Forever chemicals are widespread in U.S. drinking water
scientificamerican.com
scientificamerican.com
While a spontaneous and completely sane reaction to this is to save oneself by privately installing filters, buying organic etc. these are problems that ultimately and obviously require collective solutions, i.e. by government and through treaties between governments.
But if the last year has taught us anything, it is that any government action is likely to be met with equal and opposite reaction (in the west), a reaction that seems to stem in large part and primarily from a section of society that lives by the adage "Après moi, le déluge", and secondarily from the section of the populace that has been spoon-fed conspiracy theories (by the former?) about the government and its nefarious nature.
I suspect there are readers here that might disagree with the above, and it's not my intention to start a flame war. Instead I'd be interested to hear if there are any rational reasons why the government should not be given adequate means to regulate and follow up that regulation with the required inspections to make sure toxins are not released into the general environment that forms the basis of our, as well as other biological, present and future, life.
I think this is perhaps a vast oversimplification, driven by a desire to attribute to nilhilism and idiocy/impressionability what may actually be deeper philosophical differences, held sincerely by intelligent people.
It seems pretty common these days to ascribe people's differing philosophical viewpoints to misinformation, conspiracy theories, foreign influence, or whatever.
It's possible that reasonable, intelligent people, just like you, simply disagree on the best ways to address these problems, and that it's not as simple as that they've been "spoon-fed conspiracy theories".
(Source: I'm one of the people in that camp. Government regulation is one tool in the drawer, but it's not a very good one for causing sweeping societal change, IMO. Tesla, for example, did vastly more for the move to automotive electrification than all of the previous US government attempts up to that point.)
So you at least acknowledge a role for the government in this. Just as I acknowledge that private companies can have a positive impact. Maybe what we both need to do is to isolate the hardline extremists in each camp (people that can only see government solutions in one, and people that can only see private solutions in the other), and find rational solutions to the problem. Which is sort of what I want to accomplish with this thread, sorry if it was over the top provocative.
No.
I mean, "attempt to kill everyone who doesn't agree precisely with me, and take over the whole world and run it precisely the way I see fit" is also a tool in the drawer. Acknowledging the fact that some people choose to take that path, and that it is a tool that this tool-using species uses sometimes, does not in any way signal my acceptance or endorsement of such a choice.
I don't think that everyone that is entirely opposed to government-based solutions to the problem (or even entirely opposed to the concept of a government or a state in general) is a "hardline extremist".
The problem with this line of argument from my point of view is you oppose and obstruct highly needed government action on principle, without providing an alternative solution. The plan to offer billionaires a new start on other planets doesn't count as an alternative, sorry.
But as mentioned before, if you have an alternative solution to the problem of the constantly accumulating toxins in the environment that subtracts government action from the equation up your sleeve, I'm all ears.
I can offer an alternate solution to accumulating toxins, which may or may not be comprehensive: Property rights.
Pollution is a tragedy of the commons situation. If people owned, not just land, but whatever encompasses the pollution, there would be incentive not to pollute their own property.
So my proposed solution would require defining property in a way that includes ownership of the pollution.
Government enforces property rights, so this does rely partly on government.
Sure, but "hardline extremist" means something in particular, and is not a generic term to refer to any outlying behavior or view.
You can't label someone a "hardline extremist" (with all of the associated connotation that entails) for having reasonable views shared by many millions of others, and then pedal it back with "it's a relative term".
> is you oppose and obstruct highly needed government action
Nobody's obstructing anything, first off, but I absolutely oppose action that's undertaken at gunpoint (or threat of same). There are vastly better ways (from a standpoint of morality, efficiency, and effectiveness) of getting people to act in coordination in their own interests than threatening them with guns and cages, which is the only authority a government has to achieve things.
It sort of does though... for the purpose of this discussion the spectrum runs from: all-government-regulated to all-individually-accomplished. So basically falling into either extreme of the spectrum (which by definition declines any other mid-point solution) is exactly the definition of “hardline extremist”.
Arguing otherwise seems to me more like you haven’t made your peace with it.
...in my personal opinion such views still have a very valid role to play in the discussion, but any successful solution will lie somewhere in the middle.
I've spotted the issue. This is a false dichotomy. The government is just an abstraction over a group, like any other; literally nobody who is suggesting that government-based solutions aren't good are advocating for individual accomplishment outside of groups.
The government has no hands and no brain; all actions undertaken under color of the state are carried out by "individual" humans.
Nobody's saying that coordination amongst people in large groups isn't required.
If there is a 'spectrum', it's "individuals" vs "groups", or it's "compulsory groups, on threat of violence" (the state) vs "voluntary association" (how almost every other group in our society works - and 100% of the effective ones).
You can't meaningfully threaten world-class, creative, hardworking people into being maximally efficient and effective. You need a carrot, not a stick, and the only solutions the state provides are based on their ability to print cash (already not a problem if you're effective and productive), or a stick.
How is "don't have the government regulate anything and hope that individuals spontaneously organize into a solution with no input" any different than not doing anything at all?
>I don't think that everyone ...entirely opposed to the concept of a government or a state in general is a "hardline extremist".
Oh. Oddly, most people do find anarchy an extreme position.
This giants are building on the back of research done in Universities all over the world and Tesla benefited by government money (so how the f** Tesla gets the praises and the government gets the reverse m the exact funcking thing with God, you get ill blame it on the Devil or yourself, you get saved by doctors and science then go thank God because of the miracle he did)
Government, and Elon, and our whole system were needed to make it happen. Seems like “both” arguments are mostly right, but overlook key information
A tax on fossil fuels raising the price multiple fold would quickly align everyone’s incentives to create less pollution. The parameters of the world don’t necessarily allow for the time required for market participants to come up with solutions or care about future generations.
The difference is a tax on fossil fuels reduces quality of life for sufficient people that exist now. Therefore it’s unpopular, and not even possible to enact unless in a dictatorship or the populace accepts the idea that they need to reduce their consumption to benefit future generations.
I am also interested how you propose that sweeping societal change can come from something different than a elected representative government by the people, for the people?
https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-201...
The approach to deal with the "Après moi, le déluge" and conspiracy people is a tricky one. Only partly in can be covered with an economic (private jet tax, rejection of clinic entry/travel to people who are not vaccinated) and educational approach - but we are far from being close to an optimum here. Democracies need educated and politically mature people in order to be stable in the long term, and strong institutions that can bring forward a healthy discourse.
"I had a bath in Bath" is ambiguous as to whether you previously owned a person sized water container, or made use of the city's famous roman bathing facilities.
I understand the irritation with errors though as they read like visual noise.
I like 'nitpick' as a verb though, and also 'go over with a fine-toothed comb' - a method for both literal and figurative nit-picking.
Clothes made from recycled plastic bottles (yay recycling(?) are shedding fibers into our waters as they are washed. How is that ok?
Now just to be clear, one thing I saw in the US which I found pretty disturbing, was those small plastic bags used for fruits. Sometimes they were so low quality that they visibly shed little chunks of plastic. I'm fully behind banning those.
But as flawed as government is, I guess it's still better than nothing.
Plastic ban bags have made a huge difference in many countries. In much of the developing world, it used to be the case that discarded plastic bags were lying everywhere, flying along, stuck en masse to any barbed-wire fence, etc. Once the bans came in, the level of such pollution has visibly dropped.
There are environmentally beneficial effects to these but there are also significant effects on overall litter. It's like when soda can manufacturers switched their tab system to one that doesn't get discarded.
I am not sure what the impact of plastic straw bans has been. Beyond just the symbolism, however, they would have been a useful step towards reconsidering the use of all single use plastic if COVID hadn’t picked up when it did.
plastic straw ban has little impact mostly because people tend to leave their drinks in the fast food restaurant rather than take them home. it't not as obvious that it's helping and aren't the cups coated in plastic?
You could theoretically be audited, but I never saw or heard of a single audit in the 4-5 years I worked in produce at a national grocery chain. Granted, this was over 10 years ago. But given the regulatory climate in over those years, I would be shocked if enforcement was made stricter.
That's also ignoring the fact that non-organic farming began in part as a way to more cheaply and efficiently grow food, thereby supporting a larger population. It might be hard to unwind that clock simply because of the food demands of the current human population.
We have yet to see government action that was thoughtful, well communicated, consistent, and devoid of politics. If the government could accomplish such a thing I see no reason why it would need to be met with equal and opposite reaction.
We should consider ourselves lucky that it was “only” a moderately-deadly disease, and not something worse. I can imagine government’s reaction to a space alien invasion: Day 100, after most cities are destroyed, government is still weighing the pros and cons of taking action, and debating whether or not to write a resolution condemning the alien attack.
A lot of people think that the governmental reactions are slow and lame because covid isn’t a disease morbid enough to threaten civilization, as something like a full blown ebola pandemic for example could be. Which is probably true to extent.
But I agree 100% with you and people are crazy to think that governments would somehow suddenly be competent in handling a worse disaster than covid, given the complete (almost) worldwide failure to curb this plague. From initial downplaying and silencing scientists and doctors in China, to rise of anti-mask and anti-vaccine crowds and even voices in governments, to our incapability as a global world to handle the production and logistics of the vaccinations... when a disaster worse than covid strikes in the future, it will be the same shitshow, only with higher stakes
Hmm. My opinion is that dealing with free agents is difficult and governments don't have enough tools to encourage a free society to act in their best interests (let alone society's). Especially when there are numerous bad actors that have a lot of power.
Believing more in conspiracy is actually a great reason to mistrust the water supply. Given that men's testosterone and sperm rates have been falling for decades (with no cause known, but best hypothesis is chemicals in environment)[1], I particularly expect there to be a common ground.
After all, Alex Jones (right-wing, conspiracy theory nut) has been concerned about a herbicide named atrazine that arguably can change the gender of frogs (he mistakenly said turn them gay). "A 2010 Hayes study concluded that atrazine rendered 75% of male frogs sterile and turned one in 10 into females,"[2] and atrazine is just one of many such man-made "xenoestrogens" [3].
In fact, I'm a bit shocked how slow both sides are to start caring about this issue.
1 - https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/10/sperm-cou... 2 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrazine#Amphibians 3 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenoestrogen#Common_environmen...
Buried within your perspective is, I believe, the incorrect and somewhat dangerous idea that there is a way to harmonize society if only we'd grant the right powers to the right people. I think civilization is best thought of as a tragic compromise and attempts to make it something else never end well.
None of that is to say you're wrong to advocate for more and better regulations. Only that there are valid reasons to argue for fewer regulations or to be skeptical about the government's ability to regulate this or that.
I'll second this. I'm on the path at spending about $20 per month for fairly clean water and $20 a month for the air. I haven't solved the food contamination problem as I didn't have my sights on it but I'll include it now (I have been trying to cook at home more over the past two years, so maybe I've been taking baby steps here without realizing it).
As for the government, re:regulation, I'm trying to shy away from the politics because (at least for America) it's burdened down by identity politics instead of policy focused discussions.
As for me and my house, we're doing our part to bare the costs of personal responsibility.
Also read the Intercept series, The Teflon Toxin: DuPont and the Chemistry of Deception: https://theintercept.com/2015/08/11/dupont-chemistry-decepti....
Other important pieces out there.
When the Senate questioned General Austin, today named Secretary of Defense, they asked him about forever chemicals because they've contaminated military bases so much.
It's gonna keep happening until we flip the regulatory model on its head and require companies to prove the chemicals they're using are safe, which will never happen, because god forbid we don't let capitalism poison us all so we can have non-stick pans.
The weird thing is that this explosion of new chemical compounds has really only happened in the last 120 years or so. It never used to be a given that we had to do things this way.
It dramatises environmental lawyer Robert Bilott’s case against DuPont for contaminating water supplies with dumped PFOA/PFOS chemicals.
It’s currently available to stream on Prime Video in the UK.
Any time you drink water that contains lower concentrations of these than your body, you will lose some, as the concentrations equalize. Same thing, just more pronounced. If you drink very large amounts of water in a short time, that can be a serious health hazard, it can lead to hyponatraemia [1]. Distilled water works exactly the same here, but it is more hypotonic, so the required amount to get into problematic areas is probably lower.
Short version: Don't drink huge amounts of water (think upwards of 5l) in a short amount of time without replenishing electrolytes, it could kill you. Applies to both "normal" and distilled water, but probably to a slightly lower amount of distilled water.
https://www.ktre.com/story/5955984/was-it-homicide-water-dri...
I keep seeing this urban legend about distilled water consumption being bad for you and really wonder when it will be corrected.
The city regularly publishes tests breaking it all down:
http://www.seattle.gov/utilities/your-services/water/water-q...
Is it really possible that lower TDS makes better water and better water makes better beer and coffee?
I guess that could make it a double-blind test.
I wonder how significant the number of participants is over what length of time and how it compares to the numbers and species in the laboratory rodent work.
Potentially beneficial minerals in the water can be easily substituted with a food supplement tablets if one feels food intake is inadequate.
Minimizing PFOS to practically 0 on top of god knows what other pollution could be in it still sounds like a great idea. I wouldn't care about this if I was 60+, but we are far from it and our kid(s) deserve a bit less pollution in their most fragile stage of life. Heck, all kids do.
I have no idea what's up with the article, but I personally wouldn't take it at face value given those statetments.
Reference: https://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/dwq/nutrientscha...
I agree, it's more like a legend for the underdeveloped world, especially the more rural parts which suffer from all kinds of deficiencies.
Of course I'm going to take it "with a grain of salt" when one of the authors' introductory bullet points is
Distilled water has poor taste characteristics.
Which I have long known to be patently false, regardless of the hundreds of sources of demineralized water I have enjoyed or been responsible for. In a properly functioning system, poor taste has never been a characteristic ever.
Although I'll admit you have to know how to run a still.
Theoretically each "insoluble" mineral like mercury or lead is regarded that way because they commonly form various compounds which various chemists throughout history have tried to dissolve in otherwise mineral-free water.
These compounds are considered insoluble since you can put in a gram to a liter of DI water, stir it all you want, filter out what didn't dissolve and get back a whole gram.
Or you can put in a millgram and get back a whole milligram.
That's not the kind of everyday behavior you're going to get from compounds of Sodium, Potassium, Calcium & Magnesium. These life-giving minerals are very soluble by comparison to the life-compromising minerals like mercury & lead.
Many milligrams up to many grams of these good mineral compounds like potassium can easily dissolve in a liter of mineral-free water.
But nobody would drink mineral water that strong, it would taste worse than sea water.
However in fact when there is no mineral shortage there is also no significant difference in the amount of the good minerals that will dissolve in most average tap water versus DI water.
Therefore unless your primary source of beneficial minerals is from water alone, the difference between drinking mineral-free water versus tap water or even stronger popular mineral waters will not be mathematically measurable in a meaningful way.
Your total mineral intake relative to outflow is what determines your position on a spectrum of dynamic equilibrium for each mineral, regardless of whether the minerals come from water or food. This is not a complex concept, you wouldn't do a marathon any better on tap water than DI water when you really need something like Gatorade at least.
You really can never let the life-giving minerals become depleted down to your last milligrams or you would be dead. And no mineral water alone is enough to replace the normal amount you need coming through your system. That's why Gatorade was invented for those extreme times.
So almost everybody has always gotten most of their essential everyday minerals from their food, and unless the water has some beneficial minerals that the food does not, it makes no difference if it was replaced with DI water instead.
Water-soluble vitamins are not much diferent and need to be constantly replaced to maintain a good level, that's why Vitamin Water was invented in later decades as the food got bleaker, and you're not likely to get tap water with vitamins anytime soon.
Maybe I shouldn't give anybody any harebrained ideas for a startup.
OTOH with toxic minerals which you might want to flush out of your system, things like mercury or lead are actually saturating the water when you try to dissolve a milligram so they're not truly insoluble, you just can't measure the infintesimally miniscule amount that actually did dissolve before the water became saturated and will take up no more of that particular mineral.
But these are harmful minerals where micrograms are undesirable, and known to accumulate in living things, which can somewhat be attributed to their near-insolubility so if there's any hope of preventing or reducing any long-term accumulation it would have to be somewhat dependent on excreting more than is imbibed over the long term instead. No quick answer could ever be expected.
Because picograms add up to nanograms, and nanograms add up to micrograms and before long it's like Flint MI if your're not careful.
Mostly the rest of the time it's basically unmeasurable until something like that rears its ugly head.
Now when water has been subjected to a highly effective distillation or demineralization process which theoretically removes all minerals by orders of magnitude, and it turns out true in practice for those minerals which are measurable, you can have some confidence that the process will also affect some toxic minerals that might be present in unmeasurable amounts, and reduce them to even further levels of unmeasurability.
There's equations for all of this.
When the concentration of any barely soluble compound actually equals zero it's difficult to quantify the increase in solvent strength compared to nonzero, but I can live with it.
So I'll drink to that.
And you presumably consume food with mineral. I mean, drinking water doesn’t typically contain potassium but you don’t see people having potassium leeched out of their body.
(For the chemistry here, pure water will absorb CO2, making H2CO3, then splitting into two H+ and a CO3(2-) ions. Since this process release H+ ions, truly pure water becomes acidic on exposure to air.
>truly pure water becomes acidic on exposure to air.
Correct, the carbonate is about impossible to avoid by distillation alone, you need to follow it with point-of-dispensing deionization to get a good blank. Though sometimes the older tradition of freshly boiling distilled stock might still be OK to get rid of CO2.
I just don't like stock any more, micro-organisms can change pH more than air and be more insidious.
But contact with the ever increasing concentration of CO2 in the air is not going to soon rival the amount of CO2 simply pressured into solution for mineral-free seltzer water. Way more carbonate ion in soluton as well as dissolved CO2 gas. Great to drink straight and not nearly as acidic as orange juice. Can nicely moderate the acidity of orange juice to end up with a refreshing lower-calorie orange soda too.
pH is very important but the huge difference is in buffer value where the titratable acidity of the carbonic acid in DI water is insignificant compared to the seltzer.
IOW when you take a sip of pure distilled water with no more carbonate than you get from the atmosphere and no other ions either, the pH of that sip takes on almost the exact pH your mouth had beforehand.
OTOH when you take a sip of seltzer which is simply pure carbonated water, that sip can make very prominent changes to the pH of your mouth (depending on how different your mouth was at the time).
I prefer to do both, repeatedly.
But not club soda which as the name implies has sodium like seltzer does not.
You can get even more carbonate buffer reserve into the water when you dissolve concentrated minerals like sodium bicarbonate and get true soda water instead of just dissolving CO2 gas under pressure, but for me there's too much sodium coming from too many directions already so I want my carbonation to come without sodium and not be a true "soda".
Minerals and water are actively regulated by your body; it can deal with pure water just fine.
> It has been adequately demonstrated that consuming water of low mineral content has a negative effect on homeostasis mechanisms, compromising the mineral and water metabolism in the body. An increase in urine output (i.e., increased diuresis) is associated with an increase in excretion of major intra- and extracellularions from the body fluids, their negative balance, and changes in body water levels and functional activity of some body water management-dependent hormones.Experiments in animals, primarily rats, for up to one-year periods have repeatedly shown that the intake of distilled water or water with TDS ≤ 75 mg/L leads to: 1.) increased water intake, diuresis, extracellular fluid volume, and serum concentrations of sodium (Na) and chloride (Cl) ions and their increased elimination from the body, resulting in an overall negative balance.., and 2.) lower volumes of red cells and some other hematocrit changes (3)
And how bad is something like coffee for comparison?
But, I'm not sure of several things.
First, are these effects solely because the lack of minerals? If you drink water with a non-empty stomach, would that still be a problem? Or is it that pure water has some "magical" property that I hadn't thought of?
Second, anecdotally, I find distilled water to taste better. I've drunk tap water, boiled water, and distilled water side by side, and I prefer distilled.
Third, the longer term changes, can they be remedied if you take supplements or mineral-rich diet?
For example I have this model: https://aquaphor.com/en-us/reverse-osmosis/ro-101
I cannot search on mobile.
—————————
V. CONCLUSIONS Drinking water should contain minimum levels of certain essential minerals (and other components such as carbonates). Unfortunately, over the two past decades, little research attention has been given to the beneficial or protective effects of drinking water substances. The main focus has been on the toxicological properties of contaminants. Nevertheless, some studies have attempted to define the minimum content of essential elements or TDS in drinking water, and some countries have included requirements or guidelines for selected substances in their drinking water regulations. The issue is relevant not only where drinking water is obtained by desalination (if not adequately re-mineralised) but also where home treatment or central water treatment reduces the content of important minerals and low-mineral bottled water is consumed. Drinking water manufactured by desalination is stabilized with some minerals, but this is usually not the case for water demineralised as a result of household treatment. Even when stabilized, the final composition of some waters may not be adequate in terms of providing health benefits. Although desalinated waters are supplemented mainly with calcium (lime) or other carbonates, they may be deficient in magnesium and other microelements such as fluorides and potassium. Furthermore, the quantity of calcium that is supplemented is based on technical considerations (i.e., reducing the aggressiveness) rather than on health concerns. Possibly none of the commonly used ways of re-mineralization could be considered optimum, since the water does not contain all of its beneficial components. Current methods of stabilization are primarily intended to decrease the corrosive effects of demineralised water. Demineralised water that has not been remineralized, or low-mineral content water – in the light of the absence or substantial lack of essential minerals in it – is not considered ideal drinking water, and therefore, its regular consumption may not be providing adequate levels of some beneficial nutrients. This chapter provides a rationale for this conclusion. The evidence in terms of experimental effects and findings in human volunteers related to highly demineralised water is mostly found in older studies, some of which may not meet current methodological criteria. However, these findings and conclusions should not be dismissed. Some of these studies were unique, and the intervention studies, although undirected, would hardly be scientifically, financially, or ethically feasible to the same extent today. The methods, however, are not so questionable as to necessarily invalidate their results. The older animal and clinical studies on health risks from drinking demineralised or low-mineral water yielded consistent results both with each other, and recent research has tended to be supportive. Sufficient evidence is now available to confirm the health consequences from drinking water deficient in calcium or magnesium. Many studies show that higher water magnesium is related to decreased risks for CVD and especially for sudden death from CVD. This relationship has been independently described in epidemiological studies with different study designs, performed in different areas, different populations, and at different times. The consistent epidemiological observations are supported by the data from autopsy, clinical, and animal studies. Biological plausibility for a protective effect of magnesium is substantial, but the specificity is less evident due to the multifactorial aetiology of CVD. In addition to an increased risk of sudden death, it has been suggested that intake of water low in magnesium may be associated with a higher risk of motor neuronal disease, pregnancy disorders (so-called preeclampsia), sudden death in infants, and some types of cancer. Recent studies suggest that the intake of soft water, i.e. water low in calcium, is associated with a higher risk of fracture in children, certain neurodegenerative 158
diseases, pre-term birth and low weight at birth and some types of cancer. Furthermore, the possible role of water calcium in the development of CVD cannot be excluded. International and national authorities responsible for drinking water quality should consider guidelines for desalination water treatment, specifying the minimum content of the relevant elements such as calcium and magnesium and TDS. If additional research is required to establish guidelines, authorities should promote targeted research in this field to elaborate the health benefits. If guidelines are established for substances that should be in deminerialised water, authorities should ensure that the guidelines also apply to uses of certain home treatment devices and bottled waters
So it is an entirely different tier of purification.
So one ought to remineralize, and do so in correct proportions, for both calcium and magnesium but also trace minerals. And certain things sometimes recommended to reminerslize (pink himilayan salt) can contain lead.
Is there some simple all on one system in north america that solves this?
If PFASs are "forever" chemicals i.e. chemically stable, how do they cause harm in humans? Won't they just pass right on through?
What's the mechanism that causes harm?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Per-_and_polyfluoroalkyl_subst...
And even if you actually can it doesn't mean you actually should.
Probably shouldn't handle any more than you actually have to to get by.
There are so many other chemicals to choose from.
Perfluorinated hydrocarbons are really just fluorocarbons since they have no hydrogen. But the solvent and gaseous behavior can be similar to hydrocarbons while being non-flammable instead. Fluorocarbons are very stable compounds and after you have inhaled an anesthetic amount of volatile fluorocarbon compound under clinical conditions, it is expected that the material will wear off by evaporating back out of your system completely unmetabolized and leaving no fluorine behind. I accept that and it's probably not even harmful compared to ether or cyclopropane.
If the carbon skeleton of the molecule is not completely saturated with fluorine but instead has an organic acid group in one of the positions, then it's no longer a plain fluorocarbon since now there's a bit of oxygens in the molecule and their associated hydrogen so you call it a perfluorinated organic acid.
These correspond to the same hydrocarbon skeleton having the same acid group, which are just called plain ordinary organic acids. Many of which are biochemicals such as acetic acid which is the active ingredient in common vinegar.
Except the presence of fluorine can make the corresponding acid much stronger and not behave so much like its nonfluorinated counterpart.
Sometimes the more fluorine the worse until you reach full perfluorination.
You just can't always wash this stuff off. Don't ask me how I know.
Such perfluorinated acids can theoretically react with things that are not even considered alkalis, it would be possible to take a permanent place in a metabolic pathway which millions of years of evolution have arrived at based on organic acids which bond and unbond at a characteristic pH and no permanent members are expected to remain at all times.
The fluorine can become a permanent part of you.
That wouldn't be the best way to strive for millions more years of continuity.
There were so many other chemicals to choose from.
But it's a little too late now.
What's the digital equivalent?
Is there some toxic product or byproduct that has permeated further & deeper than it was actually safe to do, and now it looks like it could be impossible to recover to the pre-toxic condition?
Is it just a matter of unbridled greed, unlimited scale, or are these things that should never be touched at all?
A large number of studies have examined possible relationships between levels of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in blood and harmful health effects in people. However, not all of these studies involved the same groups of people, the same type of exposure, or the same PFAS. These different studies therefore reported a variety of health outcomes. Research involving humans suggests that high levels of certain PFAS may lead to the following:
- Increased cholesterol levels
- Decreased vaccine response in children
- Changes in liver enzymes
- Small decreases in infant birth weights
- Increased risk of high blood pressure or pre-eclampsia in pregnant women
- Increased risk of kidney or testicular cancer
[0] https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/pfas/health-effects/index.html
https://www.panna.org/resources/atrazine#2
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/dec/17/rainwate...
https://www.ewg.org/research/ewg-proposes-pfas-standards-ful...
Are you referring to the resources used to create the equipment then discard it when it's done? Or to the wasted water? A permeate pump increases efficiency quite a bit.
Just this morning I went to the neighbourhood Reverse osmosis machine and paid a few cents to fill up my drinking water bottles.
I think it's a great system.
Need to treat it with minerals though, as the pure water will be acidic and strip your teeth of them otherwise.
It is pretty overkill, but if you want pure water...
Your standard Brita filter doesn't even come close to filtering these chemicals.
For example, Samsung RWP70010TWW is a refrigerator filter approved[2] for filtering PCBs, PFOS, and PFAS, as well as a whole host of other things. You don't need to spend ten thousand dollars installing a reverse osmosis system to get clean water.
1: https://www.nsf.org/knowledge-library/perfluorooctanoic-acid... 2: https://info.nsf.org/Certified/DWTU/Listings.asp?ProductFunc...
Not really.
Start with pH control to be slightly acidic (in the summertime, when all the algae is having fun copulating and making the raw water extremely basic, this means dumping lots and lots of sulfuric acid). Add in a nice charged coagulant, PACL in this case (and a nice uncharged polymer could be helpful for greasy bits). Mix vigorously, then less vigorously, and then let sit for a while to let the mud settle out of the water.
After settling, bubble 7% ozone through the water. Then send the water through a prepared filter containing sand, gravel, and charcoal with a healthy biofilm on it (I don't remember the exact order, sorry). Be sure to clean the filters every day. Now dump in a load of hydroxide to make the pH slightly basic (also is less hell on your pipes, especially if there's any lead pipes in the system). Add fluoride for health, and dump in all the chlorine (nowadays as bleach; a chlorine gas pipe leak is no fun for anybody). Add some ammonium to get chloramines to help disinfect the water for longer, and some phosphate for pipe corrosion control.
That's basically the same process that's going to get used for any large (think >100 million gallons/day, enough to supply ~300k suburban households), although ozone treatment is relatively rare. UV and reverse osmosis tend to be too expensive to really scale to the large treatment plants, and slow sand filters (not to be confused with the rapid sand filters that are used in most places) requires craptons of space to push enough water to handle a large municipality.
An analysis done by Harvard found it to lower IQs in children:
https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/10579664/3491930...
The data is from China but the levels at which effects were found can be found in some regions of the US.
Water fluoridation started because it was a cheap and easy way to get rid of industrial chemicals:
https://origins.osu.edu/article/toxic-treatment-fluorides-tr...
Looking at that statistic, the levels of the high group are generally ranging from 2-4 mg/L. The target level of water fluoridation is usually about 0.7-1 mg/L, which is about the level of the reference groups in that statistic.
As the saying goes, the dose makes the poison, and this is already extremely well-known for fluorine, and accounted for in the water treatment process and regulations.
I bet everyone down-voting my comment is doing it out of reflex and has never read anything about this.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_fluoridation_in_the_Unit...
Actually, the Wikipedia article says the opposite (the citation it gives is a dead link, of course)--it suggests to parents that they should be careful with having children use fluoride toothpaste or water with > 2mg/L of water.
> There are plenty of places with more than 2mg/L in the US and Kentucky has places over 4mg/L [2].
If you read that study carefully as well, that's talking about the natural fluoride concentration of well water, not fluoridation within water treatment plants. (Another reason to generally prefer municipal treatment plants as a source for water: they are more likely to follow more stringent guidelines for water contaminants than individual wells).
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4547570/?report.... (Public Health Rep. 2015 Jul-Aug)
Which goes on to say: For many years, nearly all of these fluoridated systems used fluoride concentrations ranging from 0.8 to 1.2 mg/L; fewer than 1% of these systems used a fluoride concentration at 0.7 mg/L (Unpublished data, Water Fluoridation Reporting System, CDC, 2010). When water systems that add fluoride implement the new PHS recommendation (0.7 mg/L), the fluoride concentration in these systems will be reduced by 0.1–0.5 mg/L, and fluoride intake from water will decline among most people served by these systems.
You amused me with the image of someone thinking "the more fluorine, the better."
Of course this ignores the fact that it is impossible to adjust the dosage for everyone since everyone has a different level of consumption of the water source that we have "spiked". We are essentially medicating people without telling them and it is quite arbitrary. Not to even mention, we are exposing people who boil their water before they drink to higher concentrations etc.
Science isn't settled on this. There is no consensus. What we are doing is blatantly wrong.
How did we collectively decide with such absolute certainty that the positive impact of adding it to prevent tooth decay outweighs the risks and damages? We didn't.
Also it's not like there is no alternative. Use toothpaste with Hydroxyapatite. It works.
Why not distribute this incredible miracle/poison in tablet form for free to these poor families you think this is aiming to protect or provide free dental care if you think dental care is of utmost importance?
We clearly think kidneys (dialysis) are special because a past president had a relative that suffered from a kidney condition.
None of this is being done out of good intentions. Most involved are either misinformed because they are taught science is settled and it is safe and great, or simply uninformed.
Keep it coming - I used to work in a water treatment plant so I love water chemistry questions. If you think reboiling it in Teflon a bunch of times isn’t a great idea I agree but I’ll note all those people who go out in the wilderness with nonstick pots and a bunch of Dasani water seem to do fine.
That's fascinating, because this is an article trying to figure out what to do with such chemicals. If treating water with fluoride is a cheap way to help, I suppose we should continue.
It also makes you think how vulnerable a majority of the world is to people messing with their drinking water.
If you use fluoridated toothpaste, the fluoride in your tap water is pointless at best.
https://www.ada.org/en/member-center/oral-health-topics/fluo...
It costs about $1200 a year to have the tanks swapped out, but don't have a monthly water bill since it's a well. Public water companies claim to do the same type of filtering, but who knows what they're actually doing. It's a good feeling knowing for sure my water is clean.
Reactions? Suggestions?
What is that?
I remember reading about that, was pretty recent
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/01/09/oral-b...
> The scientists estimated that more than 200 million people—the majority of Americans—have tap water contaminated with a mixture of PFOA and PFOS at concentrations of one part per trillion (ppt) or higher. Andrews and Naidenko say previous research shows that levels higher than one ppt can increase the risk of conditions such as testicular cancer, delayed mammary gland development, liver tumors, high cholesterol and effects on children’s immune response to vaccinations. “It’s a calculation of what would be a safe exposure level,” Andrews says. Even when the researchers shifted their analysis to a higher level of 10 ppt, they still found some 18 million to 80 million Americans to be exposed. Representatives of the chemical industry have disagreed with such concerns. “We believe there is no scientific basis for maximum contaminant levels lower than 70 ppt,” the American Chemistry Council said in statement to Scientific American.
anyone have more context on gauging the safe levels? What are the studies that show 1ppt increases the risk for cancer?
the EPA also currently sets the level at 70 ppt:
> To provide Americans, including the most sensitive populations, with a margin of protection from a lifetime of exposure to PFOA and PFOS from drinking water, EPA has established the health advisory levels at 70 parts per trillion.
https://www.epa.gov/ground-water-and-drinking-water/drinking....
I’m not saying there are not harmful chemicals in drinking water, I'm not saying this article isn't raising good points. I just think using “chemical” the way it’s used by fear mongers who don’t understand or care that literally everything is a chemical isn’t helpful.
Here is a post from Scientific American on the very topic
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/chemical-is-...
>These compounds may take hundreds, or even thousands, of years to break down in the environment. They can also persist in the human body, potentially causing health problems.
It is clear that this means "Teflon" and similar molecules that aren't processed biologically. "Forever chemicals" here is excellent phrasing. They in fact last an indefinite amount of time in the ecosystem, and they are "chemicals" in that they are not naturally occurring.
For you to insist this is fearmongering is disingenuous and you should feel ashamed. This isn't at all the same as calling water "dihydrogen monoxide" and hyping up fear of "chemicals". There is in fact an active industry that promotes the production of these compounds for reasons of profit, and the externalities thereof are not at all taken into account by the mainstream understanding.
That is my point entirely. That is not the definition of chemical. If you mean non-naturally occurring chemical say that.
The scaremongers definition of chemical and has no place in scientific literature.
So how is it scaremongering? It is both accurate (PFOAs, etc are indeed chemicals) and of the proper connotation in the common parlance (using "chemical" to mean something manmade rather than naturally occurring).
Your argument holds no water.
By the way, an article in Scientific American isn't scientific literature. It's a magazine intended at lay audiences. You might be confusing it with something like Nature journal.
Using chemical to mean something man made is factually incorrect. It's in our best interest to educate against its misuse rather than acknowledge/encourage it, particularly in this case because the line between the two things is hazy at best.
People learn to associate "chemical" with "bad" and a certain class of "chemical-sounding" names with "chemical". It would be better if the lay knowledge and perception of chemicals was more nuanced, so that it is realized that chemicals are not bad due to their membership in this category, but for other, more complex reasons.
There are bad chemicals and there are good chemicals, and there is no shortcut to knowing which is which other than putting effort into understanding the mechanisms.
I think penalising this usage of the word "chemical" might further this goal.
When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
This is replying to the argument, and not calling names. You're right that the latter part was unnecessary, though.
I use a ceramic gravity drip filter and a carbon-charcoal filter (NSF 44 or 45? rated).
Is this enough?
But why can’t this article point me to testing for forever chemicals in my water or in my body?
Obviously there can be cases of companies being misleading or completely fraudulent. But generally speaking you aren't testing every cosmetic, food, clothing etc. to be sure that they're made the way they claim, why would water filters be different? Legislate certification for them if needed, rather than worry about how hard it is for a single person to test at home.
I've been drinking tap water from the fridge filter for a looong time now, so getting worried...
I'll believe it when I see it.
I don't rely on Biden to decide, of his own volition, on the right solution to anything, but the anti-Trump energy is so strong right now that perhaps he will be far more progressive than we would soberly expect. Let us hope for the best.
if you care about your family and loved ones, find them alternatives.
the standards are a joke even when followed.
even the safety of showering with tap water is questionable.
if you care to research, of course... there,s always sticking your head in the sand.
Of course, this article is about water that is potentially hazardous which is a real problem.
Why is this?
> I have trouble taking any health advisory seriously
Please keep in mind you're not talking to the person that made a health advisory. You're talking to someone who is saying why it's possible for water to be unsafe to shower in.
In Seattle it's basically raw snowmelt with 0 metals (had mine tested for heavy metals, register 0). Lots of places in the US have perfect water even if you don't trust the EPA's warning thresholds.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18124403-500-clam-up-...
But that does not happen unless the municipal water source changes day-to-day, or is catastrophically badly run in a really inconsistent manner... which is almost never the case in the US. Even in Flint, it's not like the water changed day-to-day; it just became consistently acidic, which pulled lead from pipes.
Aquifer-pumped water is consistent, reservoir-fed water is consistent, groundwater is consistent.
(also personally the contaminant I'm least fussed about)