Eco-Activist Bureaucrats and Fear-Mongering Media’s Newest Terror: PFAS Chemicals
A recent report is trying to warn people away from seafood, using measurements at the parts-per-trillion levels.
Back in my youth, when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was created, there were genuine concerns about high levels of pollution being dumped into the air and water or buried underground. Reducing pollution is a reasonable and welcome goal.
However, as the water and air got cleaner and better ways of disposing of waste were developed, the bureaucracy continued growing. As the sources of news we receive have evolved, our media is desperate for relevance, clicks, and revenue.
Hence, we are exposed to more scare-reporting and liberty-crushing policies that target materials produced to make life better, easier, and ultimately healthier for humans with few changes . . . all in the name of Science™.
I suspect hot air is being let out of the carbon dioxide scare balloon that has been floated around since former Vice President Al Gore pushed “global warming.” Glaciers that were predicted to be gone by 2020 are still here, and a myriad of other claims about the future because of global warming have proved unfounded, untrue, and quite delusional. As a result, people are becoming more skeptical of such claims.
So now eco-activist bureaucrats and the fear-mongering media have to locate a new target. Their focus is now on PFAS chemicals.
PFAS stands for per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances. The are basically molecules containing carbon, hydrogen, and fluorine in such a way that makes them super-stable and not readily impacted by heat, light, and other environmental conditions. This makes this class of compounds essential in products that most of us enjoy.
Fluoropolymer coatings can be in a variety of products. These include clothing, furniture, adhesives, food packaging, heat-resistant non-stick cooking surfaces, and the insulation of electrical wire.
What appears to be happening is that “environmental scientists” are exposing animals to high levels of these compounds in their experiments, then projecting those findings to trace levels in the environment to which humans can be exposed.
Human health effects from exposure to low environmental levels of PFAS are uncertain.
Studies of laboratory animals given large amounts of PFAS indicate that some PFAS may affect growth and development. In addition, these animal studies indicate PFAS may affect reproduction, thyroid function, the immune system, and injure the liver.
With all of this in mind, it is not surprising that Biden’s EPA is now hitting up the nation’s water supply with new rules related to PFAS chemicals. Eco-activists aim to entirely eliminate theses substances from use.
It is clear that the bureaucrats care little about the costs and hardships they will create because of the ginned-up projects from animal data and their own moral righteousness.
Critics argue the EPA didn’t go far enough because there are more than 15,000 PFAS chemicals, and this standard only regulates six.
“I think that we need to begin addressing PFAS as a whole class of chemicals,” Birnbaum said. “And we need to ask the question, do we really need them?”
The EPA estimates that of the 66,000 public water utility systems impacted by the standard, 6% to 10% may need to act to comply with the regulations. Operators will have three years to test for PFAS pollution, then an additional two years to identify, purchase and install necessary technology to treat contaminated water.
Erik D. Olson, senior strategic director of health at the Natural Resources Defense Council, tells CBS News that the EPA estimates it will cost about $1.5 billion “to treat all this water and to protect people’s health. The benefits, in our view, far outweigh those costs.”
The media is going right along with the assertions, presenting articles that link PFAS to food. I will simply note that the measurements are being given at the limits of detection achievable only because of substantial advancements in analytical technology.
Those who like to indulge in sushi buffets or treat themselves to a lobster dinner should beware – they could be at a higher risk of exposure to toxic ‘forever chemicals.’
While the chemicals are more commonly linked to factories, plastic and even tap water – a new study has warned seafood is also a major source of the cancer-causing toxins.
Dartmouth College researchers tested several types of seafood bought from various sites in New Hampshire for 26 types of PFAS.
Sampling showed that ‘bottom feeders’ like shrimp and lobster contained the highest levels.
Megan Romano, co-author of the Dartmouth study, urged people to consider the risks and benefits when eating seafood in future.
When the media is trying to scare you about something present in the environment in “parts per trillion” levels, please use this image for your serenity and perspective. pic.twitter.com/3z6BGQ1DVu
— Leslie Eastman ☥ (@Mutnodjmet) April 12, 2024
I would also like to point out we are exposed to a wide-array of chemicals that cause cancer or other adverse health effects whenever we eat. Plants wage chemical warfare on us daily.
Broccoli, apples, onions, oranges, strawberries, lemons and mushrooms all contain acetaldehyde, a natural by-product of oxidation and a known human carcinogen. If you close your eyes you can practically taste it.
Nitrates – which can be converted by the human body into carcinogenic nitrosamine compounds – are present in such seemingly inoffensive foods as celery, lettuce, kale and rhubarb. Nitrites, halfway to being nitrosamines already, are found in cured meats. There are carcinogens specific to tap water, basil, beer and mustard. Cancer-causing PCBs are found in varying levels in all foods. It is generally accepted that there is no such thing as a diet free from carcinogens, so there’s no point in worrying about it, although it is unclear how the second part follows from the first.
Humans are designed to endure hardship. Sadly, most of this hardship comes from those who are supposed to be looking out for our best interests.
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Comments
Imagine if these busybody retards had something that was actually worth worrying about.
I shall laugh as I eat my lobster and/or crab cakes.
Crappie caught in a freshwater millpond in the Carolinas is less-healthy than the recycled crap water in California. Whoda thunk?
Enviros are notorious for refusing to listen to scientists.
There are a few basic rules about numbers that they do not comprehend:
1. Dosage matters. If it’s parts per trillion, it doesn’t matter.
2. If you measure deeply enough (parts per trillion, for instance) you can find anything in anything.
3. At some point, measurements become meaningless because measurements below the margin of error are nothing but experimental noise. The margin of error for many, many situations is far larger than the alleged accuracy of a given instrument, due to variability in the environment.
points two and three illustrate the leftist existence in Zeno’s Paradox. You can split a hair forever yet never go anywhere.
These threat projections are likely based on the linear no-threshold model, which says that if X amount of something is toxic, a straight line can be drawn back to the zero amount point, and every point along the resulting line represents a level of threat. This model was developed to measure the threats associated with radiation, but the presumption is known to be faulty. For instance, some populations live at both high altitude and in places with much exposed granite at the surface. They are subject to higher levels of solar radiation and cosmic rays, as well as radon. Based on the LNT model, they should have higher rates of cancer than they actually do. Hormesis theory attempts to explain this conundrum:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hormesis
In this situation, the PFAS molecules, in small amounts, are likely very safe for the same reason they’re long-lived in the environment – they’re extremely stable/unreactive. It takes a lot of them to create the number of reactions necessary to cause physical problems in lab animals. Hormesis could prevent cancer from forming until a certain threshold of exposure is reached by keeping the body’s cell-repair and cancer-killing mechanisms in good working order. But representing the threat according to the linear no-threshold model is much scarier.
Whole comment well-done.
“…linear no-threshold model…”
About a dozen years ago my god daughter was being taught about threshold effects in her Jr High ecology class. Very excited playing with concentration threshold demonstrations. I guess the folks who did that report skipped that class.
It gets worse when the linear projection is the rate of change, or acceleration of the thing you care about. Worse, yet, when positive feedback effects get factored in.
Then, ignore anything else that happens. Likewise, look only at less of the bad thing from a solution, not any other impact. Kinda like wind turbine power is great, except we don’t know how to dispose of the things, which are hazardous enough it takes a waver to put them in landfills, and they wear out faster than predicted, noise polluting whales in the meanwhile. But, by bog, we’re getting lower-carbon watts. Not counting carbon from construction or transport.
People even have different preferences sometimes.
I. myself, am pretty OK with using perfluoropropane (C3F8) in retinal reattachment procedures. I’m willing to inflict a couple parts per trillion on every single one of you. Binocular vision is awesome. I’ll even take my own increase in cancer risk. Seeing in 3-d is … um … pretty cool.
(Great fun messing with the surgeon in the first post-op followup: “So, out of curiosity, is the gas in there the Sulfur Hexaflouride, or Octo-Fluoro Propane — that compound’s other name?)
This is the exact model those on the left use for pollution and other toxins. The cost to “solve” the problem is inverse to any benefit from removing a smaller and smaller amount to the point where formerly safe levels are suddenly discovered at levels so small that only improved diagnostics can measure them. The cost to remove it is so astronomical as to be prohibitive.
In other words, better equipment measures smaller and smaller amounts that get blown out of proportion to keep the money train going for people who depend on it.
More interested in micro plastics. This nonsense masquerading as science reminds me of the saccharin scare. Stuff rats with the equivalent of 10lbs a day of the stuff for over a year, they develop cancer and that is a hair on fire finding.
Same for Cyclamates.
I miss my cyclamates. They’re still available in Canada, I understand.
When I was a kid, the big scare was mercury in swordfish. They solved that. There isn’t any swordfish to be had anymore, and when you can find any, it’s entirely unaffordable.
Acetaldehyde, by the way, is also the primary metabolite of ingested alcohol (well, the drinkable kind, ethanol).
EPA did the same with auto emissions. With electronic fuel injection they were effectively zero when the catalysts were warm. All modern engines basically only pollute when cold, and even then it isn’t much. Plus their detection equipment couldn’t actually detect lower levels of pollutants anyway. That didn’t stop EPA though. They imposed new, now current, regulations that were less than one quarter the previous trivial numbers and got industry to give them more sensitive detection equipment to measure it. Then they trumpeted how they saved us by reducing pollution so much, never mind that clear skies had been achieved for decades and reducing pollution from basically nothing to basically nothing is not a meaningful environmental achievement. And they’re proposing even more onerous pollution rules intended, I think, to eventually get rid of gasoline vehicles in case electric mandates prove and unworkable means of accomplishing that.
Always nice to link your writings on other sites.
The subject matter is way beyond my ability to even figure it out, and I’m pretty sure there are way more like me that need to see your writings.
Thanks Leslie.
Way back in the day there was an in-school film called “Powers of Ten” that zoomed around big and little, from the scale we kind of live in. Brilliant piece of context. Full of stuff like the graphic in Leslie’s X post.
“Glaciers that were predicted to be gone by 2020 are still here, and a myriad of other claims about the future because of global warming have proved unfounded, untrue, and quite delusional.”
A tad disingenuous, the claim was that the rate of decline in the glaciers was ahead of the more general predictions because of higher temperatures found in the glaciers, when new science came out that other factors like shading were helping reduce the decline this led to a revision. Almost like scientific claims evolve unlike climate denier claims.
“Eco-Activist Bureaucrats and Fear-Mongering Media’s Newest Terror: PFAS Chemicals
A recent report is trying to warn people away from seafood, using measurements at the parts-per-trillion levels.
Posted by Leslie Eastman Sunday, April 14, 2024 at 03:00pm 14 Comments
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Back in my youth, when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was created, there were genuine concerns about high levels of pollution being dumped into the air and water or buried underground. Reducing pollution is a reasonable and welcome goal.
However, as the water and air got cleaner and better ways of disposing of waste were developed, the bureaucracy continued growing. As the sources of news we receive have evolved, our media is desperate for relevance, clicks, and revenue.
Hence, we are exposed to more scare-reporting and liberty-crushing policies that target materials produced to make life better, easier, and ultimately healthier for humans with few changes . . . all in the name of Science™.
I suspect hot air is being let out of the carbon dioxide scare balloon that has been floated around since former Vice President Al Gore pushed “global warming.” Glaciers that were predicted to be gone by 2020 are still here, and a myriad of other claims about the future because of global warming have proved unfounded, untrue, and quite delusional. As a result, people are becoming more skeptical of such claims.
So now eco-activist bureaucrats and the fear-mongering media have to locate a new target. Their focus is now on PFAS chemicals.
PFAS stands for per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances. The are basically molecules containing carbon, hydrogen, and fluorine in such a way that makes them super-stable and not readily impacted by heat, light, and other environmental conditions. This makes this class of compounds essential in products that most of us enjoy.
Fluoropolymer coatings can be in a variety of products. These include clothing, furniture, adhesives, food packaging, heat-resistant non-stick cooking surfaces, and the insulation of electrical wire.
What appears to be happening is that “environmental scientists” are exposing animals to high levels of these compounds in their experiments, then projecting those findings to trace levels in the environment to which humans can be exposed.”
Yeah predicting risk for preventative purposes. Seems perfectly valid to me given the forever chemical status.
Please!
Your comment is the equivalent of a fart in Indiana causing a typhoon in Malaysia.
Sure buddy, you keep pretending you have a point.
Stop talking to it. Stop responding to anything it posts.
It literally provides nothing but useless noise.
We can’t mute it, but if we stop interacting with it, it might go away or catch a clue and check out the validity of the claptrap it parrots.
“We can’t mute it, but if we stop interacting with it, it might go away or catch a clue and check out the validity of the claptrap it parrots.”
Unfortunately the validity of what I state has already been checked, which is why you cant actually respond to the points being made can you
Leslie’s from California. Did you pay her for appropriating nearly her entire work product in your own posting?
You mean ‘quoting’, ‘appropriating’ isn’t an appropriate usage of the meaning of the word is it. Maybe brush up on you English skills.
I have long been fascinated by this scientific phenomenon – that is: once an ‘scientific’ organization has been created to solve a problem, it never goes away, even after the problem it was created to solve has been solved. My favorite example is “The March Of Dimes” organization created to solicit funds to cure polio. In 1953 Jonas Salk found a solution to polio….but the March Of Dimes continues to this day.
With this cynical view firmly embedded in my psyche by the 1980’s I was in total awe when the environmentalists declares CO2 as a danger to the planet which must be found, and fiercely to save all life on the planet.
The genius! Factory and automotive pollutants had been brought under control to safe levels (and they absolutely needed to be) but “The March Of Crimes Against The Planet” must continue or a lot of people were going to lose fat salaries.
In CO2 they had found the perfect enemy….one that could NEVER be defeated because -you citizen!- generate it yourself with every breath you take. Lifetime job security!
This situation also led me to postulate “Hodge’s Rule of Experimentation”:
No scientist ever got his grant reviewed for saying everything is just fine.
As the CO2 terror’s sword loses its edge other lesser enemies must be found to maintain employment.
A personal favorite: Arsenic in Rice….
“Rice accumulates more arsenic than other food crops. In fact, it is the single biggest food source of inorganic arsenic, which is the more toxic form…
So dangerous! This fact completely explains why there are only a billion Chinese – imagine how many there would be if it weren’t for arsenic poisoning!
“No scientist ever got his grant reviewed for saying everything is just fine.”
Actually there are a lot of *ahem scientists who git grant money for saying just this, it’s just that this grant money came from oil interests. For example willie Soon, who was given over a million dollars by oil groups to say that solar variance was the main driver for climate change.
I read an article in the ’70s on this premise. The author’s claim is that he could come up with only two organizations that had been founded to address some problem which actually had the integrity to disband once the problem had been solved, instead of falling to the temptation of the mission creep model. One was CEPTIA — the Committee to End Pay Toilets in America. Indeed, CEPTIA’s very (double-entendre) motto was, “Our end is our own elimination.” Unfortunately, I have forgotten the other organization.
Me: Cites real world example disproving Hodges point
You: Here is an disanalogous example that has no relevance whatsoever.
Forget PFAS. I want to bring your immediate attention to a toxin that has killed millions. Help me to rid the planet of dihydrogen monoxide! Not only will we save millions from drowning in the future but if there’s nothing to compare other toxins to in parts per trillion then those substances can’t be toxic either!
Nirvana!
When I worked in a downtown area several years back, some group had surveyors out at lunchtime asking people if dihydrogen monoxide should be banned “to save the environment.” 1980s, I believe. The level of ignorance even then was staggering.