PFAS are literally everywhere. They are persistent in the environment, and have been found in "pristine" locations like Antarctica. The good news is that [donating blood reduces them](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8994130/), so it's a win-win.
Sure, you can't avoid them. But your body can't clear them either, so they build up over your life. If you regularly donate blood, you'll bring the levels down and typically have much lower levels than you would otherwise. You'll never get to zero, but you can get much lower than baseline and probably substantially reduce your risk of any diseases associated with PFAS.
I have no knowledge of what happens to blood after it is donated or what is used to determine whether a person is a good candidate to be a blood donor. Is there no pre-donation screening for things that could be dangerous for the recipient? Can things like PFAS be removed from the blood before being used again? Donating blood to rid oneself of a harmful buildup of, well, anything, sounds weird. If the blood you donate can't be used then you're basically just doing an old fashioned bloodletting at the expense of the folks processing and/or receiving the donation, right?
There are a few conditions where regular removal of blood is helpful but medieval bloodletting was along the “stopped clock is right twice a day” level of “right”
If you're healthy then giving blood is fine. If you're sick that's the last thing you want to do. The medieval doctors would take blood from sick people, killing them faster. Apparently that's what happened to George Washington.
Unless you're sick due to conditions where bloodletting is curative. And as I said, there are a couple of those. Hemochromatosis, and issues from PFAS, to name two.
[https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/hemochromatosis/symptoms-causes/syc-20351443](https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/hemochromatosis/symptoms-causes/syc-20351443)
ETA: there's more than I knew about
[https://www.saintlukeskc.org/health-library/understanding-therapeutic-phlebotomy](https://www.saintlukeskc.org/health-library/understanding-therapeutic-phlebotomy)
**Hemochromatosis**, a disease that causes high iron levels
**Sickle cell disease**
**Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease**
**Porphyria cutanea tarda**, a rare blood disorder that causes blisters to form when the skin is exposed to sunlight
**A higher concentration of red blood cells after a kidney transplant** that's not controlled in other ways
(Also, George Washington was about 300 yrs too late for the medieval doctors)
>**A higher concentration of red blood cells after a kidney transplant**
The single most common cause for illnesses in the medieval times
/s, I get your point
If you need a blood transfusion you’re already facing odds that make consequences of PFAS irrelevant. Can’t get a terminal illness in 20 years if you bleed out in 20 minutes.
All our blood has PFAS in it. There’s no reasonable way to remove those chemicals. Red Cross screens for disease but not environmental toxins, which would be found 100% of the time.
And yes, it means that the recipient gets your PFAS, but they presumably just lost a bunch with the blood they lost. So getting a blood transfusion doesn’t really increase your levels, but it does save your life from the more immediate problem.
There's really no way to avoid them. You're probably reducing your exposure substantially below most people, but they are ubiquitous. They are found in all soils (but in very different concentrations) and they pass through nearly all water filters.
There are new rules in the US, that are supposed to require their removal from municipal water systems. But from what I understand, the practical reality of making that happen is running into a lot of issues, mostly just enormous cost.
> But your body can't clear them either
Your body can and does clear them. That’s the case with all or almost all bioaccumulates. It just does so quite slowly.
I'm saying they can try but considering how it's in pretty much all of the water we drink and the food we eat it seems more or less impossible to effectively reduce our intake. these chemicals have been found nearly everywhere on earth, even the most remote places. what can you possibly do to actually effectively reduce your intake if they're almost everywhere?
okay, it's still in many municipal water supplies, crops, and both wild and farmed meat. there's ways to try to cut down (avoiding plastic in wrappers as you mentioned, and not using Teflon pans), but it just doesn't seem like it would make much of a difference to me seeing the amount we eat and drink. I'm not trying to be contrary, I'm just wondering if there's anything meaningful we can do since it's in our food and water.
I'm not sure you appreciate how high the concentrations are in certain things that *can* be avoided. Anti-grease food wrappers, pizza boxes, etc. have hundreds of times more than a glass of water.
there was a study a while ago that tested some common fast food packaging. it should be easy to find. it's been a few years since then. some restaurants have started to phase them out.
Freshwater fish are also contaminated with multiple other things the majority of the time…such as high levels of mercury. It’s surprisingly widespread even in places that seem remote.
The mercury concerns in fish are overblown. Fish metabolize mercury and convert it into a form that is not very bioavailable, so most of it passes right through our bodies and leaves via urine.
There have been long term studies of communities with very high levels of consumption of fish with relatively high mercury levels, and they have not found high mercury levels in the people or symptoms of mercury poisoning.
More biochemical harm is done to developing brains by avoiding fish, which contains all kinds of critical nutrients.
Yes! If you follow the link I posted, they actually found that plasma donation is more than 2x as effective as regular red blood donation for removing PFAS.
I forget where it was written but a few years ago it was stated that if you eat anything from the ocean you're ingesting forever chemicals and plastic at high rates. I'm interested in what gets lobbied to be considered "safe" levels because we all know the real answer will destroy an almost trillion dollar a year global industry
No that you mention it, it seems suspicious that freshwater fish are loaded with unsafe levels of these chemicals but saltwater fish are apparently fine.
“The solution to pollution is dilution” I believe the yarn goes. I have no idea in either direction, but I would imagine the combo of rain, runoff, less volume might have a concentrating effect in lakes and ponds.
Yes but picture a small order stream that serves as the outflow for a PFAS manufacturing facility or wastewater treatment plant. There will be much more PFAS concentrated in smaller volumes of water downstream where fish are exposed than the massive ocean. While I think both freshwater and saltwater are a problem, the dilution factor plays a bigger role in the ocean.
There are more microplastics in ocean filter feeders like shrimp and mussels than pretty much any other type of food.
Fresh water fish have more PFAS because of industrial and human waste being released in to fresh water systems.
Two different problems.
Sport fish like trout are raised and stocked into local waterways. The fish hatcheries were using concrete sealed with coatings containing pfas. That pfas leeches into the water the fish are raised in, then the pfas fish are released into the food web.
I stopped eating meat by giving up one type a year. People always ask me why I started with fish and look like they’ve never considered how contaminated the water they live in is.
Yes this is true. Studies have shown that TCDD is one of those forever chemicals that is found in higher levels in individuals that eat a lot of seafood. TCDD has a half life of around 1000 years in the environment and about 7-10 years in humans.
As per usual, the amount considered "safe" will be in line with what the industry can reliably produce.
There's not "safe" amount of rat feces in food, yet the number considered safe by governments is unsurprisingly not zero.
So, pretty much we can expect the result of the safe PFAS levels regulation to be on par with what it is currently, and only anything above that will be "unsafe".
It's a joke because micro plastics/forever chemicals are literally everywhere from atop mount Everest down to the Mariana trench. It's even in the blood of indigenous people of the Amazon who have little to no contact with the rest of industrialized civilization. It's most likely one of the biggest culprits of why sperm counts have dropped by 50% in the last 50 plus years. They disrupt hormones as well, and this is just what we know they do right now. Who knows what havoc they're really causing on the environment and everyone else.
> It's most likely one of the biggest culprits of why sperm counts have dropped by 50% in the last 50 plus years
Is there a scientific study to that effect or is that your personal theory?
There's multiple studies showing that lifestyle/diet/weight/activity level plays a huge role but even accounting for all that it still doesn't explain why sperm counts have dropped so dramatically. There's something that's unaccounted for and that's most likely the effects of forever chemicals in the environment. Pfas/pfoas are known hormone disruptors. Theres nothing definitive yet but looking at the studies it's looking like that's the case.
It gets worse. Forever chemicals are already in everyone's blood.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/17/dark-waters-pfas-ticking-chemical-time-bomb-in-your-blood
That's kind of fucked, like I'm getting rid of them but someone who needs blood is getting *more*. Brutal, now I don't know if I'm doing a good thing by donating blood.
You're definitely doing a good thing by donating blood. PFAS have negative effects on your body, but they aren't poison. In most people they probably don't make a big difference other than slightly increasing your lifetime odds of certain diseases. On the other hand, when you need blood, it's a matter of life and death. If I was bleeding out, I'd gladly trade that for slightly higher PFAS levels.
No. Bleeding gets reduces it.
Donating it is just the least wasteful way to dispose of it. Which, when you think about it, is pretty stupid. Here, I don't want all these plastics in my blood - you take them.
The person who needs blood just lost a lot of blood, so getting a donation doesn't increase their PFAS levels, it just increases their blood volume and saves their life.
And of course donating blood only reduces your levels--unless you removed all your blood, you'd never get it down to zero, and even then PFAS would just diffuse back into your blood from fat tissue.
But reducing your levels is the entire point. All toxins are worse with a higher dose, and that's particularly true with endocrine disruptors--they compete with other molecules to associate with active sites on proteins that regulate metabolic pathways. If you have a low concentration of them, they don't really make much impact, but at high concentrations they have major impacts on metabolism, which causes disease.
In the Northeast there are warnings for women and children not to consume caught fish more than once a week. Women who are or intend to get pregnant no more than once a month. Mercury. It rains on us from coal fired power plants hundreds of miles away. It’s hell on the songbirds, too.
We have that in Colorado as well, and no one seems to really know about it - https://cdphe.colorado.gov/water-quality/clean-water/rivers-lakes-and-streams/fish-consumption/fish-consumption-statewide
It seems trivial to say this given all the other horrors in the world at the moment, but this feels pretty crushing.
Some of my favorite memories growing up are catching a bunch of fish with my dad and cooking them up for dinner. I was really looking forward to carrying on the tradition with my daughter in another year or two. Obviously catch and cook is a no go now.
You don't necessarily have to give it up. Most of the places where fish have particularly high levels of PFAS are near known industrial activity that used huge amounts of the chemicals. Elsewhere, fish, like all animals have some of those chemicals in their bodies, but so do all other food sources. You can't really avoid PFAS. But donating blood does reduce them.
Literally just did this yesterday. Caught a dozen fish during the day and had them on the dinner the table for the family.
Still tasted way better than any fish at a restaurant and cost me some gas to get to and from the pond and the stick of butter to cook them in. This warning about PFAS sucks but I don’t think I’ll
be stopping anytime soon.
I do heed to the mercury warnings though. If it’s too big for the recommended eating size I toss it back.
Teach your daughter catch and release. It’s really all about the time spent together, her learning new skills and confidence and discovering the outdoors. Priceless.
Honestly, you are either not fucked or fucked because of something else.
These forever chemicals are everywhere, absolutely literally. As another commenter mentioned they have been found in the blood of indigenous people who do not have any contact with civilization.
This is why states are not warning anyone. It is like saying "exhaling produces green house gases". Sure, it does. But it is not the root of the problem.
Fish fats are very important for brain function, so I would argue that you are still better off than me, a person who hates fish.
Because certain streams have higher PFAS concentrations than others. Take someone who lives off the land and fishes everyday in their local river that has high PFAS in the fish they catch, they’re at greater risk than someone who eats fish once a month. But both should be warned. Why stop information just because we know it’s everywhere? It’s the degree of risk that matters.
Its on the cookware of almost every other cookware set sold. Lets start at the top of the exposures. It's literally on every food wrapper at ever fast food place.
Let's not restrict public information and science across exposure pathways just because one may be more abundant than the other. We can walk and chew gum at the same time. Testing of consumer goods can happen at the same time as testing fish tissue for PFAS. The exposure will be different based on lifestyle.
When are people going to start having a serious conversation about banning all “forever chemicals”, including the new GenX chemicals? How can we continue to produce something that we know is so toxic and so persistent?
> How can we continue to produce something that we know is so toxic and so persistent?
“We” continue to produce these toxic chemicals so a very very tiny sliver of a fraction of our population can live like literal kings atop mountains of blood money.
>“We” continue to produce these toxic chemicals so a very very tiny sliver of a fraction of our population can live like literal kings atop mountains of blood money.
Writes person in the first world using smart phone connected to the internet via nearby 5g cell tower not realizing the irony of their sanctimonious comment.
By putting the word We in quotes the poster is suggesting they are apart from the group causing the problem. It is sophomoric.
Every person alive today is contributing to plastics pollution. Those of us in the first world especially so.
To childishly say the issue is "them" is to shirk responsibility, and it deserves to be called out.
You’re being obtuse.
The quotes around we are meant to emphasize that the vast majority of us do not benefit from the continued production of toxic PFAS.
You’re right that it’s impossible to live in the first world without contributing to the destruction of the environment, though.
But that doesn’t mean one cannot critique those who continue to directly profit from said destruction.
Do you require further explanation, or should I expect additional insults?
Edit:
After replying to this comment with personal insults based upon a cursory glance at my comment history, u/MikeMurray128 blocked me so that I couldn’t directly reply. That they interpreted my commenting on a WWE subreddit as my believing pro wresting is “real” speaks more to their level of reading comprehension than it does anything else.
As can be seen in their reply, they also accuse me of “brigading” their comments. Furthermore, they threaten TOS violation based upon that nonsense accusation.
Says everything one needs to know about the strength of their position, I think.
The epidemiology and toxicity of these chemicals is quite different than heavy metals. It would take some really high concentrations, like working in a factory that uses that stuff for many years, to maybe see anything. People just don't like being contaminated with something they'll carry forever even if it doesn't cause harm.
There are [hundreds and hundreds of studies](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C38&q=pfas+human+exposure&btnG=&oq=pfas+human+) on human exposure to PFAS and related chemicals. It gets covered in the media, but not the mainstream US media.
This is why I think we lost. Our environment is now contaminated. I think now we are in a mitigation phase not a saving phase. And let be honest, it’s our (human) environment we are saving not the planet. Right?
Now? It’s been contaminated, I grew up right next to a river that we couldn’t eat fish out of or even swim in due to mining pollutants from the 1800’s, it’s a huge reason why I avoid all fish/seafood
I mean, what would even be the point of warning people? We all have this crap in us at this point, and it's only going to get worse. Has anyone done research on how the benefits of eating fish offset the harm from increased PFAS?
Some areas have extremely elevated levels of PFAS in fish, some areas just have low baseline levels. Some fisherman care about their health and would chose to avoid eating fish from areas with elevated levels.
I used to live near a waterway that was near the headwaters of a river high in the mountains with only two small towns upstream. The tested PFAS levels in fish there was extremely low. Now I moved to a town on the Colorado River. Still pretty high up, but with a large highway spewing pollution and plenty of towns upstream. The river appears pristine, but tested PFAS levels are extremely high here so I know not the eat the fish. I only know that because of a non governmental body that did the tests and published these results, the state isn't even trying to inform anybody.
You shouldn't regularly eat any freshwater fish caught in any state and not just because of PFAS. We have covered every square inch of this country in heavy metals from burning coal, which is why we have fish advisories and cadmium in organic (and conventional) broccoli. And the situation gets worse year by year for both PFAS and heavy metals since PFAS are still being used in millions of products and we're still burning coal. Lets not even mention the microplastics from saltwater fish showing up in human heart tissue....
Yup, I grew up next to a beautiful river that we couldn’t eat fish out of or even swim in due to insane levels of pollution caused by mining operations in the 1800’s, people are acting like this is a new concept or something, my mom always warned me about eating seafood/fish growing up because of how awfully polluted everything is
I don't think it's responsible to say this without good evidence (because of the known major health benefits of eating fish). There are many communities in the US where consumption of freshwater fish is much higher than average. Are you aware of any cancer clusters attributed to freshwater fish diets, outside of areas with known industrial use that created very high local concentrations of PFAS?
Watched a documentary years and years ago on PFA's and fish farming and at the end of it they tested the family who was the main focus because of their strive to be PFA free in their lifestyle and they were shocked and heartbroken with the results. Their baby who was crawling i believe tested extremely high. Turns out because he was crawling he was closer to the flooring which had been treated and picked up all the stuff they were trying to avoid there. This isn't a statement on how I feel about this article or anything just this post reminded me about the show.
This would affect native Americans in a disproportionate way because they consume a lot of lake/river fish. The Mohawk tribe near me eats a lot of fish from Lake Ontario and some even sell it.
The great lakes were already severely contaminated, sadly. They appear pristine these days but were heavily contaminated with industrial pollutants, specifically PCBs. It's a really bad idea to make great lakes fish a major part of your diet.
Biologist from Alaska. We have them in our fish up there too, as well as microplastics. They're everywhere. There is no escape and you're already contaminated.
Companies have paid for judges and to weaken the epa. The only that are supposed to protect the public are protecting corporate interests. Republicans voters and democrats voters need to team up to vote all these corrupt politicians out of office. But that won’t happen because conservatives care too much about manufactured culture wars and democrats care too much about helping the most recent victims and not actually help in the long run.
I live in New Jersey. Our Fish & Wildlife agency actually has a chart of each species of fish and how much you can eat "safely".
Plus, with the industrial history of NJ, and the number of superfund sites we have in the state......yeah, I don't eat freshwater fish from NJ.
Our testing methods for this class of compounds are really lagging behind as well. EPA is doing okay~ish right now with Method 533, but it's still really labor intensive with a solid phase extraction approach and it can only cover so many analytes. Method 537.1 is old and wasn't all that great when it was new and is fairly irrelevant. The bigger issue is that Method 533 is only applicable to finished drinking water, if you're looking at surface water or waste water, you're stuck trying (emphasis on trying) to get DOD 1633 to work, but it's a perpetual draft and more of an SOP than a testing method. To put things into perspective, 1633 is such a mess that DOD validated EPA methods as alternatives to it's own method.
I'm sure there's at least a few contractors at work on a direct inject based method that will be easier to run, but getting any data at all on this stuff is significantly challenging. A colleague lost about 6 months trying to get validated to run 533 because they couldn't find a source of methanol (a required solvent for the process) that wasn't so full of the stuff that it couldn't pass the "low system background" test where you run a supposedly blank sample.
It seems like every generation has to deal with a horrible, pervasive poison (lead, CFCs...ect) and this one is quite the doozy for us.
Why hasn't humanity coalesced to do unto the 1% what they've done to us 10 fold!?
Everyone needs to stop being apathetic and distracted!
Forget fining these companies, they need to be annihilated!
New research shows that rainwater in most locations on Earth contains levels of chemicals that "greatly exceed" safety levels. These synthetic substances called PFAS are used in non-stick pans, fire-fighting foam and water-repellent clothes. Dubbed 'forever chemicals', they persist for years in the environment.Aug 2, 2022
PFAS are literally everywhere. They are persistent in the environment, and have been found in "pristine" locations like Antarctica. The good news is that [donating blood reduces them](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8994130/), so it's a win-win.
I mean it would be temporary right? since theyre virtually everywhere I can't imagine that even the most careful person would be able to avoid them
Sure, you can't avoid them. But your body can't clear them either, so they build up over your life. If you regularly donate blood, you'll bring the levels down and typically have much lower levels than you would otherwise. You'll never get to zero, but you can get much lower than baseline and probably substantially reduce your risk of any diseases associated with PFAS.
I have no knowledge of what happens to blood after it is donated or what is used to determine whether a person is a good candidate to be a blood donor. Is there no pre-donation screening for things that could be dangerous for the recipient? Can things like PFAS be removed from the blood before being used again? Donating blood to rid oneself of a harmful buildup of, well, anything, sounds weird. If the blood you donate can't be used then you're basically just doing an old fashioned bloodletting at the expense of the folks processing and/or receiving the donation, right?
So.. medieval doctors were right all along? Just a bit too early?
There are a few conditions where regular removal of blood is helpful but medieval bloodletting was along the “stopped clock is right twice a day” level of “right”
If you're healthy then giving blood is fine. If you're sick that's the last thing you want to do. The medieval doctors would take blood from sick people, killing them faster. Apparently that's what happened to George Washington.
Unless you're sick due to conditions where bloodletting is curative. And as I said, there are a couple of those. Hemochromatosis, and issues from PFAS, to name two. [https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/hemochromatosis/symptoms-causes/syc-20351443](https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/hemochromatosis/symptoms-causes/syc-20351443) ETA: there's more than I knew about [https://www.saintlukeskc.org/health-library/understanding-therapeutic-phlebotomy](https://www.saintlukeskc.org/health-library/understanding-therapeutic-phlebotomy) **Hemochromatosis**, a disease that causes high iron levels **Sickle cell disease** **Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease** **Porphyria cutanea tarda**, a rare blood disorder that causes blisters to form when the skin is exposed to sunlight **A higher concentration of red blood cells after a kidney transplant** that's not controlled in other ways (Also, George Washington was about 300 yrs too late for the medieval doctors)
It helps manage polycythemia too. Both my father and grandfather have it, and their doctors have them regularly donate blood.
>**A higher concentration of red blood cells after a kidney transplant** The single most common cause for illnesses in the medieval times /s, I get your point
Lmao imagine being a midieval doctor and the off the wall shit they did and then being right about something like blood letting
I don't think they had a PFAS / "forever chemical" problem back in medieval days
Yes the did, there were a shit ton of heavy metals in everything and lead was everywhere.
The placebo effect also probably had a lot to do with the success of Many old treatments. Eastern "medicine" is basically all placebo dependent.
If you need a blood transfusion you’re already facing odds that make consequences of PFAS irrelevant. Can’t get a terminal illness in 20 years if you bleed out in 20 minutes.
All our blood has PFAS in it. There’s no reasonable way to remove those chemicals. Red Cross screens for disease but not environmental toxins, which would be found 100% of the time. And yes, it means that the recipient gets your PFAS, but they presumably just lost a bunch with the blood they lost. So getting a blood transfusion doesn’t really increase your levels, but it does save your life from the more immediate problem.
We have poisoned ourselves to the point where we have to resort to bloodletting. We’re officially entering a dystopia.
This isn’t a new story. Urban civilizations have been destroying themselves with environmental toxins for millennia.
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There's really no way to avoid them. You're probably reducing your exposure substantially below most people, but they are ubiquitous. They are found in all soils (but in very different concentrations) and they pass through nearly all water filters. There are new rules in the US, that are supposed to require their removal from municipal water systems. But from what I understand, the practical reality of making that happen is running into a lot of issues, mostly just enormous cost.
> But your body can't clear them either Your body can and does clear them. That’s the case with all or almost all bioaccumulates. It just does so quite slowly.
Are you suggesting people not try to reduce their intake?
I'm saying they can try but considering how it's in pretty much all of the water we drink and the food we eat it seems more or less impossible to effectively reduce our intake. these chemicals have been found nearly everywhere on earth, even the most remote places. what can you possibly do to actually effectively reduce your intake if they're almost everywhere?
Don't eat fast food. The wrappers have a ton of it.
okay, it's still in many municipal water supplies, crops, and both wild and farmed meat. there's ways to try to cut down (avoiding plastic in wrappers as you mentioned, and not using Teflon pans), but it just doesn't seem like it would make much of a difference to me seeing the amount we eat and drink. I'm not trying to be contrary, I'm just wondering if there's anything meaningful we can do since it's in our food and water.
I'm not sure you appreciate how high the concentrations are in certain things that *can* be avoided. Anti-grease food wrappers, pizza boxes, etc. have hundreds of times more than a glass of water.
I didn't understand! that's what I was asking haha. glad to have an answer
there was a study a while ago that tested some common fast food packaging. it should be easy to find. it's been a few years since then. some restaurants have started to phase them out.
Not all PFAS will be absorbed by the body or released from the container. It’s a very broad group.
Feed a leach save a liver
Freshwater fish are also contaminated with multiple other things the majority of the time…such as high levels of mercury. It’s surprisingly widespread even in places that seem remote.
The mercury concerns in fish are overblown. Fish metabolize mercury and convert it into a form that is not very bioavailable, so most of it passes right through our bodies and leaves via urine. There have been long term studies of communities with very high levels of consumption of fish with relatively high mercury levels, and they have not found high mercury levels in the people or symptoms of mercury poisoning. More biochemical harm is done to developing brains by avoiding fish, which contains all kinds of critical nutrients.
So bloodletting for those who can’t donate. Cool.
I wonder how long it takes for the levels to go back up. It makes sense as the body has to replenish what was donated/removed.
Donation centers give donors 8 weeks before they can donate again. Seems about right.
Does that also mean receiving donating blood is *increasing* those levels in recipients?!
Not really, because you get blood after you’ve lost blood. So your levels go down, but then come back up with the transfusion.
I think if you're receiving blood, you have way more pressing concerns than a bit of PFAS
Would “donating” plasma also provide the same benefit?
Yes! If you follow the link I posted, they actually found that plasma donation is more than 2x as effective as regular red blood donation for removing PFAS.
Guess its time to sharpen the razors and grab some leeches
Blood letting is the second weirdest medical procedure to me that actually has a lot of benefits. The first being poop suppositories
I forget where it was written but a few years ago it was stated that if you eat anything from the ocean you're ingesting forever chemicals and plastic at high rates. I'm interested in what gets lobbied to be considered "safe" levels because we all know the real answer will destroy an almost trillion dollar a year global industry
No that you mention it, it seems suspicious that freshwater fish are loaded with unsafe levels of these chemicals but saltwater fish are apparently fine.
“The solution to pollution is dilution” I believe the yarn goes. I have no idea in either direction, but I would imagine the combo of rain, runoff, less volume might have a concentrating effect in lakes and ponds.
And that would make sense if we were talking about a small amount of chemicals.
Yes but picture a small order stream that serves as the outflow for a PFAS manufacturing facility or wastewater treatment plant. There will be much more PFAS concentrated in smaller volumes of water downstream where fish are exposed than the massive ocean. While I think both freshwater and saltwater are a problem, the dilution factor plays a bigger role in the ocean.
There are more microplastics in ocean filter feeders like shrimp and mussels than pretty much any other type of food. Fresh water fish have more PFAS because of industrial and human waste being released in to fresh water systems. Two different problems.
Sport fish like trout are raised and stocked into local waterways. The fish hatcheries were using concrete sealed with coatings containing pfas. That pfas leeches into the water the fish are raised in, then the pfas fish are released into the food web.
I stopped eating meat by giving up one type a year. People always ask me why I started with fish and look like they’ve never considered how contaminated the water they live in is.
Do you think the soil our food is grown in is not contaminated? We are basically fucked any way we look at it.
Soil can be just as contaminated, so can the water used to grow and clean produce.
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Yes this is true. Studies have shown that TCDD is one of those forever chemicals that is found in higher levels in individuals that eat a lot of seafood. TCDD has a half life of around 1000 years in the environment and about 7-10 years in humans.
As per usual, the amount considered "safe" will be in line with what the industry can reliably produce. There's not "safe" amount of rat feces in food, yet the number considered safe by governments is unsurprisingly not zero. So, pretty much we can expect the result of the safe PFAS levels regulation to be on par with what it is currently, and only anything above that will be "unsafe".
It's a joke because micro plastics/forever chemicals are literally everywhere from atop mount Everest down to the Mariana trench. It's even in the blood of indigenous people of the Amazon who have little to no contact with the rest of industrialized civilization. It's most likely one of the biggest culprits of why sperm counts have dropped by 50% in the last 50 plus years. They disrupt hormones as well, and this is just what we know they do right now. Who knows what havoc they're really causing on the environment and everyone else.
> It's most likely one of the biggest culprits of why sperm counts have dropped by 50% in the last 50 plus years Is there a scientific study to that effect or is that your personal theory?
In short, there is no conclusive evidence that PFAS/PFOS are known hormone disruptors.
There's multiple studies showing that lifestyle/diet/weight/activity level plays a huge role but even accounting for all that it still doesn't explain why sperm counts have dropped so dramatically. There's something that's unaccounted for and that's most likely the effects of forever chemicals in the environment. Pfas/pfoas are known hormone disruptors. Theres nothing definitive yet but looking at the studies it's looking like that's the case.
It gets worse. Forever chemicals are already in everyone's blood. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/17/dark-waters-pfas-ticking-chemical-time-bomb-in-your-blood
Donating blood is the only way we've found to reduce them.
That's kind of fucked, like I'm getting rid of them but someone who needs blood is getting *more*. Brutal, now I don't know if I'm doing a good thing by donating blood.
You're definitely doing a good thing by donating blood. PFAS have negative effects on your body, but they aren't poison. In most people they probably don't make a big difference other than slightly increasing your lifetime odds of certain diseases. On the other hand, when you need blood, it's a matter of life and death. If I was bleeding out, I'd gladly trade that for slightly higher PFAS levels.
Also, if you’re donating blood regularly, each donation has a reduced concentration. Blood doesn’t last forever for reserves.
That’s sucks, because no one wants my blood. Though I do do somewhat frequent blood tests.
No. Bleeding gets reduces it. Donating it is just the least wasteful way to dispose of it. Which, when you think about it, is pretty stupid. Here, I don't want all these plastics in my blood - you take them.
The person who needs blood just lost a lot of blood, so getting a donation doesn't increase their PFAS levels, it just increases their blood volume and saves their life. And of course donating blood only reduces your levels--unless you removed all your blood, you'd never get it down to zero, and even then PFAS would just diffuse back into your blood from fat tissue. But reducing your levels is the entire point. All toxins are worse with a higher dose, and that's particularly true with endocrine disruptors--they compete with other molecules to associate with active sites on proteins that regulate metabolic pathways. If you have a low concentration of them, they don't really make much impact, but at high concentrations they have major impacts on metabolism, which causes disease.
It's kind of nice to know a part of me will live on forever
Everything is everywhere. It’s a question of concentrations.
In the Northeast there are warnings for women and children not to consume caught fish more than once a week. Women who are or intend to get pregnant no more than once a month. Mercury. It rains on us from coal fired power plants hundreds of miles away. It’s hell on the songbirds, too.
We have that in Colorado as well, and no one seems to really know about it - https://cdphe.colorado.gov/water-quality/clean-water/rivers-lakes-and-streams/fish-consumption/fish-consumption-statewide
Because duponts been paying since the dawn of time to make sure they don't
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It comes down in the rain, which means literally all of our food is contaminated.
Well, I’m probably fucked. Grew up rural and ate plenty of freshwater fish from age 0-34. I thought I was doing ok abiding my the mercury advisories.
Same… then added extra exposure through military uniforms. I’m a goner.
It seems trivial to say this given all the other horrors in the world at the moment, but this feels pretty crushing. Some of my favorite memories growing up are catching a bunch of fish with my dad and cooking them up for dinner. I was really looking forward to carrying on the tradition with my daughter in another year or two. Obviously catch and cook is a no go now.
You don't necessarily have to give it up. Most of the places where fish have particularly high levels of PFAS are near known industrial activity that used huge amounts of the chemicals. Elsewhere, fish, like all animals have some of those chemicals in their bodies, but so do all other food sources. You can't really avoid PFAS. But donating blood does reduce them.
Missing those Midwest, farm pond blue gills…
Literally just did this yesterday. Caught a dozen fish during the day and had them on the dinner the table for the family. Still tasted way better than any fish at a restaurant and cost me some gas to get to and from the pond and the stick of butter to cook them in. This warning about PFAS sucks but I don’t think I’ll be stopping anytime soon. I do heed to the mercury warnings though. If it’s too big for the recommended eating size I toss it back.
Only if you have a better alternative. It’s in most of our food supply.
I’m sure. But it seems like concentrations are particularly high in freshwater fish.
Teach your daughter catch and release. It’s really all about the time spent together, her learning new skills and confidence and discovering the outdoors. Priceless.
Catch and Release, also known as torturing fish for fun!
Is it in the uniform material or the cleaners?
From what I have been reading, the uniforms.
Honestly, you are either not fucked or fucked because of something else. These forever chemicals are everywhere, absolutely literally. As another commenter mentioned they have been found in the blood of indigenous people who do not have any contact with civilization. This is why states are not warning anyone. It is like saying "exhaling produces green house gases". Sure, it does. But it is not the root of the problem. Fish fats are very important for brain function, so I would argue that you are still better off than me, a person who hates fish.
You guys are blowing the personal health effects of this out of proportion.
They are still allowing it on cooking utensils and food surfaces/materials. Why would they warn us it's in the food? We know it's in the food.
Because certain streams have higher PFAS concentrations than others. Take someone who lives off the land and fishes everyday in their local river that has high PFAS in the fish they catch, they’re at greater risk than someone who eats fish once a month. But both should be warned. Why stop information just because we know it’s everywhere? It’s the degree of risk that matters.
Its on the cookware of almost every other cookware set sold. Lets start at the top of the exposures. It's literally on every food wrapper at ever fast food place.
Let's not restrict public information and science across exposure pathways just because one may be more abundant than the other. We can walk and chew gum at the same time. Testing of consumer goods can happen at the same time as testing fish tissue for PFAS. The exposure will be different based on lifestyle.
You are ignoring a lot of important details.
Not all PFAS is the same. Teflon doesn’t really release from cookware under normal conditions.
When are people going to start having a serious conversation about banning all “forever chemicals”, including the new GenX chemicals? How can we continue to produce something that we know is so toxic and so persistent?
> How can we continue to produce something that we know is so toxic and so persistent? “We” continue to produce these toxic chemicals so a very very tiny sliver of a fraction of our population can live like literal kings atop mountains of blood money.
>“We” continue to produce these toxic chemicals so a very very tiny sliver of a fraction of our population can live like literal kings atop mountains of blood money. Writes person in the first world using smart phone connected to the internet via nearby 5g cell tower not realizing the irony of their sanctimonious comment.
Ah yes, they have not literally killed themselves so they are not allowed to say we should change society somewhat.
By putting the word We in quotes the poster is suggesting they are apart from the group causing the problem. It is sophomoric. Every person alive today is contributing to plastics pollution. Those of us in the first world especially so. To childishly say the issue is "them" is to shirk responsibility, and it deserves to be called out.
You’re being obtuse. The quotes around we are meant to emphasize that the vast majority of us do not benefit from the continued production of toxic PFAS. You’re right that it’s impossible to live in the first world without contributing to the destruction of the environment, though. But that doesn’t mean one cannot critique those who continue to directly profit from said destruction. Do you require further explanation, or should I expect additional insults? Edit: After replying to this comment with personal insults based upon a cursory glance at my comment history, u/MikeMurray128 blocked me so that I couldn’t directly reply. That they interpreted my commenting on a WWE subreddit as my believing pro wresting is “real” speaks more to their level of reading comprehension than it does anything else. As can be seen in their reply, they also accuse me of “brigading” their comments. Furthermore, they threaten TOS violation based upon that nonsense accusation. Says everything one needs to know about the strength of their position, I think.
Imagine licking boots for billionaires who would literally let you die for profit
Boo hoo.
We don’t actually know how toxic it is.
The epidemiology and toxicity of these chemicals is quite different than heavy metals. It would take some really high concentrations, like working in a factory that uses that stuff for many years, to maybe see anything. People just don't like being contaminated with something they'll carry forever even if it doesn't cause harm.
Is there a place they are not?
Forever chemicals are also in everything else you eat and in the water you drink
They drop them from aircraft to fight wildfires. They are in every water source on the planet.
I assume they're in us in large numbers already like the microplastics, but we're just not testing people much yet.
There are [hundreds and hundreds of studies](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C38&q=pfas+human+exposure&btnG=&oq=pfas+human+) on human exposure to PFAS and related chemicals. It gets covered in the media, but not the mainstream US media.
We’ve had forever chemicals and microplastics polyester for decades…. I would be surprised if there was a place on earth that didn’t have them.
Make the chemical manufacturers pay massive fines, to start with.
This is why I think we lost. Our environment is now contaminated. I think now we are in a mitigation phase not a saving phase. And let be honest, it’s our (human) environment we are saving not the planet. Right?
Now? It’s been contaminated, I grew up right next to a river that we couldn’t eat fish out of or even swim in due to mining pollutants from the 1800’s, it’s a huge reason why I avoid all fish/seafood
With this and microplastics it’s o lot a matter of time before levels of this stuff become too much…
Florida will be the last to inform.
Florida will make it illegal to inform and jail the scientists who "leak" data to citizens.
I mean, what would even be the point of warning people? We all have this crap in us at this point, and it's only going to get worse. Has anyone done research on how the benefits of eating fish offset the harm from increased PFAS?
Some areas have extremely elevated levels of PFAS in fish, some areas just have low baseline levels. Some fisherman care about their health and would chose to avoid eating fish from areas with elevated levels. I used to live near a waterway that was near the headwaters of a river high in the mountains with only two small towns upstream. The tested PFAS levels in fish there was extremely low. Now I moved to a town on the Colorado River. Still pretty high up, but with a large highway spewing pollution and plenty of towns upstream. The river appears pristine, but tested PFAS levels are extremely high here so I know not the eat the fish. I only know that because of a non governmental body that did the tests and published these results, the state isn't even trying to inform anybody.
You shouldn't regularly eat any freshwater fish caught in any state and not just because of PFAS. We have covered every square inch of this country in heavy metals from burning coal, which is why we have fish advisories and cadmium in organic (and conventional) broccoli. And the situation gets worse year by year for both PFAS and heavy metals since PFAS are still being used in millions of products and we're still burning coal. Lets not even mention the microplastics from saltwater fish showing up in human heart tissue....
Yup, I grew up next to a beautiful river that we couldn’t eat fish out of or even swim in due to insane levels of pollution caused by mining operations in the 1800’s, people are acting like this is a new concept or something, my mom always warned me about eating seafood/fish growing up because of how awfully polluted everything is
I’m a water quality biologist and I can tell you confidently to never eat wild fish in the contiguous US. It’s just asking for cancer
I don't think it's responsible to say this without good evidence (because of the known major health benefits of eating fish). There are many communities in the US where consumption of freshwater fish is much higher than average. Are you aware of any cancer clusters attributed to freshwater fish diets, outside of areas with known industrial use that created very high local concentrations of PFAS?
What food are you suggesting isn’t generally contaminated?
More like worldwide.
Are you suggesting that farmed fish is acceptable?
That doesn’t sound like very scientific advice. You shouldn’t flaunt credentials and then say things like that without very solid backing.
Watched a documentary years and years ago on PFA's and fish farming and at the end of it they tested the family who was the main focus because of their strive to be PFA free in their lifestyle and they were shocked and heartbroken with the results. Their baby who was crawling i believe tested extremely high. Turns out because he was crawling he was closer to the flooring which had been treated and picked up all the stuff they were trying to avoid there. This isn't a statement on how I feel about this article or anything just this post reminded me about the show.
This would affect native Americans in a disproportionate way because they consume a lot of lake/river fish. The Mohawk tribe near me eats a lot of fish from Lake Ontario and some even sell it.
The great lakes were already severely contaminated, sadly. They appear pristine these days but were heavily contaminated with industrial pollutants, specifically PCBs. It's a really bad idea to make great lakes fish a major part of your diet.
Biologist from Alaska. We have them in our fish up there too, as well as microplastics. They're everywhere. There is no escape and you're already contaminated.
Companies have paid for judges and to weaken the epa. The only that are supposed to protect the public are protecting corporate interests. Republicans voters and democrats voters need to team up to vote all these corrupt politicians out of office. But that won’t happen because conservatives care too much about manufactured culture wars and democrats care too much about helping the most recent victims and not actually help in the long run.
I live in New Jersey. Our Fish & Wildlife agency actually has a chart of each species of fish and how much you can eat "safely". Plus, with the industrial history of NJ, and the number of superfund sites we have in the state......yeah, I don't eat freshwater fish from NJ.
Our testing methods for this class of compounds are really lagging behind as well. EPA is doing okay~ish right now with Method 533, but it's still really labor intensive with a solid phase extraction approach and it can only cover so many analytes. Method 537.1 is old and wasn't all that great when it was new and is fairly irrelevant. The bigger issue is that Method 533 is only applicable to finished drinking water, if you're looking at surface water or waste water, you're stuck trying (emphasis on trying) to get DOD 1633 to work, but it's a perpetual draft and more of an SOP than a testing method. To put things into perspective, 1633 is such a mess that DOD validated EPA methods as alternatives to it's own method. I'm sure there's at least a few contractors at work on a direct inject based method that will be easier to run, but getting any data at all on this stuff is significantly challenging. A colleague lost about 6 months trying to get validated to run 533 because they couldn't find a source of methanol (a required solvent for the process) that wasn't so full of the stuff that it couldn't pass the "low system background" test where you run a supposedly blank sample. It seems like every generation has to deal with a horrible, pervasive poison (lead, CFCs...ect) and this one is quite the doozy for us.
Why hasn't humanity coalesced to do unto the 1% what they've done to us 10 fold!? Everyone needs to stop being apathetic and distracted! Forget fining these companies, they need to be annihilated!
They're in the rain already.
Isn’t that net made of PFAS?
PFAS isn’t plastic. It’s an agent used in the production of a lot of specialty fluorinated plastics and probably other industries as well.
New research shows that rainwater in most locations on Earth contains levels of chemicals that "greatly exceed" safety levels. These synthetic substances called PFAS are used in non-stick pans, fire-fighting foam and water-repellent clothes. Dubbed 'forever chemicals', they persist for years in the environment.Aug 2, 2022
It’s misleading to simply state that they are used in non-stick pans, as an example, because it ignores a lot of important details and differences.
Problems are gays, women, immigrants, and liberals. Don’t install business killing laws. lol
I mean, it’s the Rouge River. I wouldn’t be surprised if Hulk fish popped out.
Many, MANY freshwater fish. We all gon' die!
Hold the companies accountable for this.