
| bwb wrote:
| Thank god for the EU leading the way. Make the rules and the
| market will find alternatives.
| Reptur wrote:
| Title should be "Could the world go _back to_ PFAS-free? Proposal
| to ban 'forever chemicals' fuels debate ".
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