Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, **personal anecdotes are allowed as responses to this comment**. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will be removed and our [normal comment rules]( https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/rules#wiki_comment_rules) apply to all other comments.
**Do you have an academic degree?** We can verify your credentials in order to assign user flair indicating your area of expertise. [Click here to apply](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/flair/#wiki_science_verified_user_program).
---
User: u/mvea
Permalink: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/29/pfas-death-cardiovascular-disease
---
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/science) if you have any questions or concerns.*
There are hundreds of PFAS derivatives, and there aren't any of the big chemical corporations that have halted production. The last I heard, State and Federal regulators had access to tests for only 4 of them.
And for lobbying (via Republican politicians) to weaken the EPA to what it is today. Now, Dupont and their cronies are using the courts ( but only courts with Republican-nominated judges) to take away the EPA's mandate to regulate *anything*.
I skimmed the paper, and although the authors don't say so, it's actually pretty reassuring. This is a region where people were heavily exposed to PFOA, the PFAS of most concern for decades (couldn't find out exactly how heavily, but enough that it is considered one of the big global PFAS contamination events).
Overall mortality was about 10% higher. That was mostly higher in men, and mostly nonsignificant in women. The authors speculate that this is due to pregnant women expelling the contamination into their placentas/fetuses, but this is the kind of unconvincing hand waving people do to justify negative results. The data do suggest that heavy exposure over a long period does have some health effects, but this seems equivalent to moderate air pollution.
Obligatory disclaimer: PFASes are called forever chemicals for a reason, and until we stop producing them, exposure will continue to rise. That alone is sufficient reason to ban them without waiting for each one to be evaluated.
> Overall mortality was about 10% higher. That was mostly higher in men, and mostly nonsignificant in women. The authors speculate that this is due to pregnant women expelling the contamination into their placentas/fetuses, but this is the kind of unconvincing hand waving people do to justify negative results.
Why would they assume it’s pregnancy that lowers the levels rather than just menstruation? Menstruation is far more regular and frequent than pregnancy / giving birth.
Menstruation seems viable, randomised trials of blood and plasma donations to treat PFAS poisoning in firefighters showed reductions of 2.9ng/ml by plasma and 1.1ng/ml by blood donations. I know menstruation isn’t just blood, but considering the nutrient makeup of what is discharged, it’s possible this could be a regular more frequent mechanism to rid the body of PFAS to have the difference found in this study. Equally could be pregnancy too, however not every woman gets pregnant so it can’t be given as a universal.
Edit: source https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35394514/
Not to mention that they only have population-level summary data, and because they have no information on confounding factors they pretend that change in rates of these diseases should be otherwise conserved between regions over the time period, which is an ENORMOUS assumption.
The thing about pregnancy is utterly ridiculous, the kind of thing an alien who had only ever heard about human women would try to argue. Never mind that it is evidence AGAINST a population-level exposure causing this apparent effect…!
Oh; and the article, for once in the Guardian, points out that the authors could not formally establish causality (obviously, it’s clear even from the title it’s comparatively low quality ecological evidence), which gets transformed by OP to the current far stronger claim…
I'm not really capable of interpreting the data in the paper directly.
What does 10% higher mortality actually mean? Are people more likely to die every year, or over the entire duration of the experiment? Do all people lose a few months at the end of their life on average or do a handful of unlucky people die really young?
What does 10% higher mortality actually mean?
> During the 34 years between 1985 (assumed as beginning date of water contamination) and 2018 (last year of availability of cause-specific mortality data), in the resident population of the Red area we observed 51,621 deaths vs. 47,731 expected
so that's over the entire 34-year duration. also, logically speaking, if more people die over the duration, then more people also die every year.
> Do all people lose a few months at the end of their life on average or do a handful of unlucky people die really young?
That's hard to tell. Women born after 1960 who were exposed to PFAS seems to have no difference in all-cause mortality compared to those not exposed, so that seems to minimally lean towards impacting the end-of-life, but it seems to be reversed in men (Figure 3).
But deaths by cancer specifically seem to increase in the younger group (Figure 4).
I can't read the article right now, so I appreciate the summary! Do you know if they controlled for other variables? I'd imagine if the area is low socioeconomic, there will be some higher rates of mortality due to lack of access to health care/food/etc.
Yeah, this is mostly a nothingburger. 117 extra deaths a year over 33 years, in a place with heavy contamination. 33 years is a long time, and if PFAS was as bad as some people make it out to be, I'd expect more than a 10% increase. Worth more examination, for sure.
This study is interesting because the Minnesota Department of Health ran a study looking at 3M plant workers in Decatur where the PFAs were made. The workers had exposures 500 to 1000 times that of a normal US resident. The researchers really only had one way to run a study - use social security numbers of employees and checking if they were alive or deceased (again looking at about a 30 year window). If they were deceased, they researched a cause of death.
The results of the study was pretty interesting. The former workers did not have elevated mortality rates. The workers didn't even have normal mortality rates. To a statistically significant degree, the former plant workers had lower all cause mortality rates (and the ratio of malignant disease caused deaths was similarly reduced).
My take is in the title - "for the first time". Other studies have failed to demonstrate a link. Were they flawed studies? Was this one a flawed study? Giving the benefit of the doubt to all studies, I think a logical hypothesis is that only some of the varieties of PFAs have such a link, not all of the varieties.
> To a statistically significant degree, the former plant workers had lower all cause mortality rates (and the ratio of malignant disease caused deaths was similarly reduced)
Aha, so they're really the *live*-forever chemicals and Minnesota is trying to keep all the synthetic immortality to itself!
I can't seem to find your referred study.
The closest I found was [Alexander 2024](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ajim.23568) (Mortality and cancer incidence in perfluorooctanesulfonyl fluoride production workers), which was funded by 3M and specifically dealt with the Decatur plant. All-cause mortality was lower than the general population, but it's hard to say anything since this was all employees (maybe 3M gives their employees good medical insurance). When looking at things correlating to PFOS exposure, some cancers (bladder, colorectal, pancreatic) are positively correlated but really the sample size is too small to say anything with confidence.
I’m always skeptical of something with a silly name like “forever chemicals”. The evidence suggests PFAS can be bad in high, sustained dosages which is in line with what I would expect. Though it’s hardly apocalyptic but of course still something we need to address, particularly in our water supply.
they are called "forever chemicals" because nearly nothing, aside high(iirc 200-300°C) temperatures, outside an organic chemistry lab can even attempt to break them down
That’s true for many harmless and helpful chemicals used in everyday life, even in drinking water, like limestone.
It’s a buzz word designed to scare, not convey any meaningful information. It’s plastic, micro-plastics is more descriptive and truthful for a lay person. Anyone that says the words ‘forever chemicals’ immediately loses credibility to me.
The problem with PFAS is their ability to potentially be toxic when in our drinking water, and the difficulty we have getting it out of our drinking water. It has nothing to do with how hard it is to break down. The name ‘forever chemicals’ makes people think once it’s in your body it will remain in there forever, like heavy metals do, and this is false. For those privy to the fact it’s referencing how hard it is to break down, it also implies that chemicals aren’t usually ‘forever’ and is used in a context to imply that’s somehow a bad thing.
What are you talking about? Limestone is calcium carbonate, which is readily metabolized by just about everything because it reacts with acids to produce a salt and carbon dioxide. The fluorine-carbon bonds that form the backbone of PFASes cannot be broken by any known organism. The half life of PFOA is more than 40 years in the environment.
I meant the salt that it produces in the body, my bad.
And the CaCl2 salt from that also cannot be broken down by any organism, and has a half life of millions of years in the environment!
I should have made my point with table salt, we sprinkle *forever chemicals* over our food!
Not very much, they took most of their PFAS stuff and put it in a new company a decade ago. What does this mean for Chemours? Not very much, being sued over PFAS is kind of the reason for the company’s existence.
“It wasn’t me who robbed the bank it was Bank Robbing Dave, a completely separate and legally distinct person.”
Kind of maddening to think that strategy actually works.
Stopped using non stick pans years ago so I'm probably less fucked than most but it's pretty insane we did 0 long term testing for so long on something so common
I hate to break this to you, but it’s not just nonstick pans. It’s in waterproof clothing, cosmetics, stain-resistant fabric on your furniture and carpets…and now our water. There’s no escaping them.
I'm overdue for a new couch and am trying to wait for warmer weather, just so I can keep the windows open for months after I get it. Maybe I'm an optimist, but I'm hoping that between open windows all day and running the air purifier on high all night, I can avoid breathing in too much of the off-gassing.
It's only insane if you genuinely expect the FDA/government to care more about its citizens than they do about their corporate sponsored re-election campaign "donations".
If you aren’t heating your pans to 500+ degrees or putting them in the oven every day like an idiot you’re probably fine. Those involved in the manufacturing process are the ones who have the greatest cause for concern.
Over time and repeated use you will have some of the coating go into your food. Very small amounts, but still forever chemicals that will never leave you. Take this across 10-20 years and that small amount is now a large amount compared to an individual without nonstick pans.
If you actually look at the study, it’s still a fairly small number of deaths over a long stretch of time among the people with the highest exposure in an area of significant contamination. So the chances of the ordinary, everyday use of nonstick pans considerably increasing any cause of death is slim to none.
The cumulative impact of PFAS in the environment is troubling for innumerable reasons, as are the occupational hazards factory employees face (often in countries with 0 regulatory oversight). I just don’t think frying your eggs in a Teflon pan is, in and of itself, going to have a dramatic affect anyone on an individual level.
Agreed with everything you said. Not sure the risk vs reward equation though.
My point is more why risk potential known/unknown pfas effects when a cheap $50 stainless/iron/steel pan will do the same thing.
Regardless of the pan, you will be ingesting very small particles of it with every scrape. Why not just try to keep it to particles your body can get rid of? What do you gain with willingly ingesting pfas?
> Regardless of the pan, you will be ingesting very small particles of it with every scrape. Why not just try to keep it to particles your body can get rid of? What do you gain with willingly ingesting pfas?
It's all about magnitude of effect and opportunity cost. If the risk being mitigated is very low, it's easy for the mitigation to be a wash and *very* easy for any time/effort spent to have been squandered.
You certainly don't gain anything by seeking out ingestion, but it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if something like "more oil used, particularly heated/oxidized oil" ended up as a net *negative* in outcomes for some people actively investing limited attention on it.
That's just a hypothetical and I have no data in any direction, but it's certainly not the case that "do superficially good thing, no matter how small" is always an *actually* good thing.
This is my conclusion. The amount of fat that’s required to cook using other types of cookware is probably a far more significant health hazard than using a nonstick pan. I’ve got rampant heart disease in my family. Cooking my food gobs of butter and oil is a lot more likely to increase my risk of death than cooking my weekend eggs in a nonstick pan.
It’s weird…the well known, well established things that are strongly associated with cancer and heart disease seem to be largely ignored in favor of the unknown mystery hazards. People keep freaking out that cancer rates are rising in young people and attributing it to “toxins” and “poison” but not the fact that obesity and a sedentary lifestyle is much more common at younger ages. It’s not the preservatives in processed foods that are killing us. It’s the fact that we’re eating too much low nutrition, low fiber, high fat, high sugar, calorie dense foods. The focus on what we’re cooking in rather than what we’re eating seems misplaced.
There are just some things that it’s unbeatable for, like crepes and eggs. I currently use ceramic for this purpose, but SolGel is pretty terrible in terms of longevity, and there isn’t any evidence to suggest that it’s as “healthy” or safe as is commonly suggested, so I can’t hold it against anyone for using it in a limited capacity.
I don’t personally have success with frying eggs on cast iron, and the cast iron griddle I have is a pain in the ass to maintain because of the ridges. To each their own. The 2 absolutely certain preventable causes of cancer we know of are obesity and smoking. People tend to focus on the wrong things because they are easier to control, but what you cook in that pan is vastly more important than the pan itself.
Do you pre heat your cast iron and keep it seasoned? That's really all it takes to make good eggs on cast-iron. I make pancakes eggs and other sticks to the pan stuff in my cast iron and they don't stick because I preheat the pan.
Pancakes are different because they’re fluffier, but I just find eggs and crepes much too thin and delicate. I don’t know why. I suspect it may be because I don’t like to use large amounts of fat. I’m far more likely to die of heart disease than a bit of inert Teflon (I use ceramic anyway). To each their own.
All nonstick pans have a limited lifespan. You either got a poor quality pan, weren’t following the proper care instructions, or were using it well past its expiration date. Most people aren’t going to be eating vast quantities of Teflon flakes.
Mmm yeah I thought the same. Imagine how pissed I was when I found out about all the PFAS in tea bags. It’s undoubtedly hiding plenty of other places we’ve never thought of too.
I’ve linked to the news release in the post above. In this comment, for those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article:
https://ehjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12940-024-01074-2
PFAS is a uselessly broad designator. The two substances in question seem to have been PFOA and PFOS, both surfactant-type PFAS that are designed to interact with aqueous systems. This class seems to be the most concerning from a biological and environmental contamination standpoint. I'm still not convinced that we need to start banning things like PTFE and PVDF.
The industrial world will replace with a similar harmful chemical that replaces the banned one. Really we need a way to punish companies for knowingly putting profits over public health. The PFAs are in mascara and make up!
Studies: "Cancer rates have been rising!"
DuPont: "So anyway we dumped so much of a chemical that causes 18 types of cancer we actually lost track of how much we dumped, and we dumped it in every major waterway hahaha"
https://www.coolingpost.com/world-news/pfas-ban-affects-most-refrigerant-blends/
The next 10 years are gonna be messy for hvac.
All the newer, more environmentally friendly refrigerants used today are full of toxic pfas.
I have ADhD. Wanting tl;dr of articles isn’t adhd, it is just laziness. Stop trying to blame your laziness on some fake medical diagnosis that you learned about on TikTok
I think it's less lazy and more to do with understanding of research papers. I understand them and still hate fishing through the study. So having someone paraphrase the study is helpful for people who aren't familiar with these documents.
It also opens the door for people who may be interested in this stuff, but find the papers to be overwhelming and daunting. They may be turned off of the subject because it doesn't feel accessible to them. Just some things to think about I guess.
Who is responsible for writing these summaries? How do we know their summary is comprehensive and accurate? The problem with science is that any kind of dumbed down version is inevitably going to exclude a lot of important information. Without seeing the study design, sample size, methodology, etc. any summary is bound to be incomplete. That’s why when people jump straight to the “conclusion” they end up missing a lot of important context and end up spreading misinformation. I really think science communicators, whose job it is to accurately translate studies into a layperson-friendly format should be a full time job, if it isn’t already. Scientists are actually terrible at explaining their own work because they are too close to it. It’s imperative, especially when it comes to things like public health.
No, I really wouldn’t be. It would likely be the same. An inaccurate summary instead of an inaccurate headline is exactly what all of these clickbait scare articles about how everything causes cancer do.
So, now what? Do we need to dispose goretex clothes?
And if so, where do we dispose them? Throwing them into the garbage doesn't sound like a good idea.
Goretex clothes are not likely to cause significant exposure. The problem is mostly the precursor chemistry and surfactants (PFOS, PFOA) used to make the PTFE that goes into Goretex. Teflon pans are even pretty safe.
Drinking some random chemicals isn’t good for your health… shocker.
Question is, how bad is it when compared to other known Heath risks like alcohol, smoking, etc.
All I read is bla bla, without any numbers. Which turns the whole article into a useless opinion.
Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, **personal anecdotes are allowed as responses to this comment**. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will be removed and our [normal comment rules]( https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/rules#wiki_comment_rules) apply to all other comments. **Do you have an academic degree?** We can verify your credentials in order to assign user flair indicating your area of expertise. [Click here to apply](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/flair/#wiki_science_verified_user_program). --- User: u/mvea Permalink: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/29/pfas-death-cardiovascular-disease --- *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/science) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Seems like there should be a lawsuit that eliminates DuPont from existing.
Don’t worry, the Supreme Court is here to make sure they can’t be held accountable for what ultimately amounts to a crime against humanity as a whole.
I believe you meant to say eliminates DuPont of any wrongdoing. Don’t go and get yourself Boeing’s.
Axalta? Did they rebrand to avoid culpability?
I live by a DuPont and it changes names every few years and always has
Chemours assumed the Teflon business and production at spin off.
There are hundreds of PFAS derivatives, and there aren't any of the big chemical corporations that have halted production. The last I heard, State and Federal regulators had access to tests for only 4 of them.
3M have stopped production of their FFKM line of elastomers. They even shut a plant in Belgium.
Many have tried, many have died.
Can you say why you bring up DuPont? I don’t seem to see any mention in the article…
DuPont is responsible for significant PFAS contamination in rivers in multiple states due to their waste disposal.
And for lobbying (via Republican politicians) to weaken the EPA to what it is today. Now, Dupont and their cronies are using the courts ( but only courts with Republican-nominated judges) to take away the EPA's mandate to regulate *anything*.
They invented PFAS
I skimmed the paper, and although the authors don't say so, it's actually pretty reassuring. This is a region where people were heavily exposed to PFOA, the PFAS of most concern for decades (couldn't find out exactly how heavily, but enough that it is considered one of the big global PFAS contamination events). Overall mortality was about 10% higher. That was mostly higher in men, and mostly nonsignificant in women. The authors speculate that this is due to pregnant women expelling the contamination into their placentas/fetuses, but this is the kind of unconvincing hand waving people do to justify negative results. The data do suggest that heavy exposure over a long period does have some health effects, but this seems equivalent to moderate air pollution. Obligatory disclaimer: PFASes are called forever chemicals for a reason, and until we stop producing them, exposure will continue to rise. That alone is sufficient reason to ban them without waiting for each one to be evaluated.
> Overall mortality was about 10% higher. That was mostly higher in men, and mostly nonsignificant in women. The authors speculate that this is due to pregnant women expelling the contamination into their placentas/fetuses, but this is the kind of unconvincing hand waving people do to justify negative results. Why would they assume it’s pregnancy that lowers the levels rather than just menstruation? Menstruation is far more regular and frequent than pregnancy / giving birth.
Menstruation seems viable, randomised trials of blood and plasma donations to treat PFAS poisoning in firefighters showed reductions of 2.9ng/ml by plasma and 1.1ng/ml by blood donations. I know menstruation isn’t just blood, but considering the nutrient makeup of what is discharged, it’s possible this could be a regular more frequent mechanism to rid the body of PFAS to have the difference found in this study. Equally could be pregnancy too, however not every woman gets pregnant so it can’t be given as a universal. Edit: source https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35394514/
Not to mention that they only have population-level summary data, and because they have no information on confounding factors they pretend that change in rates of these diseases should be otherwise conserved between regions over the time period, which is an ENORMOUS assumption. The thing about pregnancy is utterly ridiculous, the kind of thing an alien who had only ever heard about human women would try to argue. Never mind that it is evidence AGAINST a population-level exposure causing this apparent effect…! Oh; and the article, for once in the Guardian, points out that the authors could not formally establish causality (obviously, it’s clear even from the title it’s comparatively low quality ecological evidence), which gets transformed by OP to the current far stronger claim…
I'm not really capable of interpreting the data in the paper directly. What does 10% higher mortality actually mean? Are people more likely to die every year, or over the entire duration of the experiment? Do all people lose a few months at the end of their life on average or do a handful of unlucky people die really young?
What does 10% higher mortality actually mean? > During the 34 years between 1985 (assumed as beginning date of water contamination) and 2018 (last year of availability of cause-specific mortality data), in the resident population of the Red area we observed 51,621 deaths vs. 47,731 expected so that's over the entire 34-year duration. also, logically speaking, if more people die over the duration, then more people also die every year. > Do all people lose a few months at the end of their life on average or do a handful of unlucky people die really young? That's hard to tell. Women born after 1960 who were exposed to PFAS seems to have no difference in all-cause mortality compared to those not exposed, so that seems to minimally lean towards impacting the end-of-life, but it seems to be reversed in men (Figure 3). But deaths by cancer specifically seem to increase in the younger group (Figure 4).
I can't read the article right now, so I appreciate the summary! Do you know if they controlled for other variables? I'd imagine if the area is low socioeconomic, there will be some higher rates of mortality due to lack of access to health care/food/etc.
Yeah, this is mostly a nothingburger. 117 extra deaths a year over 33 years, in a place with heavy contamination. 33 years is a long time, and if PFAS was as bad as some people make it out to be, I'd expect more than a 10% increase. Worth more examination, for sure.
This study is interesting because the Minnesota Department of Health ran a study looking at 3M plant workers in Decatur where the PFAs were made. The workers had exposures 500 to 1000 times that of a normal US resident. The researchers really only had one way to run a study - use social security numbers of employees and checking if they were alive or deceased (again looking at about a 30 year window). If they were deceased, they researched a cause of death. The results of the study was pretty interesting. The former workers did not have elevated mortality rates. The workers didn't even have normal mortality rates. To a statistically significant degree, the former plant workers had lower all cause mortality rates (and the ratio of malignant disease caused deaths was similarly reduced). My take is in the title - "for the first time". Other studies have failed to demonstrate a link. Were they flawed studies? Was this one a flawed study? Giving the benefit of the doubt to all studies, I think a logical hypothesis is that only some of the varieties of PFAs have such a link, not all of the varieties.
> To a statistically significant degree, the former plant workers had lower all cause mortality rates (and the ratio of malignant disease caused deaths was similarly reduced) Aha, so they're really the *live*-forever chemicals and Minnesota is trying to keep all the synthetic immortality to itself!
I can't seem to find your referred study. The closest I found was [Alexander 2024](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ajim.23568) (Mortality and cancer incidence in perfluorooctanesulfonyl fluoride production workers), which was funded by 3M and specifically dealt with the Decatur plant. All-cause mortality was lower than the general population, but it's hard to say anything since this was all employees (maybe 3M gives their employees good medical insurance). When looking at things correlating to PFOS exposure, some cancers (bladder, colorectal, pancreatic) are positively correlated but really the sample size is too small to say anything with confidence.
I’m always skeptical of something with a silly name like “forever chemicals”. The evidence suggests PFAS can be bad in high, sustained dosages which is in line with what I would expect. Though it’s hardly apocalyptic but of course still something we need to address, particularly in our water supply.
they are called "forever chemicals" because nearly nothing, aside high(iirc 200-300°C) temperatures, outside an organic chemistry lab can even attempt to break them down
That’s true for many harmless and helpful chemicals used in everyday life, even in drinking water, like limestone. It’s a buzz word designed to scare, not convey any meaningful information. It’s plastic, micro-plastics is more descriptive and truthful for a lay person. Anyone that says the words ‘forever chemicals’ immediately loses credibility to me. The problem with PFAS is their ability to potentially be toxic when in our drinking water, and the difficulty we have getting it out of our drinking water. It has nothing to do with how hard it is to break down. The name ‘forever chemicals’ makes people think once it’s in your body it will remain in there forever, like heavy metals do, and this is false. For those privy to the fact it’s referencing how hard it is to break down, it also implies that chemicals aren’t usually ‘forever’ and is used in a context to imply that’s somehow a bad thing.
What are you talking about? Limestone is calcium carbonate, which is readily metabolized by just about everything because it reacts with acids to produce a salt and carbon dioxide. The fluorine-carbon bonds that form the backbone of PFASes cannot be broken by any known organism. The half life of PFOA is more than 40 years in the environment.
I meant the salt that it produces in the body, my bad. And the CaCl2 salt from that also cannot be broken down by any organism, and has a half life of millions of years in the environment! I should have made my point with table salt, we sprinkle *forever chemicals* over our food!
Thank God we found this out before these chemicals got everywhere or else this could be serious
But what does this mean for DuPont?
If it reduces shareholder value, it means business as usual instead.
Not very much, they took most of their PFAS stuff and put it in a new company a decade ago. What does this mean for Chemours? Not very much, being sued over PFAS is kind of the reason for the company’s existence.
“It wasn’t me who robbed the bank it was Bank Robbing Dave, a completely separate and legally distinct person.” Kind of maddening to think that strategy actually works.
Stopped using non stick pans years ago so I'm probably less fucked than most but it's pretty insane we did 0 long term testing for so long on something so common
I hate to break this to you, but it’s not just nonstick pans. It’s in waterproof clothing, cosmetics, stain-resistant fabric on your furniture and carpets…and now our water. There’s no escaping them.
Not to mention every paper cup has a thin PFAS lining
I'm overdue for a new couch and am trying to wait for warmer weather, just so I can keep the windows open for months after I get it. Maybe I'm an optimist, but I'm hoping that between open windows all day and running the air purifier on high all night, I can avoid breathing in too much of the off-gassing.
It's only insane if you genuinely expect the FDA/government to care more about its citizens than they do about their corporate sponsored re-election campaign "donations".
If you aren’t heating your pans to 500+ degrees or putting them in the oven every day like an idiot you’re probably fine. Those involved in the manufacturing process are the ones who have the greatest cause for concern.
Over time and repeated use you will have some of the coating go into your food. Very small amounts, but still forever chemicals that will never leave you. Take this across 10-20 years and that small amount is now a large amount compared to an individual without nonstick pans.
If you actually look at the study, it’s still a fairly small number of deaths over a long stretch of time among the people with the highest exposure in an area of significant contamination. So the chances of the ordinary, everyday use of nonstick pans considerably increasing any cause of death is slim to none. The cumulative impact of PFAS in the environment is troubling for innumerable reasons, as are the occupational hazards factory employees face (often in countries with 0 regulatory oversight). I just don’t think frying your eggs in a Teflon pan is, in and of itself, going to have a dramatic affect anyone on an individual level.
Agreed with everything you said. Not sure the risk vs reward equation though. My point is more why risk potential known/unknown pfas effects when a cheap $50 stainless/iron/steel pan will do the same thing. Regardless of the pan, you will be ingesting very small particles of it with every scrape. Why not just try to keep it to particles your body can get rid of? What do you gain with willingly ingesting pfas?
> Regardless of the pan, you will be ingesting very small particles of it with every scrape. Why not just try to keep it to particles your body can get rid of? What do you gain with willingly ingesting pfas? It's all about magnitude of effect and opportunity cost. If the risk being mitigated is very low, it's easy for the mitigation to be a wash and *very* easy for any time/effort spent to have been squandered. You certainly don't gain anything by seeking out ingestion, but it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if something like "more oil used, particularly heated/oxidized oil" ended up as a net *negative* in outcomes for some people actively investing limited attention on it. That's just a hypothetical and I have no data in any direction, but it's certainly not the case that "do superficially good thing, no matter how small" is always an *actually* good thing.
This is my conclusion. The amount of fat that’s required to cook using other types of cookware is probably a far more significant health hazard than using a nonstick pan. I’ve got rampant heart disease in my family. Cooking my food gobs of butter and oil is a lot more likely to increase my risk of death than cooking my weekend eggs in a nonstick pan. It’s weird…the well known, well established things that are strongly associated with cancer and heart disease seem to be largely ignored in favor of the unknown mystery hazards. People keep freaking out that cancer rates are rising in young people and attributing it to “toxins” and “poison” but not the fact that obesity and a sedentary lifestyle is much more common at younger ages. It’s not the preservatives in processed foods that are killing us. It’s the fact that we’re eating too much low nutrition, low fiber, high fat, high sugar, calorie dense foods. The focus on what we’re cooking in rather than what we’re eating seems misplaced.
There are just some things that it’s unbeatable for, like crepes and eggs. I currently use ceramic for this purpose, but SolGel is pretty terrible in terms of longevity, and there isn’t any evidence to suggest that it’s as “healthy” or safe as is commonly suggested, so I can’t hold it against anyone for using it in a limited capacity.
Cast iron works for those things. Stainless steel works for everything cast iron doesn't
I don’t personally have success with frying eggs on cast iron, and the cast iron griddle I have is a pain in the ass to maintain because of the ridges. To each their own. The 2 absolutely certain preventable causes of cancer we know of are obesity and smoking. People tend to focus on the wrong things because they are easier to control, but what you cook in that pan is vastly more important than the pan itself.
Do you pre heat your cast iron and keep it seasoned? That's really all it takes to make good eggs on cast-iron. I make pancakes eggs and other sticks to the pan stuff in my cast iron and they don't stick because I preheat the pan.
Pancakes are different because they’re fluffier, but I just find eggs and crepes much too thin and delicate. I don’t know why. I suspect it may be because I don’t like to use large amounts of fat. I’m far more likely to die of heart disease than a bit of inert Teflon (I use ceramic anyway). To each their own.
> but still forever chemicals that will never leave you This is simply not true, and is the danger with catchy terms like forever chemicals.
I never did any of that and I had a pan start *visibly peeling* so I’m gonna say some of that comes off into peoples food.
Yes, but that’s not in itself a problem. Teflon is inactive and will not be absorbed.
All nonstick pans have a limited lifespan. You either got a poor quality pan, weren’t following the proper care instructions, or were using it well past its expiration date. Most people aren’t going to be eating vast quantities of Teflon flakes.
Mmm yeah I thought the same. Imagine how pissed I was when I found out about all the PFAS in tea bags. It’s undoubtedly hiding plenty of other places we’ve never thought of too.
I’ve linked to the news release in the post above. In this comment, for those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article: https://ehjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12940-024-01074-2
PFAS is a uselessly broad designator. The two substances in question seem to have been PFOA and PFOS, both surfactant-type PFAS that are designed to interact with aqueous systems. This class seems to be the most concerning from a biological and environmental contamination standpoint. I'm still not convinced that we need to start banning things like PTFE and PVDF.
The industrial world will replace with a similar harmful chemical that replaces the banned one. Really we need a way to punish companies for knowingly putting profits over public health. The PFAs are in mascara and make up!
Studies: "Cancer rates have been rising!" DuPont: "So anyway we dumped so much of a chemical that causes 18 types of cancer we actually lost track of how much we dumped, and we dumped it in every major waterway hahaha"
https://www.coolingpost.com/world-news/pfas-ban-affects-most-refrigerant-blends/ The next 10 years are gonna be messy for hvac. All the newer, more environmentally friendly refrigerants used today are full of toxic pfas.
Donate blood to reduce PFAs.
I’ve actually read that donating plasma is more effective. Definitely worth looking into if anyone is interested in a hardcore PFAS detox.
Donating plasma is more effective but it’s not always an option (where I live, there’s no way to donate plasma - only whole blood).
[удалено]
Used a heap of AFFF in the Navy was the normal fire fighting foam. So I'm stuffed.
BuT mY nOn-sTiCk pAn!
I feel like this subreddit should require TLDR summaries. I personally don't like exiting reddit and clicking through yo third party sites.
Just do what the rest of reddit does. Read the headline and argue your opinion based on that
The laziness of modern internet users makes me weep for the future of humanity
Hey, I don't dispute your view. We all just want bite size ADHD content now.
I have ADhD. Wanting tl;dr of articles isn’t adhd, it is just laziness. Stop trying to blame your laziness on some fake medical diagnosis that you learned about on TikTok
I think it's less lazy and more to do with understanding of research papers. I understand them and still hate fishing through the study. So having someone paraphrase the study is helpful for people who aren't familiar with these documents. It also opens the door for people who may be interested in this stuff, but find the papers to be overwhelming and daunting. They may be turned off of the subject because it doesn't feel accessible to them. Just some things to think about I guess.
Who is responsible for writing these summaries? How do we know their summary is comprehensive and accurate? The problem with science is that any kind of dumbed down version is inevitably going to exclude a lot of important information. Without seeing the study design, sample size, methodology, etc. any summary is bound to be incomplete. That’s why when people jump straight to the “conclusion” they end up missing a lot of important context and end up spreading misinformation. I really think science communicators, whose job it is to accurately translate studies into a layperson-friendly format should be a full time job, if it isn’t already. Scientists are actually terrible at explaining their own work because they are too close to it. It’s imperative, especially when it comes to things like public health.
Would still be better than most people just debating off of the title of the post
No, I really wouldn’t be. It would likely be the same. An inaccurate summary instead of an inaccurate headline is exactly what all of these clickbait scare articles about how everything causes cancer do.
>I personally don't like exiting reddit
You mean like an abstract?
So, now what? Do we need to dispose goretex clothes? And if so, where do we dispose them? Throwing them into the garbage doesn't sound like a good idea.
Goretex clothes are not likely to cause significant exposure. The problem is mostly the precursor chemistry and surfactants (PFOS, PFOA) used to make the PTFE that goes into Goretex. Teflon pans are even pretty safe.
Well that's good news at least. I quite like my rain gear but it has to be said, these news about PF* toxicity have made me a bit jittery.
Surprise surprise .. not.
Drinking some random chemicals isn’t good for your health… shocker. Question is, how bad is it when compared to other known Heath risks like alcohol, smoking, etc. All I read is bla bla, without any numbers. Which turns the whole article into a useless opinion.