U.S. imposes first-ever national drinking water limits on PFAS

If it did cold water too would be awesome.

Question - how do you deal with countertops that have storage tanks made out of plastic?

Are there no concerns with microplastics at all with these units? I know the plastic is not the Polypropylene stuff, but still.

Other than that just basic hand tools are involved. I would have no problem installing one in a rental but I’m also comfortable with plumbing. It’s definitely a job that seems a lot more intimidating than it is.

They work pretty well to reduce waste but do add complexity to what is already a somewhat complicated device under the sink. They will also create bad TDS creep if used without an auto-shutoff valve installed in the RO.

You could definitely use it as gray water but if you are filtering for contaminants, that water would have a higher concentration and if you were pushing it out as gray water, would those areas of the yard have higher levels potentially of contaminants?

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/scientists-find-about-a...

[1] https://www.perplexity.ai/

What about distillation as a filtration method?

Are the micro/nano plastics filtered by distillation?

Interesting what method of filtration the chip factories use, as they need 100% pure water for the cpu making process.

The best option is to turn on the bathroom fan and open a window, or use activated carbon.

Edit: What I would add is I often ponder how much additional nanoplastics are getting added compared to what is being removed. I know some of the test suggest RO is adding more but I am not sure if it accounts for the complete life cycle in a bottling plant. For the near term I have just settled that nanoplastics are the lesser evil to me than PFAS and other chemicals within the water. It is scare mongering but I look at how that town in Oregon I believe had has wide spread PFAS contamination in ground water from the airport fire foam.

Often as these business shutdown they built offices and homes on top of the property, for the ones that happened in the 70s there was no remediation until much later. For the ones that happened in the 90s-00s there was a level of remediation but I am still not trustworthy of it 1) lasting and 2) the developers doing the best work.

So its not a "in short" story unless you are completely ignoring the large amounts of trichloroethylene contamination that is in still so much of the ground soil in the bay area. Sure if you live inside of SF proper you are probably fine in most of the residential areas as there was no manufacturing but areas like Bayview can be just as bad and you have the radioactive contamination on top of chemical. If you live anywhere in the south bay or east bay, you probably should at the very least get an idea of what was built near your office/home. Maybe test your water or just throw an RO on it. So many of these companies were dumping trichloroethylene and perchloroethylene in the south/east bay and we just built homes on top of them. They are indeed generally localized hot spots but when I realized how many were near me it opened my eyes. I remember years ago this was an issue at one of the google campus offices because it too had significant ground contamination.

https://www.epa.gov/superfund-redevelopment/superfund-sites-... - Even the homes built in later years have had problems with vapors contamination even though it was built with prevention in mind. You can see the other super fund sites there.

I cannot find the map now but there are even a larger number of DTSC cleanup projects from the bay area. Kind of surprising someone would ask where is the contamination when it literally is dotting the whole bay area.

I just fill it like a coffee maker at night and run it while I'm asleep. Fresh water in the morning, then I'll fill it again after breakfast and run it during the day.

"Distillation removes all minerals from water. This results in demineralised water, which has not been proven to be healthier than drinking water. The World Health Organization investigated the health effects of demineralised water in 1982, and its experiments in humans found that demineralised water increased diuresis and the elimination of electrolytes, with decreased serum potassium concentration.[citation needed] Magnesium, calcium, and other nutrients in water can help to protect against nutritional deficiency. Recommendations for magnesium have been put at a minimum of 10 mg/L with 20–30 mg/L optimum; for calcium a 20 mg/L minimum and a 40–80 mg/L optimum, and a total water hardness (adding magnesium and calcium) of 2–4 mmol/L. At water hardness above 5 mmol/L, higher incidence of gallstones, kidney stones, urinary stones, arthrosis, and arthropathies have been observed.[citation needed] For fluoride the concentration recommended for dental health is 0.5–1.0 mg/L, with a maximum guideline value of 1.5 mg/L to avoid dental fluorosis.[17]"

I have gotten used to the taste of my Zerowater filter and so I got worried when I saw your comment. Maybe its better to drink the clean water and supplement with electrolytes and vitamins/minerals. That way you control all the parameters vs leaving it up to chance.

But there's plenty of other ones out there. I liked that one because it's simple and seems unlikely to break soon.

I've used them and been happy with the report. Happy to share if requested.

We don't need big governments to save us from cigarette companies because people don't know better. We need consumers saying to hell with cigarettes because they just need to roll a bit of dried tobacco leaves if that's what they're going for.

We lost the scale of our lives in favor of convenience, marketing, and greed. Governments can't fix that.

If people care enough to decide not to use products that contain PFAS, the environmental exposures would disappear pretty quickly. More importantly, if its even possible for governments to effectively coordinate a cleanup process that job would be much easier if consumers pitched in by first using their individual power to drastically reduce the contaminants being added into the system.

> I'd say lets have a vote. Do you want to risk autism, cancer, infertility and whatnot for nonstick pans and all the other wonders of PFAS? If the majority doesn't, it will get a global ban.

That doesn't require a vote at all. Bans are only useful when we have to leverage the power of the state to force people to do something they don't want to do. If consumers agree that nonstick pans have all those risks and they aren't worth it, they stop buying nonstick pans and companies stop making them.

Even if we wanted the ban route, who enforces it? The UN? Some new global government? Or a unanimous agreement by every government in the world, including those who's economies are partly supported by producing the nonstick pans?

I was arguing that more consumers could step up to make similar decisions, in this case avoiding PFAS products.

We don't have direct control over what's in our water, especially in areas where collecting rain water or using a well isn't even allowed if you wanted to do it yourself. We do have control over what we buy though, we just rarely see consumers making decisions that match the values we often argue for (like we need to massively reduce oil/plastic use and chemical exposures).

Local food doesn't have to mean growing it for yourself in your own yard. Buying local food is a huge improvement. When the food is grown in your area and doesn't have to be processed or packaged to handle national infrastructure challenges the plastics and PFAS aren't necessary.

When buying locally you can also have the ability to actually see where and how the food is grown, an option that is never possible when the food is grown across the country, shipped overseas for processing/packaging, and shipped back before eventually hitting shelves at your local chain store.

I'd also assume that you don't see EVs as a practical solution, or any non-petroleum engine, since plastics can't be made without oil and it'd be crazy to drill enough oil to keep our post-industrial lives without using the refined gas and diesel that we'd be creating anyway.

Personally I think each type of material has its place in the kitchen (nonstick, stainless steel, cast iron, enameled cast iron, etc)

No. If these things were never invented, those people would no be asking for them. Least not very much.

If it helped me avoid eating 20 meals out it easily paid for itself.

Let’s take a simple example: have you tried to make a fried egg in a cast iron pan and compared it to a nonstick pan? In a cast iron, you’ll need to use a pat of butter to get the egg to slide easily (around 100 calories). In nonstick you can get away with zero butter. It adds up.

The health difference is large for someone trying to lose weight. A tablespoon of butter isn't that filling, but contains about 150 calories. That's equivalent to a whole pot of non-fat yogurt or two eggs, both of which are more filling and give you more protein.

When making eggs, I try to use about a teaspoon of butter, which still gives some butter flavor, but lets me save more calories for eggs.

Lots of people do this, and it’s not because they’re somehow ignorant and against all fats. It’s more that people trying to be healthy make small tweaks they can live with that add up. It’s not about being an extremist but just moderating things where you are willing to. Everyone’s metabolism, dietary preferences, and lifestyle is different. If you live an active lifestyle with enough exercise or just have a higher metabolism, then it might make no difference to optimize at that level. But for lots of people it can make a big difference without making them feel like they can’t eat what they want.

Three meals a day prepared without added fat means savings of around 3-500 calories a day depending on how much fat you’re using and your portion sizes. Keep in mind as well that not all calories are equal and calories from protein sources tend to be more filling (compare eating 3 tablespoons of butter versus a chicken breast).

As for micro-plastics, if your claim is that PTFE is no better, but no worse, than, say, polyethylene, well. I suspect you're wrong, and that it's better, but no matter: at that point there's no reason to single it out.

It's easy to dream up rules and government mandates or budget items, which would be more directly interesting if we lived in an actual democracy (no matter what country on earth today) but rather we have to understand why state and business as we've enabled them to operate structurally would ever work toward those directives, and not just to an appeasingly greenwashed extent. And then think what other tools are available to us besides voting and waiting, given all that. Don't we all know devops here? Where's the structural analysis and systemically-impacting follow-up discussion? Instead people talk about the quality of individual masters and operators

Yes! that's the whole point of Wikipedia!

I guarantee you that we can afford to spend 90 cents of Euro for 1 Kg of sugar.

Everybody here with a normal income use as much sugar on the kitchen as they want, plus a lot of fructose also.