Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

U.S. drinking water widely contaminated with 'forever chemicals': report

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 413 posts

Re: U.S. drinking water widely contaminated with 'forever chemicals': report

#151

Post by refurb »

sparker72678 wrote: post #126

Can anyone help me understand how anything at a concentration of I'm not arguing, just trying to get my head around it. (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)

I had a similar question.

I assume that these compounds aren’t readily excreted from the body, so you’d want a very low limit with the understanding it would accumulate over time?

Just a guess.

Re: U.S. drinking water widely contaminated with 'forever chemicals': report

#152

Post by molteanu »

vasilipupkin wrote: post #143
molteanu wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your comment, but just for the sake of the argument, let's look at it like this. The elected officials are also responsible for the functioning of the society in general. Sometimes you need quite the acrobatics to achieve that, I suppose. In this very case, what would happen if this report would circulate widely and become common knowledge among the population in a short time? One outcome would be that s…

More importantly, based on this article, we literally do not know anything. How bad is this really? Is the draft report accurate ? Etc etc. let’s not jump to conclusions, let’s just be comfortable admitting we don’t know what’s going on.

Well, imagine that. I'm from Eastern Europe. How bad can it be around here since we don't get any kind of info or measurements? You can just hope for the best!

Re: U.S. drinking water widely contaminated with 'forever chemicals': report

#153

Post by JohnJamesRambo »

goda90 wrote: post #135
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #117

A reminder that you can remove these and many other contaminants from your water with a simple undersink RO filter. They are quite inexpensive and start at about $160 on Amazon for a lifetime of clean drinking and cooking water. https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/list-of-household-filters-appr...

Out of curiosity, I looked up maintenance costs on RO filters. It looks like the filters that need replacing annually are $20-$30 for the set, and the membrane that needs to be replaced every 2-5 years is $30-$50.

I’ve found those guidelines to be pretty conservative. I think I’ve maybe changed the membrane once. A simple TDS (total dissolved solids) meter can be had on Amazon for <$20 that tells you if the water quality is changing over time and it is time for a change.

Re: U.S. drinking water widely contaminated with 'forever chemicals': report

#154

Post by blaser-waffle »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #137
matthewdgreen wrote: post #48

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.

> "cover up the existence of poisonous chemicals in your drinking water" is a viable position for a democratically-elected officeholder to have. I'm not sure if you actually read the article, but the EPA has known about this since 2001. Attempting to make this all about the Trump administration is quite myopic. From the article: The EPA has known since at least 2001 about the problem of PFAS in drinking water but has…

Then let's make it about the George W administration. They spent 8 years ceaselessly hammering TERRORISM and GAYS GETTIN MARRIED -- why take action on this?

See also: "History of US Presidential Assaults on Modern Environmental Health Protection" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5922215/

Re: U.S. drinking water widely contaminated with 'forever chemicals': report

#155

Post by goda90 »

sparker72678 wrote: post #144
goda90 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like 4 to 1. Not great, but probably not a huge hit if you hook it up only for drinking water. I wonder how hard it would be to pump that waste water to your toilet tanks instead.

Some people just let it gravity drain to another container (inside or out) and then use it for outdoor watering. The flow rate & pressure is typically very low for the drain water with these systems, so you'd need another setup to handle pumping it to your toilet, etc. Sending it outside is probably the easiest way to immediately use it.

Unfortunately some areas only have need for outdoor watering a few months of the year, so other uses might need to be found.

Re: U.S. drinking water widely contaminated with 'forever chemicals': report

#156

Post by blaser-waffle »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #117

A reminder that you can remove these and many other contaminants from your water with a simple undersink RO filter. They are quite inexpensive and start at about $160 on Amazon for a lifetime of clean drinking and cooking water. https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/list-of-household-filters-appr...

Shifting the costs to the consumer -- standard externality game.

Re: U.S. drinking water widely contaminated with 'forever chemicals': report

#157

Post by hlindwin »

> Results from a single sample form a snapshot of what was found in tap water at a specific site.

This is a weak statistical methodology.

>They are likely representative of the water in the area where the sample was taken...

I don't agree with that.

Quotes from the source: https://www.ewg.org/research/national-pfas-testing/

That said, this is serious problem.

Re: U.S. drinking water widely contaminated with 'forever chemicals': report

#158

Post by rukittenme »

nck4222 wrote: post #85
Frost1x wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Democracy is mostly a facade anymore, unfortunately. Don't get me wrong, we haven't gone completely south to a dictatorship--there are many protections in place to keep things from falling apart but nonetheless I feel as though we're in the decline in the respect of being democratic. The underlying failed assumption in our representative democracy was that representatives would represent their constituents' interests…

>Democracy is mostly a facade in the US anyway. But I agree, the US government isn't functioning 1) as originally intended or 2) for the benefit of the majority of the people it 'represents.' Although it's worth noting that 'as the forefathers intended' carries more weight than it typically should. Their intentions were mostly based on philosophical guess work, as they didn't have a whole lot of empirical data or exi…

> the US government isn't functioning for the benefit of the majority of the people it 'represents.'

American democracy was never meant to benefit just the majority. Which is why we have undemocratic institutions (such as the Judiciary). Minorities (both long-standing and ephemeral -- e.g. a race of people versus the losing party in an election) exist and should be protected from the majority and should be represented in government. Only long-term, widely-held political thoughts can truly dominate minorities in this country.

The fact that power swings from Republicans, back to Democrats, back to Republicans, and so on, illustrates that there is a very weak majority in this country and no consensus opinion on how to move forward.

> Although the EU has its own sets of problems, but at the very least seems more representative of the people than the US government.

From an outsiders perspective many aspects of the EU seem undemocratic and ad-hoc. Can you explain your view of the EU to me?

Re: U.S. drinking water widely contaminated with 'forever chemicals': report

#159

Post by logfromblammo »

jb775 wrote: post #129

I've seen this issue trending on HN multiple times within the past year, search "PFAS contamination" for more info online. 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 instal…

> "...you can't put a price on clean water."

Is that... is that not exactly what you just did? $5k capital expense and $1500/yr operational expense.

That system is almost certainly more than enough for your own household needs, so you could probably sell the excess capacity to your neighbors at near cost to cover some of the operational expenses.

Re: U.S. drinking water widely contaminated with 'forever chemicals': report

#160

Post by phkahler »

Frost1x wrote: post #57
matthewdgreen wrote: post #48

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.

Democracy is mostly a facade anymore, unfortunately. Don't get me wrong, we haven't gone completely south to a dictatorship--there are many protections in place to keep things from falling apart but nonetheless I feel as though we're in the decline in the respect of being democratic. The underlying failed assumption in our representative democracy was that representatives would represent their constituents' interests…

>> The underlying failed assumption in our representative democracy was that representatives would represent their constituents' interests ...

For that to have a chance at working we need to get the outside influence out of government.

I propose that each state ban political ads funded by anyone outside the state - including the national parties. If you dont live there, your input is not wanted.

Another problem is that we ship our representatives off to Washington, away from us and surrounded by outside influencers. Not sure what to do about that, but it's a recipe for not representing the people who they ostensibly should.

Post reply on HN