[HN Gopher] It's raining PFAS in South Florida - study
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It's raining PFAS in South Florida - study
Author : Jimmc414
Score : 70 points
Date : 2024-11-06 13:54 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sciencedirect.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sciencedirect.com)
| Jimmc414 wrote:
| Article:
|
| https://phys.org/news/2024-11-rainwater-samples-reveals-lite...
| nayuki wrote:
| Related: https://youtu.be/-ht7nOaIkpI?t=699 . MyLifeOutdoors -
| "Your Gear is Poisoning You! (Not Clickbait)" (14m21s)
| [2024-10-23]
|
| He mentions finding PFBA (
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfluorobutanoic_acid ) in a
| pristine mountain stream, most likely because the chemical
| evaporates and gets carried by the air.
| drawkward wrote:
| Don't worry, DeSantis will just enact legislation or make an Exec
| Order to forbid government employees talking about it. Problem
| solved!
| c-linkage wrote:
| There is a far simpler solution. Just stop measuring it.
| montagg wrote:
| That's very likely. One of the proposals in Project 2025 is
| to defund NOAA.
| https://www.axios.com/2024/07/20/project-2025-trump-what-
| to-...
| jeff_carr wrote:
| Trump can just take the whole NOAA budget himself now and
| replace them with a legal pad and a black sharpie. I assume
| that's the plan. Say, we can just steal anything from any
| budget now right?
| barbazoo wrote:
| Or do it like Alberta and celebrate the pollutant instead
|
| https://www.nationalobserver.com/2024/10/18/news/alberta-ucp...
| drawkward wrote:
| Wow.
| CSMastermind wrote:
| > Miami has been identified as the US city with the 3rd highest
| levels of PFAS pollution in groundwater among 44 locations
| assessed
|
| Do we know why?
|
| I don't think a lot of manufacturing happens near Miami.
| ggm wrote:
| In '78 I worked as a general dogsbody doing water quality
| analysis around the river forth estuary. Suspended solids,
| phosphate & nitrates from fertiliser factories and
| manufacturing alongside sewage outfalls were measured right
| upstream, to tidal limits and from the top north shore to the
| south. 100km or more. My constant tl;dr is that stuff moves,
| and whilst nothing like the tidal zone, groundwater is anything
| but static.
|
| My case? Estuarine. The Biscayne aquifer is limestone. Highly
| porous. Water will travel as water does. If anything even close
| has contamination its getting in, if there's transport from
| surface water into the aquifer. The stuff here says urban
| canals and groundwater flows definitely feed in. Any
| firestation testing foam? Its in. PFAS contamination from
| airport fire testing is a thing.
|
| https://www.evergladesfoundation.org/post/water-on-earth-exp...
| pengaru wrote:
| This article goes into some of alleged sources:
|
| https://news.fiu.edu/2023/how-pfas-forever-chemicals-are-get...
| greenavocado wrote:
| Firefighting foam used in airports is a major source that
| dwarfs the rest
| alejohausner wrote:
| The article just below mentions two major sources:
|
| - failing septic systems, and spilled wastewater. Lots of
| household products like food packaging and carpets are coated
| with oil- and water-repellent PFAs. When you wash these
| products, the PFAs end in the waste water.
|
| - airports and military bases use a fire-fighting foam that is
| made from a PFA.
|
| Also, Kennedy space center uses fire-fighting foams (although
| it's far from Miami, but then again Florida is one big
| aquifer).
| nonelog wrote:
| Distilled water is the purest drinking water you can get on this
| planet (and you just need a $150 distiller producing about 1
| gallon of clean water per run).
| sottol wrote:
| It's also devoid of minerals so you might want to supplement,
| if you mean to consume distilled water.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| It's also unsafe to drink in larger quantities, as is seawater.
| Both will let you live for a few days if there is no other
| source of water, but anything longer and you're looking at
| serious levels of minerals mismatch.
| pfdietz wrote:
| It's safe to drink if you're eating a balanced diet, since
| food will provide all the minerals you need.
|
| In very large quantities it's unsafe, but that's true of any
| kind of water.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > It's safe to drink if you're eating a balanced diet,
| since food will provide all the minerals you need.
|
| And that's a pretty ambitious assumption. A lot of people
| don't eat anything even close to a balanced diet, as
| evidenced by insane obesity rates or the return of
| malnutrition diseases like _scurvy_.
|
| [1] https://news.sky.com/story/scurvy-is-re-emerging-due-
| to-mode...
| pfdietz wrote:
| But we're talking about minerals here, common ones, not
| things like vitamins or iodine.
|
| Which mineral do you propose will be found in ordinary
| tap water but not in food?
|
| Anyway, I challenge you to come up with published
| evidence for your initial assertion there. I find it
| highly dubious.
|
| EDIT: I looked up calcium. The average tap water in the
| US contains about 50 mg/L of calcium. The minimum daily
| requirement for calcium intake is 1000 mg (1300 mg for
| teens). If you are depending on tap water for this
| mineral you're going to be in sad shape.
| BoiledCabbage wrote:
| > It's safe to drink if you're eating a balanced diet,
| since food will provide all the minerals you need
|
| I mean, not OP, but you're the one who made the initial
| assertion. Maybe you should be the one providing
| published evidence?
| pfdietz wrote:
| The way it works is that rebuttals need only be at the
| level of evidence of the initial claim. Hitchen's Razor:
| "what is presented without evidence may be dismissed
| without evidence."
|
| His claim is absurd on its face, due to the small
| quantity of minerals actually in water, compared to what
| is required. Food _must_ be providing most of that input.
|
| I'm curious where this nonsense came from. It feels like
| another variety of nutrition superstition.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| Fluoride is the only thing I can think of which is
| typically only encountered in municipal water in a
| typical diet.
|
| Most toothpaste has fluoride also, but not sure if the
| benefits are the same.
| pfdietz wrote:
| The closest, I think, is copper.
|
| https://www.ars.usda.gov/arsuserfiles/80400525/articles/n
| dbc...
|
| There is no US RDA for fluoride.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Obesity isn't caused by bad diet. It's caused by
| overconsumption for a low effort lifestyle.
| its_down_again wrote:
| Respectfully, what experience or expertise backs your
| statement? As someone who has personally faced obesity
| and struggled with weight management over the years, I
| have a somewhat different perspective. Growing up, I was
| an obese child and even made the varsity tennis team as
| an underclassman at an obese BMI. I tried dieting,
| cardio, and nothing really helped me lose weight. I
| eventually found some success with a keto diet before my
| senior tennis season. However, I found I had to start
| eating carbs to stay competitive, which led to weight
| fluctuations but also better performance.
|
| Even now, as an adult, I find weight management complex--
| I've been close to obesity while running up to 80 miles a
| week in marathon training, hitting a 3:02 marathon
| (6:58/mile pace). After finishing the marathon and
| cutting back to 40-50weekly mileage, my weight just
| naturally decreased. My appetite was much less when I
| wasn't running such high mileage. For me, it's a journey
| that seems to involve many factors beyond just low
| physical effort or overconsumption.
| Vken wrote:
| Obesity is a multifaceted issue that many people
| misunderstand in a patronizing if not malicious way.
|
| For many they wish the reason was as simple as them just
| being lazy, because then they would only need to tackle
| that one simple flaw. But it goes beyond having a
| lazy/sedentary lifestyle. Does it contribute? Absolutely,
| but there are examples of lazy/sedentary people who
| adopts an unhealthy diet and lifestyle who are on the
| opposite extreme in BMI. To treat the obesity epidemic in
| the States as an individual failing on all who find
| themselves in that category is to downplay the systemic
| failings that have allowed this to happen.
|
| It's kind of weird how this is simply another avenue
| people take to put themselves on a "I'm better than you"
| pedestal.
| jajko wrote:
| Consuming seawater is generally a bad idea, people died of
| thirst before drinking the material in which they swam for
| some time (if documentaries are correct, haven't faced this
| myself)
| greenavocado wrote:
| Seawater has a high salt concentration--about 3.5%, or 35
| grams of salt per liter. The human kidneys are limited in
| how much salt they can filter out; they need a lower salt
| concentration than what seawater has to effectively expel
| salt. When someone drinks seawater, the kidneys are forced
| to use more water from the body to dilute and excrete the
| excess salt. This actually leads to a net loss of water,
| worsening dehydration instead of hydrating the body.
| hobs wrote:
| While that's true, effectively the same process is occurring to
| create rain, and if rain is contaminated so will your
| distillation stream.
|
| You'd need to do something that destroys it entirely if you
| want to remove the lighter molecules.
| greenavocado wrote:
| VEVOR distiller is a lot cheaper than that
| rozap wrote:
| PFBA is transported in rain and snow. That suggests that it
| sticks around in the vapor and condenses back into the liquid.
| There's no escaping it except to break it down, but that's the
| crux of the issue - the PFAS class of molecules are extremely
| energy intensive to break apart, which is why they don't break
| down naturally.
|
| Important to note that while the EPA says names acceptable
| level of 4PPT
| (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/14/epa-
| drin...) for drinking water, they name that level out of
| pragmatism. They found health effects at every level, and the
| acceptable level is actually closer to 0.
|
| Also distillation is very energy intensive. A solar still makes
| sense if you need to do this a lot and live in a sunny place.
| pvaldes wrote:
| Can't be drank without suffering serious diarrhea. People
| should expect to discover more nasty surprises now that
| scientists had being fired, and 'uneducated' is the goal
| r00fus wrote:
| Entire countries survived on distilled water for decades
| (Hong Kong, etc). Electrolytes can be readily gotten by solid
| foods.
| pvaldes wrote:
| Trump was on power for less than a day, and here we are,
| talking about those electrolytes that plants crave, and
| forgetting about how osmosis really works. That was fast.
|
| Funny times ahead.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| I'm supper torn. I came up with a product that would probably
| sell well. It's not really needed (solves a simple issue people
| can take care of with a different product but just don't because
| it's inconvenient), and just dumps PFAS into houses (like that is
| kind of the product). As a hippie I haven't moved forward with it
| but at the same time I'd really like more money to help my adult
| children out. The idea came after learning of other products that
| just straight dump PFAS into the environment and thinking WTF
| this is horrible, I mean if we are willing to do that why not
| just XYZ (my product). It literally came from 'this is horrible'.
| And yet hippie me is torn because $$$. Us humans are not good at
| this stuff.
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(page generated 2024-11-06 23:02 UTC)