[HN Gopher] Penguin 'Toxicologists' Find PFAS Chemicals in Remot...
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Penguin 'Toxicologists' Find PFAS Chemicals in Remote Patagonia
Author : giuliomagnifico
Score : 137 points
Date : 2026-04-10 06:15 UTC (16 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ucdavis.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ucdavis.edu)
| giuliomagnifico wrote:
| They fitted some penguins with chemical-sensing silicone passive
| samplers.
| greenavocado wrote:
| Did they wear gloves when installing the samplers?
| themafia wrote:
| One of the issues I see with PFAS testing is that the legal
| limit is right at the lower limit of detectability for most
| test equipment. Signals at that level are difficult to read
| reliably and the accuracy of detection at that level is worse
| than at higher levels.
|
| It's almost like legislators saw that the machines could
| ostensibly detect 4 parts-per-trillion and decided that
| should be the limit without continuing to read the machine
| manual to describe the reduction in accuracy at that
| threshold level.
|
| The levels in this test were close to this threshold and
| there was one outlier sample that severely changed the
| average results. The testing methodology also involved
| several laboratory steps where contamination could have
| occurred.
|
| https://media.sciltp.com/articles/2603003293/2603003293.pdf
| alex43578 wrote:
| Is this going to be like the micro-plastics-are-actually-
| contamination-from-lab-gloves news all over again?
|
| I'm all for removing PFAS and similar chemicals from the many
| places and uses they aren't needed, but if people don't care
| about PFAS in their tap water, they certainly aren't going to
| care about penguin PFAS.
| giuliomagnifico wrote:
| Yes, it could be (I posted the article about the gloves), but
| PFAS are different from microplastics, and not all the studies
| are contaminated by gloves.
|
| The interesting part here is using the animals as "scientists"
| to collect samples in their habitats for years (2022-2024)
| instead of sending humans to collect samples. This is far more
| reliable in my opinion
| alex43578 wrote:
| The animal angle is fun and interesting, and my quip about
| the gloves is mostly a joke. My frustration comes from the
| fact that we don't (or shouldn't) need to know that PFAS is
| in Patagonia to care about it.
|
| 45% of US households contain PFAS, apparently, but no
| mitigation or even manufacturing bans are required for years.
|
| In the US, one side cries about regular flouride in the
| water, but is meh to PFAS. Meanwhile, the other side is
| supposedly pro-environment, but can't even get the fortitude
| to ban PFAS ski wax.
| littlexsparkee wrote:
| The point for the lay reader is that the pollution has
| reached extremely remote places, so the stuff is absolutely
| pervasive and/or the method of travel should concern us.
| hvb2 wrote:
| > if people don't care about PFAS in their tap water
|
| People don't? Sounds to me like they need to look at history a
| bit more.
|
| To me, this looks very much like some of the other magical
| materials...
|
| Lead in gasoline, asbestos as building material, tobacco etc
| alex43578 wrote:
| _Most_ people don 't care. PFAS is only voluntarily being
| phased out in _food packaging_ , rather than being banned.
| People cook with teflon-coated pans for the tiny convenience
| over a nitrided, ceramic, or seasoned cast iron pan. Outdoors
| enthusiasts want PFAS rain jackets and PFAS ski waxes, rather
| than the alternatives.
|
| I definitely agree they need to look at history, consider
| what they're being exposed to, and understand how simple and
| easy some of the substitutions/mitigations could be. There's
| 0 reason why manufacturers are getting 5+ years to phase out
| a forever chemical in something like ski wax or dental floss.
| adriand wrote:
| I don't think it's that people don't care, I think it's
| that people are ignorant. I also don't think that's an
| accident, I think we're in the midst of a multi-decade
| project to create a populace that's as dumb as possible,
| because the more aware and educated people are, the less
| likely they are to allow the kinds of behaviour that are
| destroying the health of people, animals and the
| environment.
|
| The ideal societal conditions for, say, a petrochemical
| company that is creating toxins that are genuinely
| "forever" for all intents and purposes, is a society where
| people are exhausted from their terrible job (or two jobs,
| or job + gig economy side hustle) and spend their leisure
| time glued to their phones, scrolling AI slop on instagram
| and gambling away their meagre savings on sports betting
| and prediction markets.
|
| These are not people who are going to get educated about
| chemistry.
|
| Scientific expertise is derided as elitism. The president
| lies constantly by issuing "truths" on his social media
| platform. Public education gets defunded and IQ scores are
| declining. Either this is just random societal decay, or
| this is serving the interests of the rich and powerful. I
| know where I stand on it. And yes, I'm cranky.
| billfor wrote:
| No it's because lots of us grew up in the 70s with
| asbestos, lead, chlordane, ddt, etc... and we are still
| alive and thriving. We played with radioactive chemistry
| sets and even made our own plastic animals inside
| enclosed areas and loved to breath in the vapors :
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thingmaker
|
| PFAS is the least of our concerns.
| normie3000 wrote:
| > tiny convenience over a nitrided, ceramic, or seasoned
| cast iron pan
|
| Or stainless steel?
| andai wrote:
| >PFAS in dental floss
|
| Jesus Christ.
|
| Speaking of which, it occurs to me that my toothbrush is
| also made of plastic, and that most toothpastes are also
| mildly abrasive...
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| Toothbrushes wear down against your teeth anyways.
| timr wrote:
| > People cook with teflon-coated pans for the tiny
| convenience over a nitrided, ceramic, or seasoned cast iron
| pan.
|
| ...which has _absolutely nothing to do_ with the _PFOA_
| that you might reasonably be concerned about. Teflon is
| chemically inert. It 's _literally used for human body
| implants_. Teflon-coated pans are not your enemy. Fire-
| fighting foam, on the other hand -- you probably shouldn 't
| bathe in it.
|
| Any test that "detects" teflon in the generic category of
| "PFAS" is a hopelessly flawed test [1]. Unfortunately, a
| great many of these papers don't make the distinction,
| whether intentionally or due to incompetence, or simply
| because it's far easier to do that, and it gets better
| headlines.
|
| [1] Important aside: _historically_ , several of the major
| manufacturers of teflon had problems with PFOA
| contamination around the factories due to manufacturing
| processes. This is unrelated to your personal use of a
| Teflon pan, and also, the process has been changed. If you
| want to argue that the new process is _also_ polluting,
| fine, make that argument -- but don 't assert that the use
| of the final product is itself unsafe.
| convolvatron wrote:
| the concern is not about immediate effects of using
| products, but the fact that they are now everywhere in
| the environment, including water supplies and our own
| blood streams.
| hvb2 wrote:
| Plenty of people will use those pans and
|
| Overheat them, which means the stuff gets into the air.
| Many many pet birds have died of this only because
| they're more susceptible
|
| Use the wrong material in them meaning the start to
| scratch the Teflon layer.
|
| I'm not saying you cannot use them right, but too many
| people don't and the product isn't safe when improperly
| used. This is true for many products but in this case
| plenty of people aren't aware they're holding it wrong.
| tristor wrote:
| > ...which has absolutely nothing to do with the PFOA
| that you might reasonably be concerned about. Teflon is
| chemically inert. It's literally used for human body
| implants. Teflon-coated pans are not your enemy. Fire-
| fighting foam, on the other hand -- you probably
| shouldn't bathe in it.
|
| Unfortunately, that is not the case. Yes, Teflon is inert
| but only when it's not exposed to high temperatures
| (>350F). When heated, such as in a non-stick pan, Teflon
| gives off fumes which contain byproducts including
| breakdowns back into PFAS compounds. So /YES/ the use of
| the final product (as cookware) /is/ unsafe. NOBODY
| SHOULD BE USING TEFLON NONSTICK COOKWARE.
| rdn wrote:
| Teflon is not inert at very high temperatures. Nobody
| ever overheats a pan?
| Zigurd wrote:
| Future archaeologists are going to chronicle humankind's
| stupidity by the lead layer, the atom bomb testing fallout
| layer, the PFAS layer, etc. All of these were made possible
| by a misplaced sense of scale. Yes we can poison the whole
| planet. That little blue dot.
| awkward wrote:
| Geologically speaking it's just one really cool layer.
| andai wrote:
| It's also got my pogs in it!
| progbits wrote:
| No, they-are-not-actually-contamination. Some studies might
| have inaccurate numbers due to contamination. That's all.
|
| Important to correct for, but doesn't invalidate the whole
| microplastics concern.
| MisterTea wrote:
| Just like how people never cared about lead in their tap water.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| you missed the full jab -- "most people" did not care about
| lead pipes for drinking water. It does not take much effort
| to blankly state that the public "does not care" and proceed
| to spend less than one minute of thinking capacity to self-
| confirm and move on. IMHO That is what you see in some of the
| comments here -- "ignorance" in true form, on display here in
| a erudite and modern forum. Functional definition of
| "ignorance" for this topic? I do not know that and I do not
| care, end of discussion.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| > on display here in a erudite and modern forum.
|
| I wouldn't overestimate the quality of this forum. It
| certainly has its uses, but I wouldn't overstate the
| quality of discourse here. It's not _that_ great.
| tempaccount5050 wrote:
| Because lead doesn't readily leach into water. Your water
| supply has to be real fucked up for that to happen.
| ricardobayes wrote:
| Anectodal but my tap water in downtown Budapest, in an
| old house, had lead. I had the tap water tested and lead
| levels were multiple times the limit.
| klevertree1 wrote:
| Two notes for cynical HN crowd:
|
| 1. Why you/penguins should care about this: PFAS suppress immune
| function and reduce reproductive success in birds [1]. They
| transfer from mothers to eggs and disrupt thyroid hormones and
| immune organ development in avian embryos [2]. In humans, IARC
| classified PFOA as a Group 1 carcinogen in 2023, which means
| there is the highest classification (i.e. International Agency
| for Research on Cancer is convinced PFAS causes cancer). A 2x
| increase in serum PFAS is associated with a 49% drop in vaccine
| antibody levels in children [3]. These are the same compounds
| showing up in >90% of penguin samples in remote Patagonia. They
| don't break down. They bioaccumulate up the food chain. And the
| "safer replacements" like GenX are clearly reaching the ends of
| the earth too. This is bad for penguins and for people.
|
| 2. This is a problem I'm taking seriously. My startup, NeutraOat
| (neutraoat.com) is developing a modified oat fiber that
| selectively binds PFAS and plasticizers in the GI tract without
| stripping nutrients like charcoal does. It will also remove PFAS
| from the blood. Early-stage, binding data is promising. Clinical
| trial happening in ~6-9 months. Website has our early data and a
| pre-order signup form.
|
| [1] Vendl et al., "Profiling research on PFAS in wildlife," Ecol
| Solut Evid, 2024.
| https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002...
| [2] Halldin et al., "Developmental exposure to a mixture of PFAAs
| affects the thyroid hormone system and the bursa of Fabricius in
| the chicken," Sci Rep, 2019.
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-56200-9 [3] Grandjean
| et al., JAMA 2012;307(4):391-397.
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22274686/
| NotGMan wrote:
| Interesting, best of luck with this, microplastics really are
| the modern lead.
|
| You said it removes them from the blood: does the body dump
| microplastics in the gut for your product to remove them from
| the blood or how does it work (if you can answer due to
| proprietary reasons)?
|
| Are saunas and blood donations not also effective for this?
| ben-schaaf wrote:
| It's a common misconception, but microplastics and forever-
| chemicals (PFAS) are not the same thing. They're two similar,
| but distinct pollutants.
|
| > Are saunas and blood donations not also effective for this?
|
| Yes, plasma & blood donations are good at reducing PFAS blood
| concentration. Some(?) firefighting foam contains PFAS, so
| they tend to have high blood concentrations. Donations have
| shown to significantly reduce that:
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8994130/
| klevertree1 wrote:
| All the older firefighting foam did. Some of the new stuff
| does. There's also some amount of "poisoning" from the old
| equipment to the new foam.
|
| Unfortunately, PFAS sticks around forever, so everywhere
| that the old firefighting foam was deployed (e.g. air force
| bases) still has high levels of PFAS contamination.
| ben-schaaf wrote:
| There was a scare in 2024 where high levels of PFAS were
| found in the water supply in the Blue Mountains region of
| NSW. It took months, but they traced it to a single fire
| in 1992 where foam was deployed. Scary stuff.
| contingencies wrote:
| So avoid using dry teflon lubricant spray? Will do!
| bawolff wrote:
| > They're two similar, but distinct pollutants.
|
| They aren't particularly similar.
|
| Honestly, the way the two are conflated is quite annoying.
| You should be terrified of PFAS. You should be mildly
| worried about microplastics, mostly because there isn't
| enough research on the effects yet.
| ByThyGrace wrote:
| Blood donation helps the donor, but what happens to the
| recipient? Would it not be possible to accumulate PFAS in
| your blood stream by receiving PFAS-concentrate blood? Is
| it that simple?
| NotGMan wrote:
| Yes, but since blood donations are not tested for this
| you don't know what you get so people are already getting
| PFAS contaminated blood.
|
| You could just do phlebotomy (blood letting) where your
| blood is discarded in case you have insanely high PFAS.
| everdrive wrote:
| In PFAS's defense, we really needed to poison the whole
| planet. Otherwise people would have occasionally needed to
| get wet in the rain, or perhaps scrub their pots and pans.
| Really, these extremely minor conveniences are worth the
| devastating cost to ours and future generations.
| gryzzly wrote:
| so many things contain it, like plumbing tape that a
| plumber might use right in your water supply - to fix a
| leak leading to your tap :/ and then the ski waxes until
| recently. it is really strange lots of these products are
| still sold all over
| tristor wrote:
| PTFE plumbers tape is not the cause of people getting
| PFAS in their bloodstream. The PRIMARY source of PFAS for
| most people is via the water supply [1][2] and the food
| supply, directly. The food supply is contaminated because
| the water supply is contaminated and these compounds bio-
| accumulate in vegetation that is irrigated with
| contaminated water and in animals that consume that
| vegetation or drink that contaminated water. As someone
| very concerned about this issue and that takes
| precautions that put me very much in the long-tail of the
| population, I also still use PTFE plumbers tape when
| doing home repairs. PTFE/Teflon is not a risk factor as
| long as it is not exposed to high temperatures (>350F)
| (and yes that means you should throw out your nonstick
| cookware and learn how to use cast iron and stainless
| steel for cooking).
|
| In order to reduce contamination in my home's drinking
| water, I have a whole-home water filtration that's lab
| certified to NSF 53 standards (and beyond) to remove
| PFAS, and then for drinking and cooking usages, I further
| filter water via a 5-stage RO system that's certified to
| NSF 58 standards (and beyond). Not just drinking/cooking
| incurs contamination, water is aerosolized and breathed
| in while showering as an example. I only cook using bare
| metal; cast iron, carbon steel, stainless steel, glass
| and ceramic bakeware. Even with these precautions, I
| still get PFAS exposure just via the foods I eat, and
| being exposed in the overall environment (e.g. through
| rainfall).
|
| [1]: https://www.usgs.gov/news/national-news-
| release/millions-us-... [2]:
| https://www.ewg.org/interactive-maps/pfas_contamination/
| gryzzly wrote:
| thanks for the comment and links.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| PTFE tape is perfectly safe to use on threaded fittings
| for domestic water lines, both hot and cold.
| genewitch wrote:
| To people that see this: yes, cast iron is as non-stick as
| teflon, but you are generally told not to soak or put it in
| the dishwasher. I don't think you're supposed to put teflon
| in the dishwasher, but people do.
|
| Regardless, the main thing about cast iron is to use it
| _all the time_. If you really, truly use cast iron all the
| time, it will never have food stick to it, you 'll never
| need to "scrub" it. Hot water in the pan, let it sit for 10
| seconds, scour with a normal dishes brush or whatever you
| use, put the pan on the stove, heat till there's no water,
| hit quickly with an oil spray. Notice i didn't mention
| soap. It takes EXACTLY the same amount of time as cleaning
| an older teflon pan, less the heating part. I just look at
| the heating as sterilization, and i don't worry about it.
|
| I have 3 induction hobs, i switched to 100% cast iron and
| stainless cookware, and i'm happy. I just got tired of
| being upset about flakes/damage to my cookware from other
| people using it. MIL gave me a set of lodge she didn't
| want, plus i had 3 pans from ages ago that we re-seasoned
| and started using. Cast iron griddle, cast iron flat
| weight.
|
| If my arthritis gets so bad i can't lift the pans at all, i
| might consider carbon steel or something, but i haven't
| used it yet. I'm better at cooking on cast iron than
| stainless, but i can make stainless work, too; it's just
| more hands-on than cast iron or teflon.
|
| I've used peanut, rapeseed, olive, coconut, avocado oils;
| butter, bacon and other rendered fat. All work fine,
| although butter i'd put some other oil in with it. I only
| use avocado, peanut, olive, and bacon, in that order these
| days because of diet and other concerns.
| WarmWash wrote:
| To go down the rabbit hole of cast iron...which seemingly
| is not that deep.
|
| We use cast iron daily, but I have been unable to find
| any health studies that looked at the quasi plastic
| polymerized fats that make up the cast iron cooking
| surface. Not even studies to determine what they are
| exactly. I wouldn't be slightly surprised if it's found
| that eating the bits of scraped up "seasoning" while
| cooking leads to cancer or something.
|
| So I think that leaves stainless steel as the ultimate
| health conscious cooking pan.
| klevertree1 wrote:
| PFAS (and, to a lesser extent, plasticizers) circulate from
| the blood to the gut ~5 times per day through enterohepatic
| circulation
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterohepatic_circulation).
| This is why cholestyramine was shown to be effective at
| reducing serum PFAS by up to 60% in a Swedish trial.
|
| Blood donations are also somewhat effective, saunas less so.
| Also, to be clear, PFAS are very different from
| microplastics. PFAS are the Teflon chemical.
| amluto wrote:
| > the Teflon chemical
|
| Teflon is PTFE, which is fully fluorinated but is also very
| much a plastic: it's a highly unreactive solid at
| reasonable temperatures (which sadly do not include
| temperatures commonly encountered on stoves).
|
| By "the Teflon chemical" are you perhaps referring to the
| various nasty liquid, water-soluble surfactants commonly
| used in factories that make or process PTFE? Those include
| PFOA, PFOS, and the newer and not obviously any safer
| "GenX" compounds.
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| Yes, they are referring to PFOA/PFOS; they're talking
| about PFAS which is the broad class of chemical compounds
| that includes PFOA/PFAS. And PFAS are not plastics.
| jcims wrote:
| >Blood donations are also somewhat effective, saunas less
| so. Also, to be clear, PFAS are very different from
| microplastics. PFAS are the Teflon chemical.
|
| I wonder if there's a safe way to equip people to just do
| simple bloodletting if they have high exposure to PFAS. I
| mean obviously it's better to donate, even in that case,
| given the steady state of most blood banks. But it's still
| a bit of a pain in the ass.
| rustyhancock wrote:
| Saunas helping with any kind of detox is complete hocum.
|
| Blood donations clearly do.
|
| Microplastics and PFAS aren't synonyms however.
|
| What isn't established is a dose dependant harm from PFAS.
| Some things are harmful in minute quantities to the point it
| doesn't matter if you have a lot or a little.
|
| Lead has a clear dose response but a relatively low threshold
| for noticeable harm. It's not clear what PFAS curve will look
| like.
|
| I won't restart the linear no threshold flame wars about
| radiation harm but let's just say it's not always intuitive.
| zonkerdonker wrote:
| There is plenty of evidence that sauna does in fact help
| with detox, specifically phthalates. It's not magic or some
| intrinsic property of sauna though, just sweat.
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3504417/
| michael9423 wrote:
| That's a great idea. Have you compared the effects of your
| product with non-modified soluble fibers? Afaik, soluble fibers
| not only from oats but also from vegetables and beans already
| have solid effects on toxin-binding in their natural state.
| ecshafer wrote:
| My hypothesis is that PFAS and microplastics are responsible
| for the drop in female fertility, drop in male fertility, drop
| in testosterone levels, increase in obesity, etc. These
| chemicals are pervasive in the environment, causing disruptions
| to the endocrine system that regulates our body. This is why
| higher elevation areas seem to lag the trends, as they are not
| getting as much down stream accumulation in the environment. My
| sister hypothesis GLP-1s are a chemical that is undoing some of
| that disruption. If what you are doing works, it'll imo be a
| modern day Norman Borlaug.
| Ancalagon wrote:
| Wow a non-AI startup doing good for the world (no gambling) in
| 2026? Ycombinator, someone get OP some money!
|
| Seriously though, amazing idea I love this.
| ribosometronome wrote:
| >no GLP's
|
| GLPs are similar to gambling?
| fao_ wrote:
| some people are very bad at reading, I see
| mbonnet wrote:
| How are GLPs bad for the world?
| Ancalagon wrote:
| you're right its my own annoyance with the ads, updated my
| comment
| apt-apt-apt-apt wrote:
| He thinks it's bad to inject drugs, rather than managing
| calories in/out.
|
| I'm not into GLPs, but I could see a reasonable case made
| for supporting them. For most of the past 50K years, we
| either had to hunt, walk around, farm, split wood etc.
| which means burning 500+ calories daily. Now, most of us
| sit in offices 8 hours a day using 0 calories and 0 muscle,
| surrounded by calories.
|
| It's not surprising really that the default in this
| situation is obesity.
| kogasa240p wrote:
| Impressive and I wish you the best! Hoping you get noticed and
| get funding.
| 650REDHAIR wrote:
| Excellent!
|
| I've signed up and look forward to following your success.
|
| Your mission is near and dear to my heart- I grew up on an US
| Air Force base that is a PFAS superfund site and didn't find
| out about it until much later in life. Recently I've jumped
| into research linking PFAS contamination in dog food to canine
| Addison's disease.
|
| We've been pretty cavalier with PFAS and it's horrifying.
| eblair wrote:
| Are they sure it's not from their gloves?
|
| https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/03/260329222938.h...
| amelius wrote:
| Outdoor gear also contains pfas.
| burnte wrote:
| I don't tryst penguin toxicologists, I've never heard of any
| reputable penguin colleges or labs.
| falcor84 wrote:
| That's speceist. The whole idea with good science is that you
| don't need to trust the person. You can evaluate the penguins'
| study's results and reasoning on its own merits.
| azinman2 wrote:
| It's a joke
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| That's an abstract ideal. In practice, it is not feasible for
| most people to verify a study. It is difficult enough for
| colleagues in the field. Hence why we have to use proxies
| like trustworthiness of a source.
| amatecha wrote:
| PFAS, aka endocrine disruptors:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endocrine_disruptor
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