Millions may rely on groundwater contaminated with PFAS for drinking water
phys.org
phys.org
For example, many large cities (San Francisco, Seattle, Portland) either do not use groundwater sources from within city limits, or only use it as a secondary source. Unless you use a private well, this map is therefore not super useful for understanding whether PFAS contamination of tap water should be a concern for you. The map likewise doesn't take into account water treatment or filtering.
Specifically water for irrigation, and processed sewage/sludge for fertilizer
This one scares me the most, including whatever drugs people flush down the toilet that they pass
Like I can find people promoting magnetic bracelets to align my Chi and they will be citing supposedly scientific articles which supposedly back up their claims. In extreme cases like that I can feel pretty confident that it's bullshit. But the relative health benefits of eating berry A or berry B? It seems intractable. I'm left with trusting my instincts and common sense.
Personally find it extremely easy to detect scams. You also don't need a degree or much more than a HS degree to check sources, this was taught to most of us in high school.
You're right though, there's a billions and billions of dollars in marketing and misinformation aimed at the people who skipped that class in school (especially in the health space).
[0]: https://www.foundmyfitness.com/genetics
--- It was actually this report that highlighted that I might have a high likelihood for a weird genetic issue that causes you to have extremely low vitamin D. This caused me to go get testing for this as I would get bad seasonal depression in the winters. At the age of 27 my doctor told me that it was the lowest levels of Vitamin D she's ever seen including her elderly patients. This isn't something any of common mainstream genetic reports provide and they charge 10X more. You would need to generate a report manually through one of the databases to find those studies or manually look up individuals SNPs
If by "check a source" you mean look it up and read it, sure. But that tells you relatively little; you can verify that a claim appears in that source but actually weighing the validity of that source requires a lot more specialized expertise.
That you think a highschool course can teach all you need to reliably detect bullshit makes me think you're a lot more credulous than you seem to think.
The rest of your post is more or less about the heuristics you use in lieu of being a subject matter expert. And those heuristics are known to influencers and are routinely gamed. For instance, you're impressed that this influencer criticizes supplement companies. People peddling bullshit routinely trash talk their own or adjacent fields in order to gain trust, this is a textbook tactic. Used car salesmen trash talk used car salesmen, to make themselves seem candid and honest. Textbooks about sales and persuasion teach this tactic. Supplement peddlers trash talk homeopathy, homeopaths trash talk chiropractors, etc. Of course people who aren't peddling bullshit will trash talk bullshit too, everybody else does too so it's a very unreliable heuristic.
For every medical claim someone makes, you can find at least 3 papers published in reputable journals that claim the opposite. Knowing which papers are lacking and which aren't goes beyond what most of us were taught in high school.
I maintain a DB of drinking water contaminants in the US[1]. You can look up your city's system to see if they test for PFAS.
Afaik, very little is still understood about the actual risks from a particular PFAS exposure level. Right?
https://www.hbm4eu.eu/the-substances/per-polyfluorinated-com...
It's an assumption that this will be similar, but sure.
I don't see your point.
Lots of substances may not need to be tested if they occur frequently in nature as we can assume that life has already mitigated the problems that they may or not cause. If we start to widely distribute these naturally occurring substances, then we need to re-examine what effects they may have (e.g. lead occurs naturally, but putting it into the air produced a very harmful effect on human development).
If it's a new substance that doesn't already occur in meaningful quantities, then we need to be very careful before we start putting it into water supplies as that has the potential to disrupt a wide variety of life and habitats. To merely consider it not harmful due to lack of testing is really foolish.
If it's bad and we don't avoid it = potential disaster
If it's no problem and we avoid it = Some unnecessary losses
If it's no problem and we avoid it = No problem
Currently, considering past patterns, it looks like PFAS are problematic and the potential cost of failing to mitigate could be very high. So being more cautious is the rational solution, even in the face of uncertainty.
This is incorrect. I think that you also understand why.
Also, if you buy the RO water in plastic, that's risking avoidable microplastics. I use glass and steel bottles.
Good. There is absolutely no reason this should be in water.
On the other hand, I now developed sensitivity in a tooth that is going to be a challenge to fix. This is despite me using fluoride toothpaste twice daily. Acidic foods can do more damage to teeth when there isn't fluoride in the drinking water. As a result, the saliva also lacks fluoride, and cannot protect the teeth so well anymore. It was my mistake for consuming an acidic food. I now have to see if expensive nano-hydroxyapatite toothpaste can fix the sensitivity.
Toothaches are indeed also caused by headaches, oral infections, and sinus infections/allergies/irritation. Sometimes it's sinus related and sometimes it isn't. These have nothing to do with tooth sensitivity.
The reason is that sodium fluoride which exists in toothpastes is associated with testicular and hormonal dysfunction in males - refer to PMID 30165274.