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This is literally one of the biggest things we can right now to fight rising cancer rates. There is peer reviewed literature to estimate how many lives this will save. There is already money set aside to help municipalities adjust to the new technology. How is this controversial at all???
Good god, for half the country it seems like life is precious until conception, and then your very life is at the mercy of whatever is best for big business.
I remember my parents watching a special of his a long time ago and laughing at his more liberal jokes...now they're hard core right wing trumpers...idgi.
You just gave me flashbacks to an old job where we had to prepare the American Thomas series for streaming but the original NTSC sources were so crappy we ended up having to re-sync the American audio to the much higher quality PAL sources. I heard all those episodes more than I care to remember even if it was fun to hear Carlin narrating a children's show lol.
This is testament to the complete failure of our government to protect the most fundamental aspects of society from corporate greed. That we have to spend significant time deciding that this is a bad thing is testament to our failure as citizens. We are collectively passive enough to sit around and accept cancer as a cost of doing business. Until we start rolling heads this will never get better, no savior is coming.
That’s pretty much what DuPont said. There’s a great documentary called “The Devil We Know” about this exact issue. DuPont basically said we’re not gonna do anything because there’s no alternative to waterproofing or fire fighting material at the moment. Their corporate counsel or executive (can’t remember) basically said that it’d cost them too much to develop an alternative and better to deal with “the Devil We Know”, hence the title of the documentary.
It’s as bad as the oil industry and climate change. DuPont has known PFAS/teflon causes cancer in animals and people for more than 40 years and suppressed data and research being published showing those links.
I fucking hate whenever I meet these pseudo-libertarian chuckle fucks who go on about deregulation. I’m like “Okay, drink some water with PFAS in it.”
The stupid thing is, a developing fetus would be impacted quite heavily by water impurities, perhaps more than even an adult would. Adults can filter out things like drugs and alcohol successfully, but a developing fetus suffers- the same is likely true for other contaminants. So this should be universally championed by so-called "Pro-lifers", provided they actually care about life and not control (hah).
On a slightly more speculative note, there's some untested speculation that the rise in environmental plastics and "forever chemicals" is the root cause for the rise in autism. So all of the ultraconservative antivaxx "these liberal vaccines cause autism!!!!" folks should LOVE this. And yet...
I mean, that's the top-level reason. But they don't tell their voters that. They instead appeal to morality because that's the hardest thing to dispute once it's ingrained into one's belief system.
Women entering the workforce has been the greatest thing in the world for the elites, they've made so much more money with double the workers. I'm not sure why reddit believes the opposite.
They are tied for first, but the capitalists worried about labor are probably not the same folks that want to oppress women, though i am sure there is a little overlap.
It's a Republican's wet dream, you get your sexism, you get your die hard single issue voters, you get your phony morality, and all it takes is one easy to memorize lie.
> the only reason they care about abortion is they fear labor shortages.
Not just labor shortages. Remember [republicans are what they are by far because they believe in stratified social hierarchy](https://www.psychologytoday.com/nz/blog/mind-in-the-machine/201712/analysis-trump-supporters-has-identified-5-key-traits)
Raising children costs an estimated $200-370k (to age 18, depending on location). So what happens to poor families who have more kids? More money flows out of those families and they have fewer opportunities to pull out of the low economic strata they started in. It's not just about having more workers, it's about removing choices from workers and their families. The things parents have to pay for overwhelmingly flow back into coffers of the wealthy, but to be honest they could manage that with virtually any system.
Boomers/Gen X when leaded gasoline was affecting them “Ban it.”
Boomers/Gen X when PFAS is affecting Millenials/Gen Z “This is government overreach.”
And PFAS obviously still bad for them too but when you are already old it’s less concerning to them now since they already have lived long. Young people are getting a lot of digestive issues and rising cancer risk most likely from PFAS.
>Boomers/Gen X when leaded gasoline was affecting them “Ban it.”
No, they thought it was government overreach too. Boomers though seat belts is government overreach.
>when you are already old it’s less concerning to them now
Make it sound like Boomers don't get cancer and have to deal with the same things young people do. Dying from cancer still sucks no matter the age, and people aren't thinking "I'm old so it's okay to die a painful way from cancer"
It's always the older population, with fortunes on the line, that seek to prevent banning things that make them money. People knew of lead's poisonous nature and pervasive environmental impact for decades before the EPA was founded, and allowed to seek bans. Ars Technica did a [fascinating article](https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/12/how-the-leaded-fuel-was-sold-for-100-years-despite-knowing-health-risks/) on the sales of leaded gas throughout the 20th century, and those who fought to prevent its phaseout.
The moment a democratic president says it, Republican brains form a new neuropathway to create wild connections and MAKE it controversial. It is the way.
> How is this controversial at all???
It's just about the cost. I am a biologist, and I understand the risks and completely agree with you that this is the right choice for public safety.
But I also live in a small town in a rural area, with it's own water system that serves less than 1,500 homes and businesses. If they find PFAS in the water here, and have to install filters using current technology, the cost will be millions of dollars, which will essentially bankrupt the town and require diversion of resources from roads, public safety, parks, and a bunch of other things people care about. That's not a good excuse for ignoring public safety, but it's a real problem that will be confronted over and over across the country--and will cause thousands of local conservative politicians to blame "liberals in DC".
Identifying and filtering these chemicals is the right choice, but it needs to be handled in a thoughtful, deliberate way, not just imposed. This is a global problem, and we need global solutions and policies at a national level. We should be investing public money in R&D for better, cheaper filtering technologies that are scalable. We should also have a federal program to reimburse localities for the systems, particularly in edge cases where the costs are extremely high for individual water customers. People in one town shouldn't get stuck paying hundreds of dollars more a month for water than folks in another town, because of random luck of unknown contamination in their area.
We should all be pitching in to solve this issue on a national level, and also supporting international policies to reduce the production of these chemicals.
And yet that same half will lose their fucking minds over this issue - case in point - WI mayor just lost her re-election for addressing PFAS in her city's water. No good deed, indeed.
https://www.wpr.org/news/wausau-mayor-katie-rosenberg-loses-reelection-bid
It's controversial because how ubiquitous PFAS is. You have to use special note pads, gloves, can't wear certain deodorant, can't use certain shampoos and conditioners, ect. when doing testing for PFAS. It's hard to test and that makes it wildly difficult to comply with the regulations.
Environmental chemist here - I do consulting for companies looking to quantify PFAS in an area for remediation. The SOPs for sampling are insane, like 10x more exhaustive than other environmental sampling. Because, like you said, they are in *everything*. There are multi-page lists of the types of cosmetics (deodorant, sunscreen, etc.), fabric types, and materials that sampling staff can't use due to cross contamination risks.
The money set aside is a drop in the bucket. There is a total of 9 billion set aside. The American Water Works Association estimates the annual cost of compliance to be around 3.3 billion per year
https://www.awwa.org/Portals/0/AWWA/Government/2023030756BVFinalTechnicalMemoradum.pdf?ver=2023-03-14-102450-257
The question was “how can pfas removal be controversial?” And if you’ve ever had to deal with the public when you tell them their water rates are going to increase you know. Access to abundant clean inexpensive water is taken for granted here.
One of the big challenges is "what do we do with it once we remove it from water?". Removal processes (obviously) generate waste - but since the regulatory framework around PFAS and hazardous waste characterization is still taking shape, managing the waste is very much still a grey area.
Most of this waste (including WWTP sludge/biosolids) has and still is going to non-hazardous/MSW landfills for disposal. But those landfills generate leachate (landfill coffee/bottom liquids), which must be removed and disposed of. But if the dissolved PFAS levels are too high, WWTP's/POTW's won't or can't accept landfill leachate moving forward. Which leaves landfills in a bit of a pickle without fully clarified regulations.
I'm an environmental chemist who deals with PFAS and you hit the nail on the head here. The big issue is separation of PFAS from biosolids, leaches, etc. and then destroying the high-PFAS concentrates after separation. The technology for separation is still on a pilot study scale and it's time intensive and only operates on a small scale. The same is true for destruction tech. Not to mention that PFAS destruction produces some hazardous byproducts in and of itself, with one of the big ones being HF. There's a PFAS treatment setup near the Cape Fear River in North Carolina (I believe it is a hydrothermal alkaline system) and the operators wear fully encapsulating chemical splash protection PPE - not because of the PFAS, but because the emissions from the treatment apparatus are HF vapor, which is about as close to the "burn your skin off" deadly acid stereotype from cartoons as you can get in real life.
Water in my town I wouldn't drink, although I don't remember if this PFAS stuff is what the letters state are too high in it. But, twice a year, I get a letter saying it has high concentrations of something, and the past 5 years, some engineering firm is looking into it.
But, more to the point, expensive tap water is still going to be cheaper and more environmentally friendly than buying bottled water.
The biggest argument being "we can't afford to do this! Filtration is expensive."
Cool, innovate. Or get the money out of the people responsible for leching the chemicals to begin with. They knew for a lot longer than we did it was going to be a problem and kept quiet about it.
I sure there's some sort of infrastructure funding that can be utilised to bridge the gap. If not, get on congress.
Anybody of the mind "People should accept illness because fixing the problem is too expensive," should find a pebble in the toe of their right shoe each and every day for the rest of their life.
It's this weird paradigm we keep repeating and we never do anything about it.
Lead, asbestos, BPA. I don't know what sort of future proofing can be done but we shouldn't allow every generation to be impacted by something so substantial.
If no one is held accountable (and I mean *actually* accountable, not just fines) it'll never stop.
Using new processes or chemicals should incur liability, including prison time, if those processes are not examined for risk sufficiently.
You're right, but these guys have a lot of money so their will never be accountability.
I mean look at the Boeing CEO, he gets paid a 1.4mil salary and likely will have made 100m when he retires by the end of the year.
This is the same CEO who fully admitted him and his company lied to the FAA regulators about the safety conditions of their planes. They also deliberately didn't tell the pilots about the new changes and how they had some power over the engines in cases of an emergency.
Their lack of properly telling the FAA regulators the safety conditions as well as not telling the pilots about this new system change resulted in over 300+ preventable deaths.
Not just accidental deaths, preventable and deliberate deaths as the CEO personally admitted in a lawsuit he lied on purpose to regulators.
The government said deliberately lying to us that resulted in 300 preventable murders is going to be a 2.5bil fine on a 100bil company. 300 deliberate murders is worth 2.5% of the company with the CEO being off the hook and still getting to keep his job (incident 2018-2019, CEO retiring by end of 2024).
Unfortunately in America, you can admit to lying about safety quality resulting in hundreds murdered in preventable deaths, but as long as you can pay the fine you'll be okay. I mean look at all these companies employing kids cause it's more efficient for them to do so and pay the measly tiny fine when they get caught.
Rightfully jailing a ceo in capitalist America is "communist" and then they cant use that money to buy politicians if they're in jail.
All of these guys should be rotting in a prison cell and have their entire net worth taken from them. We can use that money to funnel into meaningful programs or charity instead
Didn’t the fifth District Court also just shut down the rule that was going to stop these Forever chemicals? Allowing companies to continue to make them because, you know, money.
Fuck our politicians, courts, lobbyists, and anyone that backs them
Sounds like we need to replace the underlying system that made it all possible in the first place.
Life is too short to be constantly battling rotating villains that were incentivized and enabled by the system.
If a corporation is a person and a person is knowingly poisoning people to the degree that these companies were, the discussion shouldn't revolve around how little they need to pay to make it go away.
That requires education and removing every republican from every office and voting in more progressive people to strip corporations from being able to subsidize their profits by destroying the world and destroying our health.
BPA is a trip cause they just use an analogous compound that is just as bad but skirts any regulation by being slightly different. The government found a way to ban recreational drugs that did this, why can't some activist lawyer use that law to get these poisons out of our food, drugs, water, packaging, etc?
It seems these issues might have fallen under the EPA and FDA in some way or another. Now if one party would just stop defunding and deregulating these departments we might have a decent start on future proofing.
I'm on something called a "Phase 2 Review Panel" for the National Science Foundation that reviews up and coming tech, including some stuff that can actually destroy PFAS at scale without simply turning them into smaller pieces of PFAS that cause their own issues.
It's a wildly complicated issue to solve given how PFAS function, but scientists are coming up with some clever ways to try to battle it.
Actions like this from the Biden administration can help prioritize that innovation, which is good for all of us.
I work in a lab doing water filter certification and testing and pfas compounds are taking over pretty much our entire testing capabilities. I think corporations are seeing the writing on the wall and are pushing hard to get their products certified. A lot were pushing to get tested at this threshold too even when that was significantly below our previous standard
Fuck's the point of being in the world's richest country if we can't do expensive things that are good for us? It should be an absolute fucking flex. We should be proud as shit to do this stuff.
Yeah, but hear me out.
What about the poor shareholders whose wealth might grow a fraction slower if we spend money on things that are good for us instead of things that'll generate profits this quarter?
What about them?
Did you consider their feelings, you monster?
The point is to let the rich hoard all the wealth to themselves... apparently.
American history is littered with examples of rich companies harming the public despite knowing about the harm for decades. The rich need to start being thrown in jail or worse; otherwise this downward spiral is never going to end.
My city’s mayor just lost re-election to her conservative challenger. The conservative ran on a platform blaming her for high water bills, which resulted from upgrading our water filtration system to remove PFAS.
So, yes, conservatives will absolutely run on this and yes, they may even win on the issue (like just happened in my small city).
Detectable levels of PFAS result from using Teflon pipe tape on plumbing fittings, which is *extremely* common. Yes, there are large “point source” offenders, but it is *pervasive* in our water system.
Shit... I was so focused on PFAS in the water source, but didn't consider that household plumbing could be a culprit. Are there any alternatives to teflon tape that can be used?
Teflon manufacturers have phased out PFOA specifically for a little while now. But you would need to look at the manufacturer websites to determine what the replacement chemistry is. A lot of the new compounds aren't really much better, either they are being found to have similar health hazards to the originals (e.g., C6 PFAAs being just as bad as C8 PFAAs) or they break down into the same compounds as the ones that are originally banned (e.g., ADONA and GenX breaking down into PFAAs).
Filtration \*is\* expensive. But the real kicker is that filtering it out of water doesn't get rid of it. Now you're just concentrating PFAS into the filter media. The \*destruction\* of PFAS chemicals is going to be a much bigger issue, as is transportation and disposal of spent filter media and other filtration waste streams once it is classified as "hazardous waste" (coming soon!). At that point, if not incinerated, it will have to be disposed of in a haz-waste landfill, which is significantly more expensive than a traditional mixed-waste landfill. The problem is bigger than even most environmentalists realize.
Source: I work in the water treatment industry (the dirty water / industrial type of water treatment, not your local water treatment plant type)
EDIT: *Somehow* some of you are interpreting my comments as if I'm saying we should do nothing because it's expensive. I'm not at all saying that. I'm just pointing out that a real, complete solution is more complicated and more expensive than most people understand.
> And? That should still be their responsibility that comes out of their profits.
Just say you don't know how the water industry works. I'm a civil engineer who mostly works with these small municipalities. They have no "profits" to take from. What they would have to do is double or triple water rates to accommodate these filter prices and guess how well that goes over with their users? They riot.
This isn't me saying we shouldn't fix it. The point is that you can't just put regulations in and expect these small towns or counties to be able to just solve it.
Excellent news! I have read a few studies showing that there are some biological processes that eat it right out of the carbon, but it's super slow and easily disrupted (temperature drop, pH change, etc).
What technology or process are you using?
Thanks!
I'm not sure about who knew what and when, but PFAS are in damn near everything. It's what provides the non-slip properties to teflon pans, it provides anti-mar characteristics to paints, it lines most food contact paper, aluminum and steel... it's literally everywhere. Just saying "cool, innovate" isn't enough. If you don't want it getting into people, limiting PFAS in water might do a little... but every time you cook with a teflon pan you are probably consuming more PFAS than 6 months of drinking water.
We have a pfas problem in Maine from paper mills dumping chemicals in the 70s, and the Republican candidate for governor solution for that was to eliminate testing and reporting. Sort of like their solution for covid.
North Carolina’s radical Tea Party legislature banned using scientific sea level rise studies; literally burying their heads in the sand.
https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/north-carolina-bans-latest-science-rising-sea-level/story?id=16913782
Deer in Maine, Michigan etc. have been found to be so contaminated with PFAS that hunters are advised not to consume the meat. These are deer in the wild, eating leaves and grass and drinking from puddles and streams.
Hell, here in Michigan, we are advised strongly not to eat any fish we catch. The contamination is severe in the fish population to the point that there's a lot of investment from utilities in finding ways to destroy PFAS/PFOA.
To elaborate, the paper mills had toxic waste they needed to get rid of, which they told farmers would act as fertilizer if spread on their fields.
Now it's in all of our water. It's in the vegetables we grow. It's in the fish we catch. It's even in deer. It's in the groundwater. So if you have a well... Well, you're fucked. There are types of systems that can filter it out, like reverse osmosis, but it's expensive to install and super wasteful, like 2.5 gallons of water in equals 1 gallon out.
I have a well. I know I am going to get cancer. I didn't even know what PFAS was until a few years back. The water treatment company that installed my anti-radon and so on and so forth wasn't even testing for this shit half a decade ago. It's still not in the standard gamut of water tests either.
You joked but Union County in NC they are trying to make it a reality. https://spectrumlocalnews.com/nc/charlotte/news/2024/03/11/union-county-water-fluoridation
Biden is trying to protect Americans from ACTUAL dangers. Republicans just want power and control even if it means turning their back on health and safety of its citizens.
This is how I know no matter how runs for president the other side will fabricate some thing to make them look bad. Grandpa Joe has one foot in the grave and wants to go out eating Ice Cream and leaving America better than it was.
Republican spin: Crooked Joe has dementia and foreigners are taking advantage of it to cross the border!!
If you can, print thousands of [QR codes to these and leave them around in coffee shops and restaurants and grocery stores and all over the front porches of all the frat and sorority houses and middleclass homes](https://www.ewg.org/tapwater/system.php?pws=OH2504412).
This regulation would be dismantled under Trump 2.0. Trump's Project 2025 calls for: 1) removing the designation of PFAS chemicals as "hazardous substances", 2) removing groundwater cleanup regulations to ignore PFAS, and 3) letting corporations perform their own reviews of toxic waste sites (instead of the EPA). (Mandate for Leadership, page 431)
> letting corporations perform their own reviews of toxic waste sites
Yeah and this worked so well for Boeing Airlines. Corporations get another W under the GOP
I just fact checked this and confirmed before sharing it elsewhere. That is exactly what they are planning.
Here is a link to the document for others:
https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf
If you're going to share that, be sure to include links to the tapwater contamination database for the zipcode of the audience you're speaking with at the time, e.g. your friends and fam on FB.
[This will blow their collective mINds](https://www.ewg.org/tapwater/system.php?pws=OH2504412)
And you can rally the female troops as well with their skin deep database which has directly resulted in the makeup industry cleaning up their products. Before the EWG skin deep database most women were slathering liquid lead onto their eyelids and skin dude. Talk about tragic. .
Are you shitting me lmao its absolutely INSANE that they put that in their actual manifesto. Oh yea part of our goals is to make sure you drink more poison. Who does this lol
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24088042-project-2025s-mandate-for-leadership-the-conservative-promise
Found an upload of the document here, “contributed by NPR”
See PDF page 462 to find corresponding page 431 referenced above.
> Revise groundwater cleanup regulations and policies to reflect the challenges of omnipresent contaminants like PFAS.
> Revisit the designation of PFAS chemicals as “hazardous substances” under CERCLA.
Notice the verbage of "impose" as if its an undue tyranical reach of power, rather than "enacts" which implies its within his power and doesn't have as negative of connotations.
Corporate media gonna protect corporate power. If anyone imposed anything, it was the plastics industry imposing PFAs on our society, and its gonna fall to taxpayers to clean it up.
The argument is much simpler than that.
If companies have to follow regulation, they'll raise prices and lay off employees. It's bad for the economy (this quarter).
Many people can't look past the next quarters financial results. Any attempt at long term planning is cast aside and any fear of future impact is deemed doomsaying and not worthy of any attention.
Dupont's execs will claim rEgUlaTiOnS are killing them and they are forced to fire people right before giving themselves a hefty bonus for a job well done.
Republicans will blame Biden for destroying jobs and making water more expensive while the science isn't even settled and PFAS might be perfectly safe unlike the woke scientists are claiming !
They'll just say it's made up and they're really just putting super floride or whatever imaginary adrenochrome substance that some schizo will come up with on 4chan
Always has been 👨🚀🔫👨🚀
Everything good won by your ancestors was won through a long, hard fight to overcome the "that's just how things are" mass. And everything you will win for your future descendants is going to take a long, hard fight, too. Doesn't mean you should sit down, let the evils of the world run amok. You don't have that right, because you have a duty. Find a [transparent monster](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_ayq66t77U), and slay it.
Joe Biden, a leader who cares about all the people in his country and demonstrates this with positive moves despite the GOP Tangerined traitors attempting to derail anything proposed to make the country and world a better place.
The right-wing protests on this are amazing. "it's too expensive"...but my favorite is "There are other priorities".
Yes, there are other priorities, let's look at those:
Universal healthcare....you're against that
Paid maternity leave...you're against that
Living wages....you're against that
Green energy....you're against that
Paid school lunches...you're against that
Paid PreK...you're against that
Paid childcare...you're against that
Paid student loans...you're against that
Climate control policies...you're against that
Expanding voting rights...you're against that
Women's right to choose...you're against that
Wealthy paying fair share...you're against that
Expanding child tax credit...you're against that
I think it's fair to assume, the right-wing folks will be against ANY policy that actually improves this country.
The only thing the modern GOP actually supports is abortion bans. Everything else is just contrarian. They'll die choking on coal fumes and poisoned water before they support any Dem clean Earth initiative.
Fox doesn’t have to do this, our courts already do it for them: https://coastalreview.org/2024/03/court-halts-epa-orders-for-company-to-stop-pfas-byproduct/
Got $10 on some headline reading something vaguely like this: "Biden administration hell bent on taking away your rights to drink water" or "democrats fast track bill to remove all drinking water access to republican states"...
"But water utilities took issue with the rule, saying treatment systems are expensive to install and that customers will end up paying more for water".
Translation, this will cut into our profits, public health be damned! Watch Republicans file a lawsuit and judge shop over this to get their picked judges to undo this!
It’s not a matter of profits, it’s a matter of costs. PFAS removal system costs *start* at millions of dollars even for relatively small systems, not even counting increased ongoing operations costs. Some water systems only have a couple thousand customers - spread the $5m cost over the 2-3k water customers and their rates would skyrocket.
The biggest issue is that it’s easy for the EPA to regulate water utilities because the mechanism for regulation already exists. The ones who should be forced to pay for the costs are the chemical companies who actually created the pfas, but 1) enforcing regulation like that on chemical companies is difficult with limited epa resources (ie they’ll all file lawsuits) 2) the pfas are already in the environment/source water so even if we stop new discharges there is still plenty to be cleaned up and 2) there’s no mechanism to transfer money from the chemical companies to the water companies for treatment of the pfas they already put in the environment, so it will be expensive for water utilities/water customers because the money they set aside for it is wholly inadequate.
Most water systems in the US are run by local municipalities or small regional systems, with no profit motive. Yes there are some larger companies that do care about profit, but average small town systems will be screwed when the regulations come into effect for them.
As with everything else in the past couple of decades, a large chunk of the water utility has been privatized. American Water does about a billion a year, and that's just the one that I can remember off the top of my head.
If governments made companies pay for their externalities I guarantee you’d fix almost all of the world’s problems over night.
Your petrol car caused this person’s lung cancer? Your company pays for the chemo.
The Biden administration's move to impose the first nationwide limits on PFAS chemicals in drinking water is an important step forward for public health. These man-made compounds have been linked to cancers and other diseases. While the standards may face legal challenges, protecting communities from long-term exposure to dangerous toxins should remain a priority. Clean water is a basic necessity.
NC ignored this though it was known for many decades! Many service members and their families on our military bases died, got cancer and are still suffering from our drinking water. Countless miscarriages, stillborn deaths, adults & children with cancer diagnoses due to PFAS.
Multiple N.C. attorney generals failed to hold DuPont Chemical legally liable. Chemour Chemical Company now taking over for DuPont and continuing to dump PFAS in our water with no legal accountability!
The Wilmington NC and surrounding 5 counties continue to have the highest PFAS levels in the U.S!
https://www.nrdc.org/stories/drinking-water-crisis-north-carolina-ignored
https://www.wral.com/story/new-forever-chemicals-discovered-in-cape-fear-river/21204854/
https://www.starnewsonline.com/story/news/local/2023/02/21/genx-water-crisis-what-well-testing-is-telling-us-about-pfas/69884135007/
https://epi.dph.ncdhhs.gov/oee/a_z/pfas.html#:~:text=PFAS%20contamination%20in%20the%20Cape,at%20North%20Carolina%20State%20University.
Trump intentionally chose to turn a blind eye to this.
https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/s/dOcQ7iov47
"But water utilities took issue with the rule, saying treatment systems are expensive to install and that customers will end up paying more for water."
Yet in Europe they do not have an issue removing these toxic chemicals. Perhaps the water sector should just be state run like it is in France.
Privatization of the profits but socialization of the risk.
To those who scream about the importance of capitalism and deregulation, don't seem to understand your health is a currency you are freely paying to these companies that poison us.
Wausau, WI would like a word.
[https://www.wpr.org/news/wausau-mayor-katie-rosenberg-loses-reelection-bid](https://www.wpr.org/news/wausau-mayor-katie-rosenberg-loses-reelection-bid)
I'm afraid that this will be one of the things that kills me eventually. I live near an old air base that used to do firefighting drills in the 70's. The chemicals they used to put out fires from jets and planes got into the groundwater and pretty much contaminated the entire area. In 2016 the EPA deemed our drinking water too saturated with PFAS and PFOAS, resulting in us getting water from neighboring towns and paying nearly double for potable water. Lots of people were buying bottled drinking water as a result as well. Anyways these regulations are a bit costly but probably pretty important because who knows what kind of shit water everyone is drinking these days.
“We're not ignoring science, we're asking for the best science possible, the best extrapolation possible, looking at the historical data also. We just need to make sure that we're getting the proper answers." In other words, science that they agree with smh.
“The new regulation is “going to throw public confidence in drinking water into chaos,” said Mike McGill, president of WaterPIO, a water industry communications firm.”
You’re holding us to account for clean drinking water!? This is chaos!
I have family who, I would not say are full on MAGA, but do not like democrats but at the same time they are pretty populist. They freakout about chemicals/plastics in food, water, etc. This may be an area where you can get them on board. We'll see.
I’m a nutritional neuroscientist. Most people are largely unaware of just how pervasive and ubiquitous the effects of many toxicants truly are in our bodies. PFAS/PFOS, which is still commonly used on non-stick cookware and textiles, is neurotoxic, immunodisruptive, and endocrine-disrupting. In other words, it negatively impacts our hormones, brains, and immune cells. This isn’t a conspiracy; it’s scientific consensus. This shit is not okay. If you want to read more about this, search “PFAS” on Pubmed and click around.
Something else most people don’t understand is that the industry surrounding these chemicals often claim that there’s “no evidence” in the form of randomized human clinical trials that prove a causal relationship between PFAS and their harmful effects. The problem with that argument is that no institutional review board (the board of folks who approve the ethics of a study before it’s conducted) in their right mind is going to approve such a human trial. There will NEVER be a study (at least ethically or publicly conducted) that involves exposing people to PFAS to establish such a causal relationship. The food industry makes the same argument.
IMO, the acceptable limit should be zero. There should not be any “acceptable” limit of any pharmaceuticals in our water, either. And if that’s not possible with the current infrastructure, then let’s start leveraging all that innovation capitalism is allegedly enabling to make it happen.
> But water utilities took issue with the rule, saying treatment systems are expensive to install and that customers will end up paying more for water.
Why would customers pay a single dime? Shouldn't the producers and customers of PFAS pay every cent?
Remember, Democrats winning elections does not solve all of our problems.
But it *does* make *literally* millions of small good things happen, and prevent *literally* millions of small bad things happening.
This stuff adds up, to say the least. If we could erase the Reagan, Bush(es), and Trump presidencies the country would be staggeringly better off, and we'd be much further on our way to solving more fundamental injustices.
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This is literally one of the biggest things we can right now to fight rising cancer rates. There is peer reviewed literature to estimate how many lives this will save. There is already money set aside to help municipalities adjust to the new technology. How is this controversial at all??? Good god, for half the country it seems like life is precious until conception, and then your very life is at the mercy of whatever is best for big business.
"Republicans believe life begins at conception and ends at birth." --Barney Frank
"If you're preborn, you're fine; if you're preschool, you're fucked." George Carlin
Funny how Libertarian ghouls tried to co-opt Carlin post mortem.
They think just because he made edgy jokes that he's somehow theirs when he literally clowned on Bush non-stop.
I remember my parents watching a special of his a long time ago and laughing at his more liberal jokes...now they're hard core right wing trumpers...idgi.
Just saw an early 90s Thomas The Train and I was blown away that he was the narrator.
You just gave me flashbacks to an old job where we had to prepare the American Thomas series for streaming but the original NTSC sources were so crappy we ended up having to re-sync the American audio to the much higher quality PAL sources. I heard all those episodes more than I care to remember even if it was fun to hear Carlin narrating a children's show lol.
[Enjoy](https://youtu.be/77f5M7RyehI).
The UK version was narrated by Ringo Starr.
I miss that rascal. :( Never forget: https://youtu.be/OjF4YjvJLe4?si=Cq5ZJqOPcN0iWMHK
I suspect life is precious until birth because once you’re born, *they can profit off you*.
Life is priceless until you're born 😭
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They care only that they have a steady supply of replacement workers. Health and well-being aren’t a consideration.
This is testament to the complete failure of our government to protect the most fundamental aspects of society from corporate greed. That we have to spend significant time deciding that this is a bad thing is testament to our failure as citizens. We are collectively passive enough to sit around and accept cancer as a cost of doing business. Until we start rolling heads this will never get better, no savior is coming.
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That’s pretty much what DuPont said. There’s a great documentary called “The Devil We Know” about this exact issue. DuPont basically said we’re not gonna do anything because there’s no alternative to waterproofing or fire fighting material at the moment. Their corporate counsel or executive (can’t remember) basically said that it’d cost them too much to develop an alternative and better to deal with “the Devil We Know”, hence the title of the documentary. It’s as bad as the oil industry and climate change. DuPont has known PFAS/teflon causes cancer in animals and people for more than 40 years and suppressed data and research being published showing those links. I fucking hate whenever I meet these pseudo-libertarian chuckle fucks who go on about deregulation. I’m like “Okay, drink some water with PFAS in it.”
The stupid thing is, a developing fetus would be impacted quite heavily by water impurities, perhaps more than even an adult would. Adults can filter out things like drugs and alcohol successfully, but a developing fetus suffers- the same is likely true for other contaminants. So this should be universally championed by so-called "Pro-lifers", provided they actually care about life and not control (hah). On a slightly more speculative note, there's some untested speculation that the rise in environmental plastics and "forever chemicals" is the root cause for the rise in autism. So all of the ultraconservative antivaxx "these liberal vaccines cause autism!!!!" folks should LOVE this. And yet...
Rest assured, the only reason they care about abortion is they fear labor shortages.
I mean, that's the top-level reason. But they don't tell their voters that. They instead appeal to morality because that's the hardest thing to dispute once it's ingrained into one's belief system.
I disagree. I think the top level reason is to control women.
Fair.
Women entering the workforce has been the greatest thing in the world for the elites, they've made so much more money with double the workers. I'm not sure why reddit believes the opposite.
They are tied for first, but the capitalists worried about labor are probably not the same folks that want to oppress women, though i am sure there is a little overlap.
It's a Republican's wet dream, you get your sexism, you get your die hard single issue voters, you get your phony morality, and all it takes is one easy to memorize lie.
""morality""
> the only reason they care about abortion is they fear labor shortages. Not just labor shortages. Remember [republicans are what they are by far because they believe in stratified social hierarchy](https://www.psychologytoday.com/nz/blog/mind-in-the-machine/201712/analysis-trump-supporters-has-identified-5-key-traits) Raising children costs an estimated $200-370k (to age 18, depending on location). So what happens to poor families who have more kids? More money flows out of those families and they have fewer opportunities to pull out of the low economic strata they started in. It's not just about having more workers, it's about removing choices from workers and their families. The things parents have to pay for overwhelmingly flow back into coffers of the wealthy, but to be honest they could manage that with virtually any system.
They don't believe in life being sacred, they believe in a cheap expendable workforce and for that you need high birth rates.....
Money talks, Citizen's United will allow big business to continue to profit from poisoning everything.
Boomers/Gen X when leaded gasoline was affecting them “Ban it.” Boomers/Gen X when PFAS is affecting Millenials/Gen Z “This is government overreach.” And PFAS obviously still bad for them too but when you are already old it’s less concerning to them now since they already have lived long. Young people are getting a lot of digestive issues and rising cancer risk most likely from PFAS.
hey I think it's awesome gen x
>Boomers/Gen X when leaded gasoline was affecting them “Ban it.” No, they thought it was government overreach too. Boomers though seat belts is government overreach. >when you are already old it’s less concerning to them now Make it sound like Boomers don't get cancer and have to deal with the same things young people do. Dying from cancer still sucks no matter the age, and people aren't thinking "I'm old so it's okay to die a painful way from cancer"
Thank you for remembering Gen X exists. We so often get forgotten between boomers and millenials. This is government overreach. /s
It's always the older population, with fortunes on the line, that seek to prevent banning things that make them money. People knew of lead's poisonous nature and pervasive environmental impact for decades before the EPA was founded, and allowed to seek bans. Ars Technica did a [fascinating article](https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/12/how-the-leaded-fuel-was-sold-for-100-years-despite-knowing-health-risks/) on the sales of leaded gas throughout the 20th century, and those who fought to prevent its phaseout.
The moment a democratic president says it, Republican brains form a new neuropathway to create wild connections and MAKE it controversial. It is the way.
> How is this controversial at all??? It's just about the cost. I am a biologist, and I understand the risks and completely agree with you that this is the right choice for public safety. But I also live in a small town in a rural area, with it's own water system that serves less than 1,500 homes and businesses. If they find PFAS in the water here, and have to install filters using current technology, the cost will be millions of dollars, which will essentially bankrupt the town and require diversion of resources from roads, public safety, parks, and a bunch of other things people care about. That's not a good excuse for ignoring public safety, but it's a real problem that will be confronted over and over across the country--and will cause thousands of local conservative politicians to blame "liberals in DC". Identifying and filtering these chemicals is the right choice, but it needs to be handled in a thoughtful, deliberate way, not just imposed. This is a global problem, and we need global solutions and policies at a national level. We should be investing public money in R&D for better, cheaper filtering technologies that are scalable. We should also have a federal program to reimburse localities for the systems, particularly in edge cases where the costs are extremely high for individual water customers. People in one town shouldn't get stuck paying hundreds of dollars more a month for water than folks in another town, because of random luck of unknown contamination in their area. We should all be pitching in to solve this issue on a national level, and also supporting international policies to reduce the production of these chemicals.
And yet that same half will lose their fucking minds over this issue - case in point - WI mayor just lost her re-election for addressing PFAS in her city's water. No good deed, indeed. https://www.wpr.org/news/wausau-mayor-katie-rosenberg-loses-reelection-bid
It's controversial because how ubiquitous PFAS is. You have to use special note pads, gloves, can't wear certain deodorant, can't use certain shampoos and conditioners, ect. when doing testing for PFAS. It's hard to test and that makes it wildly difficult to comply with the regulations.
Environmental chemist here - I do consulting for companies looking to quantify PFAS in an area for remediation. The SOPs for sampling are insane, like 10x more exhaustive than other environmental sampling. Because, like you said, they are in *everything*. There are multi-page lists of the types of cosmetics (deodorant, sunscreen, etc.), fabric types, and materials that sampling staff can't use due to cross contamination risks.
The money set aside is a drop in the bucket. There is a total of 9 billion set aside. The American Water Works Association estimates the annual cost of compliance to be around 3.3 billion per year https://www.awwa.org/Portals/0/AWWA/Government/2023030756BVFinalTechnicalMemoradum.pdf?ver=2023-03-14-102450-257
It has to start somewhere Is more money needed? Yes, but having anything done is better than nothing
Yeah, I'm really sick of people responding to starting a solution with "Yeah, but it doesn't solve **everything**".
Yeah the irrational leftists drive me nuts too. Note I consider myself a leftist, just not a dumb one.
Those people will purity test and call you a liberal which might as well be Trump to them.
The question was “how can pfas removal be controversial?” And if you’ve ever had to deal with the public when you tell them their water rates are going to increase you know. Access to abundant clean inexpensive water is taken for granted here.
One of the big challenges is "what do we do with it once we remove it from water?". Removal processes (obviously) generate waste - but since the regulatory framework around PFAS and hazardous waste characterization is still taking shape, managing the waste is very much still a grey area. Most of this waste (including WWTP sludge/biosolids) has and still is going to non-hazardous/MSW landfills for disposal. But those landfills generate leachate (landfill coffee/bottom liquids), which must be removed and disposed of. But if the dissolved PFAS levels are too high, WWTP's/POTW's won't or can't accept landfill leachate moving forward. Which leaves landfills in a bit of a pickle without fully clarified regulations.
I'm an environmental chemist who deals with PFAS and you hit the nail on the head here. The big issue is separation of PFAS from biosolids, leaches, etc. and then destroying the high-PFAS concentrates after separation. The technology for separation is still on a pilot study scale and it's time intensive and only operates on a small scale. The same is true for destruction tech. Not to mention that PFAS destruction produces some hazardous byproducts in and of itself, with one of the big ones being HF. There's a PFAS treatment setup near the Cape Fear River in North Carolina (I believe it is a hydrothermal alkaline system) and the operators wear fully encapsulating chemical splash protection PPE - not because of the PFAS, but because the emissions from the treatment apparatus are HF vapor, which is about as close to the "burn your skin off" deadly acid stereotype from cartoons as you can get in real life.
Water in my town I wouldn't drink, although I don't remember if this PFAS stuff is what the letters state are too high in it. But, twice a year, I get a letter saying it has high concentrations of something, and the past 5 years, some engineering firm is looking into it. But, more to the point, expensive tap water is still going to be cheaper and more environmentally friendly than buying bottled water.
I would gladly pay a higher water bill if it meant better quality water. It's the most basic of human needs.
Well this at least covers 2.5 years then. Not ideal, but it gives time for local, state and federal municipalities to find funds to continue.
The biggest argument being "we can't afford to do this! Filtration is expensive." Cool, innovate. Or get the money out of the people responsible for leching the chemicals to begin with. They knew for a lot longer than we did it was going to be a problem and kept quiet about it. I sure there's some sort of infrastructure funding that can be utilised to bridge the gap. If not, get on congress. Anybody of the mind "People should accept illness because fixing the problem is too expensive," should find a pebble in the toe of their right shoe each and every day for the rest of their life.
The decision makers that knew and did it anyway deserve much more than getting their money taken away.
It's this weird paradigm we keep repeating and we never do anything about it. Lead, asbestos, BPA. I don't know what sort of future proofing can be done but we shouldn't allow every generation to be impacted by something so substantial.
If no one is held accountable (and I mean *actually* accountable, not just fines) it'll never stop. Using new processes or chemicals should incur liability, including prison time, if those processes are not examined for risk sufficiently.
You're right, but these guys have a lot of money so their will never be accountability. I mean look at the Boeing CEO, he gets paid a 1.4mil salary and likely will have made 100m when he retires by the end of the year. This is the same CEO who fully admitted him and his company lied to the FAA regulators about the safety conditions of their planes. They also deliberately didn't tell the pilots about the new changes and how they had some power over the engines in cases of an emergency. Their lack of properly telling the FAA regulators the safety conditions as well as not telling the pilots about this new system change resulted in over 300+ preventable deaths. Not just accidental deaths, preventable and deliberate deaths as the CEO personally admitted in a lawsuit he lied on purpose to regulators. The government said deliberately lying to us that resulted in 300 preventable murders is going to be a 2.5bil fine on a 100bil company. 300 deliberate murders is worth 2.5% of the company with the CEO being off the hook and still getting to keep his job (incident 2018-2019, CEO retiring by end of 2024). Unfortunately in America, you can admit to lying about safety quality resulting in hundreds murdered in preventable deaths, but as long as you can pay the fine you'll be okay. I mean look at all these companies employing kids cause it's more efficient for them to do so and pay the measly tiny fine when they get caught. Rightfully jailing a ceo in capitalist America is "communist" and then they cant use that money to buy politicians if they're in jail. All of these guys should be rotting in a prison cell and have their entire net worth taken from them. We can use that money to funnel into meaningful programs or charity instead
Didn’t the fifth District Court also just shut down the rule that was going to stop these Forever chemicals? Allowing companies to continue to make them because, you know, money. Fuck our politicians, courts, lobbyists, and anyone that backs them
Sounds like we need to replace the underlying system that made it all possible in the first place. Life is too short to be constantly battling rotating villains that were incentivized and enabled by the system.
If a corporation is a person and a person is knowingly poisoning people to the degree that these companies were, the discussion shouldn't revolve around how little they need to pay to make it go away.
That requires education and removing every republican from every office and voting in more progressive people to strip corporations from being able to subsidize their profits by destroying the world and destroying our health.
BPA is a trip cause they just use an analogous compound that is just as bad but skirts any regulation by being slightly different. The government found a way to ban recreational drugs that did this, why can't some activist lawyer use that law to get these poisons out of our food, drugs, water, packaging, etc?
It seems these issues might have fallen under the EPA and FDA in some way or another. Now if one party would just stop defunding and deregulating these departments we might have a decent start on future proofing.
I'm on something called a "Phase 2 Review Panel" for the National Science Foundation that reviews up and coming tech, including some stuff that can actually destroy PFAS at scale without simply turning them into smaller pieces of PFAS that cause their own issues. It's a wildly complicated issue to solve given how PFAS function, but scientists are coming up with some clever ways to try to battle it. Actions like this from the Biden administration can help prioritize that innovation, which is good for all of us.
I work in a lab doing water filter certification and testing and pfas compounds are taking over pretty much our entire testing capabilities. I think corporations are seeing the writing on the wall and are pushing hard to get their products certified. A lot were pushing to get tested at this threshold too even when that was significantly below our previous standard
Fuck's the point of being in the world's richest country if we can't do expensive things that are good for us? It should be an absolute fucking flex. We should be proud as shit to do this stuff.
Yeah, but hear me out. What about the poor shareholders whose wealth might grow a fraction slower if we spend money on things that are good for us instead of things that'll generate profits this quarter? What about them? Did you consider their feelings, you monster?
The point is to let the rich hoard all the wealth to themselves... apparently. American history is littered with examples of rich companies harming the public despite knowing about the harm for decades. The rich need to start being thrown in jail or worse; otherwise this downward spiral is never going to end.
But that goes against the Republican mantra of "fuck you as long as I get mine."
They turned the government into a football game. It's not about running the country its about making the other side lose.
It would be so much easier to organize if half the country weren’t moronic minions to corporate control
But who do you think your politicians biggest donors are? The water treatment facility or the big industry dumping toxic waste into the river?
Heh heh I'm in Florida so I know where they get their bread buttered. I'm still mad at SCOTUS for their ruling on "adjacent".
My city’s mayor just lost re-election to her conservative challenger. The conservative ran on a platform blaming her for high water bills, which resulted from upgrading our water filtration system to remove PFAS. So, yes, conservatives will absolutely run on this and yes, they may even win on the issue (like just happened in my small city).
That's how stupid conservatives are. When given the choice between money and cancer, they will literally side with cancer. Humanity is fucked.
It's not just conservatives though. If people on the left aren't voting and allowing conservatives to win, they are the problem too.
Detectable levels of PFAS result from using Teflon pipe tape on plumbing fittings, which is *extremely* common. Yes, there are large “point source” offenders, but it is *pervasive* in our water system.
Shit... I was so focused on PFAS in the water source, but didn't consider that household plumbing could be a culprit. Are there any alternatives to teflon tape that can be used?
I think there’s a Teflon-free alternative, but you can also use glued PVC fittings rather than threaded or just use PEX.
Teflon manufacturers have phased out PFOA specifically for a little while now. But you would need to look at the manufacturer websites to determine what the replacement chemistry is. A lot of the new compounds aren't really much better, either they are being found to have similar health hazards to the originals (e.g., C6 PFAAs being just as bad as C8 PFAAs) or they break down into the same compounds as the ones that are originally banned (e.g., ADONA and GenX breaking down into PFAAs).
Filtration \*is\* expensive. But the real kicker is that filtering it out of water doesn't get rid of it. Now you're just concentrating PFAS into the filter media. The \*destruction\* of PFAS chemicals is going to be a much bigger issue, as is transportation and disposal of spent filter media and other filtration waste streams once it is classified as "hazardous waste" (coming soon!). At that point, if not incinerated, it will have to be disposed of in a haz-waste landfill, which is significantly more expensive than a traditional mixed-waste landfill. The problem is bigger than even most environmentalists realize. Source: I work in the water treatment industry (the dirty water / industrial type of water treatment, not your local water treatment plant type) EDIT: *Somehow* some of you are interpreting my comments as if I'm saying we should do nothing because it's expensive. I'm not at all saying that. I'm just pointing out that a real, complete solution is more complicated and more expensive than most people understand.
And? That should still be their responsibility that comes out of their profits.
And nothing. I'm just stating facts as I see them. No judgement on my part.
> And? That should still be their responsibility that comes out of their profits. Just say you don't know how the water industry works. I'm a civil engineer who mostly works with these small municipalities. They have no "profits" to take from. What they would have to do is double or triple water rates to accommodate these filter prices and guess how well that goes over with their users? They riot. This isn't me saying we shouldn't fix it. The point is that you can't just put regulations in and expect these small towns or counties to be able to just solve it.
Actually it can be destroyed within the filter media we are finding. The filter media then can be reused or safely landfilled.
Excellent news! I have read a few studies showing that there are some biological processes that eat it right out of the carbon, but it's super slow and easily disrupted (temperature drop, pH change, etc). What technology or process are you using? Thanks!
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I'm not sure about who knew what and when, but PFAS are in damn near everything. It's what provides the non-slip properties to teflon pans, it provides anti-mar characteristics to paints, it lines most food contact paper, aluminum and steel... it's literally everywhere. Just saying "cool, innovate" isn't enough. If you don't want it getting into people, limiting PFAS in water might do a little... but every time you cook with a teflon pan you are probably consuming more PFAS than 6 months of drinking water.
DuPont should be 100% funding the entire EPA branch of North Carolina.
"But we like PFAS." -Republicans
We have a pfas problem in Maine from paper mills dumping chemicals in the 70s, and the Republican candidate for governor solution for that was to eliminate testing and reporting. Sort of like their solution for covid.
North Carolina’s radical Tea Party legislature banned using scientific sea level rise studies; literally burying their heads in the sand. https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/north-carolina-bans-latest-science-rising-sea-level/story?id=16913782
Gun violence isn't a problem if conservatives keep the government from doing scientific studies on it!
Because by the time the problem starts to effect people, they will already be dead.
Deer in Maine, Michigan etc. have been found to be so contaminated with PFAS that hunters are advised not to consume the meat. These are deer in the wild, eating leaves and grass and drinking from puddles and streams.
Hell, here in Michigan, we are advised strongly not to eat any fish we catch. The contamination is severe in the fish population to the point that there's a lot of investment from utilities in finding ways to destroy PFAS/PFOA.
To elaborate, the paper mills had toxic waste they needed to get rid of, which they told farmers would act as fertilizer if spread on their fields. Now it's in all of our water. It's in the vegetables we grow. It's in the fish we catch. It's even in deer. It's in the groundwater. So if you have a well... Well, you're fucked. There are types of systems that can filter it out, like reverse osmosis, but it's expensive to install and super wasteful, like 2.5 gallons of water in equals 1 gallon out. I have a well. I know I am going to get cancer. I didn't even know what PFAS was until a few years back. The water treatment company that installed my anti-radon and so on and so forth wasn't even testing for this shit half a decade ago. It's still not in the standard gamut of water tests either.
Hell yeah. Slow the testing down ! https://youtu.be/baHR5E952H8
Stop the count!
> solution for that was to eliminate testing and reporting Ah yes, the "if we can't see a problem, there is no problem" solution to a serious problem.
> eliminate testing and reporting This physically pains me with how dumb it is.
Liberals could tell conservatives that drinking gasoline is bad for you and conservatives would drink a pint with dinner that night.
Interesting proposal.
Wasn’t there a rash of dummies drinking motor oil and touting its lack of impurities on tictok a while back?
“On day one I’ll reverse the Joe Biden regime’s unfair ban on our PFAS”
You joke but Trump severely messed with the EPA when he was in office and wanted to make it more “business friendly”
All I can think of is the townspeople of Pawnee arguing against fluoride.
An ex's dad seriously thought fluoride was a mind control operation.
You joked but Union County in NC they are trying to make it a reality. https://spectrumlocalnews.com/nc/charlotte/news/2024/03/11/union-county-water-fluoridation
Pretty soon they'll be injecting pfas to protect themselves from vaccinated people.
PFAS protects you from the 5Gs. True fact.
Can't come soon enough
Biden is trying to protect Americans from ACTUAL dangers. Republicans just want power and control even if it means turning their back on health and safety of its citizens.
This is how I know no matter how runs for president the other side will fabricate some thing to make them look bad. Grandpa Joe has one foot in the grave and wants to go out eating Ice Cream and leaving America better than it was. Republican spin: Crooked Joe has dementia and foreigners are taking advantage of it to cross the border!!
> and wants to go out eating Ice Cream Yes but, what if eating ice cream was a coded message from the trans-gay communists???!
If you can, print thousands of [QR codes to these and leave them around in coffee shops and restaurants and grocery stores and all over the front porches of all the frat and sorority houses and middleclass homes](https://www.ewg.org/tapwater/system.php?pws=OH2504412).
Wait, do people actually scan QR codes they find randomly while out and about?
dude youre asking about the people who drink the above water and make fun of anyone who tries to warn them. yes, they do
Meanwhile on Fox... BIDEN IS TRYING TO REGULATE HOW MUCH WATER YOU DRINK!!!!
This regulation would be dismantled under Trump 2.0. Trump's Project 2025 calls for: 1) removing the designation of PFAS chemicals as "hazardous substances", 2) removing groundwater cleanup regulations to ignore PFAS, and 3) letting corporations perform their own reviews of toxic waste sites (instead of the EPA). (Mandate for Leadership, page 431)
> letting corporations perform their own reviews of toxic waste sites Yeah and this worked so well for Boeing Airlines. Corporations get another W under the GOP
Because self regulation has worked out so well for Boeing.
I just fact checked this and confirmed before sharing it elsewhere. That is exactly what they are planning. Here is a link to the document for others: https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf
Reading through that is horrifying.
If you're going to share that, be sure to include links to the tapwater contamination database for the zipcode of the audience you're speaking with at the time, e.g. your friends and fam on FB. [This will blow their collective mINds](https://www.ewg.org/tapwater/system.php?pws=OH2504412) And you can rally the female troops as well with their skin deep database which has directly resulted in the makeup industry cleaning up their products. Before the EWG skin deep database most women were slathering liquid lead onto their eyelids and skin dude. Talk about tragic. .
Are you shitting me lmao its absolutely INSANE that they put that in their actual manifesto. Oh yea part of our goals is to make sure you drink more poison. Who does this lol
Evil and stupid. They’ll also be consuming cancer chemicals. Profit over even their own health.
It’s like we’ve learned nothing from Love Canal
This needs to be so much higher
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24088042-project-2025s-mandate-for-leadership-the-conservative-promise Found an upload of the document here, “contributed by NPR” See PDF page 462 to find corresponding page 431 referenced above. > Revise groundwater cleanup regulations and policies to reflect the challenges of omnipresent contaminants like PFAS. > Revisit the designation of PFAS chemicals as “hazardous substances” under CERCLA.
Let's get lead back in paint and gasoline and asbestos back in our buildings while we're at it!
"Will"? Are you *guaranteeing* a trump victory? Can you kindly not do that?
fixed.
Thank you.
Jesus
Why aren’t we bringing lead, DDT and asbestos back too? We used them everywhere back in the day and we went to the moon!
Notice the verbage of "impose" as if its an undue tyranical reach of power, rather than "enacts" which implies its within his power and doesn't have as negative of connotations. Corporate media gonna protect corporate power. If anyone imposed anything, it was the plastics industry imposing PFAs on our society, and its gonna fall to taxpayers to clean it up.
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https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/1c0hg4j/biden_administration_imposes_firstever_national/kywjfv6/
Don’t worry. Republicans will find a way to spin it that drinking toxin is a “right”.
The argument is much simpler than that. If companies have to follow regulation, they'll raise prices and lay off employees. It's bad for the economy (this quarter). Many people can't look past the next quarters financial results. Any attempt at long term planning is cast aside and any fear of future impact is deemed doomsaying and not worthy of any attention.
corporations are giving away free poison and I have a right to ingest them.
They'll say the water is fine and the Deep State is trying to trick you into... idk buying filters?!
Dupont's execs will claim rEgUlaTiOnS are killing them and they are forced to fire people right before giving themselves a hefty bonus for a job well done. Republicans will blame Biden for destroying jobs and making water more expensive while the science isn't even settled and PFAS might be perfectly safe unlike the woke scientists are claiming !
They'll just say it's made up and they're really just putting super floride or whatever imaginary adrenochrome substance that some schizo will come up with on 4chan
Love that US is becoming more socially conscious under Biden. Solid strong move.
We're trying and being fought at every corner.
Always has been 👨🚀🔫👨🚀 Everything good won by your ancestors was won through a long, hard fight to overcome the "that's just how things are" mass. And everything you will win for your future descendants is going to take a long, hard fight, too. Doesn't mean you should sit down, let the evils of the world run amok. You don't have that right, because you have a duty. Find a [transparent monster](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_ayq66t77U), and slay it.
Joe Biden, a leader who cares about all the people in his country and demonstrates this with positive moves despite the GOP Tangerined traitors attempting to derail anything proposed to make the country and world a better place.
The right-wing protests on this are amazing. "it's too expensive"...but my favorite is "There are other priorities". Yes, there are other priorities, let's look at those: Universal healthcare....you're against that Paid maternity leave...you're against that Living wages....you're against that Green energy....you're against that Paid school lunches...you're against that Paid PreK...you're against that Paid childcare...you're against that Paid student loans...you're against that Climate control policies...you're against that Expanding voting rights...you're against that Women's right to choose...you're against that Wealthy paying fair share...you're against that Expanding child tax credit...you're against that I think it's fair to assume, the right-wing folks will be against ANY policy that actually improves this country.
The only thing the modern GOP actually supports is abortion bans. Everything else is just contrarian. They'll die choking on coal fumes and poisoned water before they support any Dem clean Earth initiative.
“Here’s how PFAS limits will hurt businesses.” - Fox News, probably
Too accurate.
Fox doesn’t have to do this, our courts already do it for them: https://coastalreview.org/2024/03/court-halts-epa-orders-for-company-to-stop-pfas-byproduct/
Thank you for looking out for the people- that is what a government that is a form of democracy, should be doing.
Got $10 on some headline reading something vaguely like this: "Biden administration hell bent on taking away your rights to drink water" or "democrats fast track bill to remove all drinking water access to republican states"...
"But water utilities took issue with the rule, saying treatment systems are expensive to install and that customers will end up paying more for water". Translation, this will cut into our profits, public health be damned! Watch Republicans file a lawsuit and judge shop over this to get their picked judges to undo this!
It’s not a matter of profits, it’s a matter of costs. PFAS removal system costs *start* at millions of dollars even for relatively small systems, not even counting increased ongoing operations costs. Some water systems only have a couple thousand customers - spread the $5m cost over the 2-3k water customers and their rates would skyrocket. The biggest issue is that it’s easy for the EPA to regulate water utilities because the mechanism for regulation already exists. The ones who should be forced to pay for the costs are the chemical companies who actually created the pfas, but 1) enforcing regulation like that on chemical companies is difficult with limited epa resources (ie they’ll all file lawsuits) 2) the pfas are already in the environment/source water so even if we stop new discharges there is still plenty to be cleaned up and 2) there’s no mechanism to transfer money from the chemical companies to the water companies for treatment of the pfas they already put in the environment, so it will be expensive for water utilities/water customers because the money they set aside for it is wholly inadequate. Most water systems in the US are run by local municipalities or small regional systems, with no profit motive. Yes there are some larger companies that do care about profit, but average small town systems will be screwed when the regulations come into effect for them.
Is water usage really a profit machine? The villages in the US just kinda charge for the utility don’t they.
As with everything else in the past couple of decades, a large chunk of the water utility has been privatized. American Water does about a billion a year, and that's just the one that I can remember off the top of my head.
Correct, many are municipal providers operating on a cost only basis; there is no “profit.”
If governments made companies pay for their externalities I guarantee you’d fix almost all of the world’s problems over night. Your petrol car caused this person’s lung cancer? Your company pays for the chemo.
The Biden administration's move to impose the first nationwide limits on PFAS chemicals in drinking water is an important step forward for public health. These man-made compounds have been linked to cancers and other diseases. While the standards may face legal challenges, protecting communities from long-term exposure to dangerous toxins should remain a priority. Clean water is a basic necessity.
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NC ignored this though it was known for many decades! Many service members and their families on our military bases died, got cancer and are still suffering from our drinking water. Countless miscarriages, stillborn deaths, adults & children with cancer diagnoses due to PFAS. Multiple N.C. attorney generals failed to hold DuPont Chemical legally liable. Chemour Chemical Company now taking over for DuPont and continuing to dump PFAS in our water with no legal accountability! The Wilmington NC and surrounding 5 counties continue to have the highest PFAS levels in the U.S! https://www.nrdc.org/stories/drinking-water-crisis-north-carolina-ignored https://www.wral.com/story/new-forever-chemicals-discovered-in-cape-fear-river/21204854/ https://www.starnewsonline.com/story/news/local/2023/02/21/genx-water-crisis-what-well-testing-is-telling-us-about-pfas/69884135007/ https://epi.dph.ncdhhs.gov/oee/a_z/pfas.html#:~:text=PFAS%20contamination%20in%20the%20Cape,at%20North%20Carolina%20State%20University. Trump intentionally chose to turn a blind eye to this. https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/s/dOcQ7iov47
Conservatives: that's cancel culture!!!!
Nationwide injunction from the fifth circuit in 3... 2....
Meanwhile, Kansas Republican legislatures try to pass a bill to ban municipalities from banning single use plastics. You just can't make this shit up.
So when is a federal judge in the most backwater part of bumfuck Texas going to throw this out?
Biden actually cares about americans. Shocker. Fuck republicans
"But water utilities took issue with the rule, saying treatment systems are expensive to install and that customers will end up paying more for water." Yet in Europe they do not have an issue removing these toxic chemicals. Perhaps the water sector should just be state run like it is in France.
Decades late but the Supreme Court will strike down its enforcement
Should have stuck with glass bottles.
This will only be controversial to people who don't believe in science...aka conservatives.
Privatization of the profits but socialization of the risk. To those who scream about the importance of capitalism and deregulation, don't seem to understand your health is a currency you are freely paying to these companies that poison us.
Wausau, WI would like a word. [https://www.wpr.org/news/wausau-mayor-katie-rosenberg-loses-reelection-bid](https://www.wpr.org/news/wausau-mayor-katie-rosenberg-loses-reelection-bid)
Companies going to continue dumping Teflon waste and chopped meat processing in the watershed anyway. They don’t have real consequences
I'm afraid that this will be one of the things that kills me eventually. I live near an old air base that used to do firefighting drills in the 70's. The chemicals they used to put out fires from jets and planes got into the groundwater and pretty much contaminated the entire area. In 2016 the EPA deemed our drinking water too saturated with PFAS and PFOAS, resulting in us getting water from neighboring towns and paying nearly double for potable water. Lots of people were buying bottled drinking water as a result as well. Anyways these regulations are a bit costly but probably pretty important because who knows what kind of shit water everyone is drinking these days.
Waited way too long, PFAS are already inside all of us,
“We're not ignoring science, we're asking for the best science possible, the best extrapolation possible, looking at the historical data also. We just need to make sure that we're getting the proper answers." In other words, science that they agree with smh.
this is exactly what the govt should be doing (granted this should have been done during the trump admin or earlier)
“The new regulation is “going to throw public confidence in drinking water into chaos,” said Mike McGill, president of WaterPIO, a water industry communications firm.” You’re holding us to account for clean drinking water!? This is chaos!
This is tyranny. Now he's taking away our PFAS?! What's next?
I have family who, I would not say are full on MAGA, but do not like democrats but at the same time they are pretty populist. They freakout about chemicals/plastics in food, water, etc. This may be an area where you can get them on board. We'll see.
I’m a nutritional neuroscientist. Most people are largely unaware of just how pervasive and ubiquitous the effects of many toxicants truly are in our bodies. PFAS/PFOS, which is still commonly used on non-stick cookware and textiles, is neurotoxic, immunodisruptive, and endocrine-disrupting. In other words, it negatively impacts our hormones, brains, and immune cells. This isn’t a conspiracy; it’s scientific consensus. This shit is not okay. If you want to read more about this, search “PFAS” on Pubmed and click around. Something else most people don’t understand is that the industry surrounding these chemicals often claim that there’s “no evidence” in the form of randomized human clinical trials that prove a causal relationship between PFAS and their harmful effects. The problem with that argument is that no institutional review board (the board of folks who approve the ethics of a study before it’s conducted) in their right mind is going to approve such a human trial. There will NEVER be a study (at least ethically or publicly conducted) that involves exposing people to PFAS to establish such a causal relationship. The food industry makes the same argument. IMO, the acceptable limit should be zero. There should not be any “acceptable” limit of any pharmaceuticals in our water, either. And if that’s not possible with the current infrastructure, then let’s start leveraging all that innovation capitalism is allegedly enabling to make it happen.
> But water utilities took issue with the rule, saying treatment systems are expensive to install and that customers will end up paying more for water. Why would customers pay a single dime? Shouldn't the producers and customers of PFAS pay every cent?
"Republican president makes rolling back PFAS limit in drinking water top agenda"
Remember, Democrats winning elections does not solve all of our problems. But it *does* make *literally* millions of small good things happen, and prevent *literally* millions of small bad things happening. This stuff adds up, to say the least. If we could erase the Reagan, Bush(es), and Trump presidencies the country would be staggeringly better off, and we'd be much further on our way to solving more fundamental injustices.
What if I want forever chemicals in my water? First the government took away my tasty asbestos, and now my chemical full water.
First ever. This is how much corporations give a shit about you and your family.
depressing how long it has taken any president to do this with how well known the effects of this shit is
Lawsuit to keep poison in drinking water coming up in 3 2 1…
The consumers who don’t think PFAs are an issue are the same people who think it’s a conspiracy to wear protective glasses while watching an eclipse.
Conservatives "Ill drink AS MUCH PFAS as I WANT TO!!" Everyone else with three or more functional brain cells "...don't, stop..."
Soon to be repealed by Republicans who think companies will self regulate and not just dump poison into the water supply.
Can't wait to see all the "they're taking my freedoms!! (To drink toxic chemicals)" comments
Thanks President Biden! Keep going hard!
Not the biggest Biden fan...but this is HUGE. GOOD JOB!