Firefighting foam leaves toxic legacy in Californians’ drinking water • Hacker News Board

Re: Firefighting foam leaves toxic legacy in Californians’ drinking water

#141

Post by isthispermanent » Wed, Oct 09, 2019, 3:04 PM UTC

strainer wrote: post #93

isthispermanent wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just about humans. Waterways, wildlife, agriculture. The term "Salt the Earth" is shorthand for covering land with enough salt to prevent anything from growing. Whether it's directly benign to humans is one thing, but the indirect effects are hard to account for.

That phrase appears to be apocryphal, salt quickly disperses in practice and no land has ever been known to be deliberately contaminated by it. I feel these vague worries about road salting relate to this article about highly toxic contamination as a kind of "what-about-ery" but are even less connected by having been introduced as "kind-of-reminds-me-about-ery".

We're dancing around the point here.

Point being, that we cannot always determine the effects of continuously repeating small, seemingly benign actions. Taking tens of thousands of tons of salt from one place on Earth and dumping it on another where salt is relatively scarce has unknown side effects.

Hand-waving over it with "eh, but it probably won't hurt anything" misses the point of the discussion. That is the attitude that tends to get us trouble.

Smoking: "eh, that's probably not what's causing you to get sick" Climate change: "eh, it's probably not us" etc.

Re: Firefighting foam leaves toxic legacy in Californians’ drinking water

#142

Post by _fldr » Wed, Oct 09, 2019, 5:03 PM UTC

ubertoop wrote: post #54

I grew up approximately 2.5 miles from a major rocket manufacturer. We're talking R&D and manufacturing of jet propulsion and rocket systems since the 80s. They totally polluted the water tables in the area with by-products of rocket fuel and other industrial chemicals used to clean engines. They were fined in the 90s and supposedly worked with local water authorities to setup a filtration system... but decades later…

Ah, yes. Good ol' Aerojet. I grew up in Chino Hills, CA near the base of their operation there. As a kid, playing in the gullies around the area, we didn't really question the sounds of munitions in the background during the day--until we became teenagers and started exploring it.

After a few friends retrieved spent (and unspent) mortar shells, it quickly was guarded and a project to clean up the site was initiated.

These fine folks have been following the closure, cleanup and build over of the facility for some time: https://www.enviroreporter.com/investigations/aerojet-chino-...

For the low price of only $3.5M, you too can own a nice house on a toxic waste site: https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2276-Celano-Ct-Chino-Hill...

Re: Firefighting foam leaves toxic legacy in Californians’ drinking water

#143

Post by strainer » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 12:34 AM UTC

isthispermanent wrote: post #141

strainer wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That phrase appears to be apocryphal, salt quickly disperses in practice and no land has ever been known to be deliberately contaminated by it. I feel these vague worries about road salting relate to this article about highly toxic contamination as a kind of "what-about-ery" but are even less connected by having been introduced as "kind-of-reminds-me-about-ery".

We're dancing around the point here. Point being, that we cannot always determine the effects of continuously repeating small, seemingly benign actions. Taking tens of thousands of tons of salt from one place on Earth and dumping it on another where salt is relatively scarce has unknown side effects. Hand-waving over it with "eh, but it probably won't hurt anything" misses the point of the discussion. That is the att…

Since you are curious I really suggest you look into it - read some environmental studies and articles on salt pollution, get some details on the actual situation to offer rather than you know, just sayings and analogies.

Re: Firefighting foam leaves toxic legacy in Californians’ drinking water

#144

Post by masklinn » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 6:56 PM UTC

s0rce wrote: post #133

masklinn wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do the toxins get carried on along with distillation as well? That's ridiculously energy-intensive and you'd probably have to re-mineralise it before storage or consumption to be on the safe side. Cooking might actually be the worst issue here, low-mineralisation cooking water would leech minerals out, leading to lower nutrient intake (unless yo keep the cooking water for drinking).

Distillation would make the water safe, reverse osmosis should also work. You don't need to remineralize water, you get minerals from food not from tap/mineral water and you don't need to worry about leaching your pots and pans.

> You don't need to remineralize water, you get minerals from food not from tap/mineral water

That's exactly the issue I'm pointing out in using distilled water from cooking, you will lose those minerals in the food to cooking water unless you drink it, so a normally proper died would not be anymore.

Re: Firefighting foam leaves toxic legacy in Californians’ drinking water

#145

Post by s0rce » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 1:22 AM UTC

masklinn wrote: post #144

s0rce wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Distillation would make the water safe, reverse osmosis should also work. You don't need to remineralize water, you get minerals from food not from tap/mineral water and you don't need to worry about leaching your pots and pans.

> You don't need to remineralize water, you get minerals from food not from tap/mineral water That's exactly the issue I'm pointing out in using distilled water from cooking, you will lose those minerals in the food to cooking water unless you drink it, so a normally proper died would not be anymore.

I doubt it, tap water and distilled water are both substantially lower in minerals than food, effectively 0 in comparison, I suspect if you boil your foods in either water the mineral content of the resulting food will be roughly the same.