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From the article: > The chemicals, resistant to breaking down in the environment, are known as perfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS. Some have been linked to cancers, liver damage, low birth weight and other health problems.
"linked to" is a weasel phrase. It means nothing. How big is the effect size? How robust is the evidence? What's the dose-response curve?
This problem has been brewing for a long time, and is likely worse than any of us can grasp. Here's an enlightening read: (warning: it's long) https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/welcome-to-b...
Edit: apparently there was a movie recently released about it, that I had never heard of until I reached this thread. I still think a TV series is the best way to approach this sort of topic as you have more hours to sink into the details.
It is constantly amazing to me that "cover up the existence of poisonous chemicals in your drinking water" is a viable position for a democratically-elected officeholder to have. What a world we live in.
This sounds very much like something communist Russia did during the Chernobyl incident. Why are our governments so corrupt?
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Taxes are the original crowd funding
Right, but I think modern crowd-funding is inherently designed for trust, otherwise people won't fund. Taxes are not an option for the payer - for a reason - but still I think its lacking on the trust element, which is fundamental to a functioning society. Maybe then the crowd-funded bodies are meant to keep an eye on the government to do its job.
(And yes I realize that in some of these areas the concentrations were orders of magnitude higher; the recommendation for allowable concentration is < 1PPT according to the article)
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Can you provide any examples to support your statement? I don’t see how the production of materials and transportation of the materials and people could not increase pollution, given the current infrastructure which requires use of fossil fuels, and which will not change in the short term.
You're forgetting the #1 cheapest and most effective way to reduce our environmental impact: efficiency of energy use and efficiency of resource use. In the case of GDP, energy and resources are both costs that businesses try to minimize in order to provide end products and services, which is what the GDP measures. Therefore, the carbon intensity of a dollar of GDP is expected to decrease in time, as people discover…
How can that be cheaper and more effective than reducing consumption?
>If we were to directly price in the costs of CO2 via a tax, the fall would be far faster. And as we come up with tech that doesn't emit, and is cheaper than fossil fuel extraction, we will stop using these damaging resources completely.
I don't think this is politically feasible in the timeframe necessary. The hundreds of millions up and coming in China/India/Brazil/Nigeria/etc want a piece of that nice Western life with a home and car and vacations.
The only realistic solution in a short enough timeframe is to try to educate everyone to consume less. Consume less space (more dense living), consume less fuel (enabled by dense living as public transport is now feasible), consume less products (vastly fewer cheap plastic toys and whatnot), etc.
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That would almost certainly work but make sure to remineralize the water after.
I have been drinking non-remineralized reverse osmosis water since conception and I'm fine. Plus remineralization isn't as effective as you would think. Most of the minerals removed by RO can't be easily reintroduced as they aren't readily dissolved.
I moved into a new house last year near 2 closed down USAF military bases (known to have been previously contaminated by firefighter foam) and did a ton of research on the issue since the house water comes from a well (free water!). I ended up getting a professional water filtration system installed in our basement (carbon tanks, UV light filter, reverse osmosis). Cost me $5k+ for install and ~$1500 year to swap out the tanks and service the system. It's pricey, but you can't put a price on clean water.
If there was a magical way of convincing every single person in the U.S. to stop buying X, what would we have to stop buying to stop this pollution?