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

reuters.com

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

#321

Post by shmerl »

rayiner wrote: post #293
jokoon wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is speculative > and you may just be trading one poison for another one or a worse one. What poison exactly? This almost is whataboutism.

It's not at all speculative. At the very least, getting rid of PFAS will cost money and reduce convenience. Those things are valuable. People will accept some level of risk in order to have comfort and convenience and save money--and to do so is completely rational. That's why people drive, eat red meat, etc.

> People will accept some level of risk in order to have comfort

That's a pretty evil argument, when poisoned people for the most part have no clue they are being poisoned, or even that many are being poisoned due to spread of these chemicals.

"Accept" implies they know the consequences. Those who profit on this, benefit from obscurity.

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

#322

Post by sjg007 »

nate_meurer wrote: post #292
mark-r wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider what happens to your immune system when it detects a foreign particle that it can't get rid of because there's no way to interact with it.

For the most part, what happens is nothing. PTFE is completely biologically inert, which is why it's commonly used in surgical implants and prosthetics. Only the finest particles ( Ingested PTFE passes right through the digestive system unaltered. You can scrape the non-stick coating off of all your pans and eat it, and there will no detectable fluorinated chemicals in your blood. However, if you heat that nonstick p…

>However, if you heat that nonstick pan above 600 deg F, the decomposition products can easily injure you, and sometimes worse.

If you have birds the fumes will kill them. It's that whole canary in the coal mine.

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

#323

Post by shmerl »

buckminster wrote: post #285
shmerl wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think oil concerns are much less problematic since you can decide what oil to use (or use no oil altogether) than ones that come from the chemicals you can't control because they are already in the water or your frying pan. You can simply cook, not fry if you worry about oil. On the other hand you can't avoid poisoned water unless you filter it. So it's a false argument here.

You can choose to use non-non-stick frying pans.

That won't stop pollution of the water sources, so it will come to you either way.

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

#324

Post by strainer »

i_am_proteus wrote: post #268
bjornjajajaja wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly people have “stayed wet“ for centuries without chemicals. We’ve hung our clothes to dry instead of using machines too. Lots of apparel products are highly overrated. And those water resistant coatings just come off anyway. I think the best thing to do is go on a hike near a river with a dog, and watch how the dog marches through the water unwaveringly even when it’s cold!

There's also waxed cotton and oilskin. Some maintenance required, but they work.

Unless you really saturate cotton in wax/oil so it has no breath-ability, it only holds up against showers. It becomes sodden and little use in persistent rain. PU coated polyester rainwear can perform on a different level in persistent rain. I've not found natural materials which perform as well, although some expensive tweeds are reportedly exceptionally good.

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

#325

Post by munk-a »

harryh wrote: post #304
salawat wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny how that didn't seem to be a problem moving to Teflon and such. Kinda sounds like a post-facto rationalization for maintaining the status quo. Prior to it's synthesis there are centuries of use of stick pans without much issue.

We live in a free society. The burden for passing laws outlawing particular products is supposed to be higher than the burden to bring those products to market in the first place.

I don't think that's sensible. The burden for crime prevention follows that rule (preventing someone from leaving their home because they may rob someone else requires a heavy burden of proof) but there isn't any assumption of harmlessness encoded anywhere in the legal system.

Back in ye olde founders day these sorts of harmful chemicals weren't a consideration that warranted any specific inclusion in the foundation of our laws so I think it's a bit disingenuous to take the lack of any precedent as acceptance.

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

#326

Post by knodi123 »

papito wrote: post #296
mnm1 wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should we have to force socialize people in a context of killing others? We force socialize people in plenty of other contexts like 12 years of schooling, most of which is mandatory. That hasn't gotten people to play in a team. Why would six weeks be any different? The only thing that will come out of mandatory boot camp is resentment and hate towards the government, institutions, and people that demand it. My pa…

I didn't say conscription. Basic 6 weeks training with zero obligation to serve. I would imagine it would actually solve the recruitment struggles as many people will love it and join right away.

They meant "why _military_ conscription, because that's a _military_ context".

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

#327

Post by Supermancho »

darawk wrote: post #227
kerkeslager wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, no, actually, people aren't voting for this. Many people aren't voting at all, because they're excluded based on felony convictions, inability to meet paperwork requirements for voter IDs, etc. Gerrymandering is extremely effective. The electoral college isn't intentional gerrymandering, but it has the same effect as gerrymandering: two of the last three presidents lost the popular vote. And where it's intentio…

> Many people aren't voting at all Choosing not to vote is a vote. > because they're excluded based on felony convictions, inability to meet paperwork requirements for voter IDs, etc. Felony disenfranchisement hardly contradicts my point. And anyway, voter suppression and felony disenfranchisement are at all time lows historically, so my point stands just fine. > Gerrymandering is extremely effective. The electoral c…

> Choosing not to vote is a vote.

Abstaining is not voting. I look forward to the day we have a national election holiday, when the US gets around to being serious about democracy.

> our democracy more democratic than it ever has been. For better or worse.

I agree wholeheartedly. The US public are upset to see changes (as they always have been), but don't seem to understand it's of the population's own making in recent presidential elections.

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

#328

Post by DenisM »

smitty1110 wrote: post #242
abandonliberty wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That site isn't loading for me. I would hope that vapor-permeable membranes work (e.g. gore-tex). The only problem is that the outside of the garment gets wet, and they're not very breathable

Gore-tex is PTFE, also known as Teflon, which is a flurocarbon. Several of the waste products or reactants for making Teflon are in the same category as DWR products, and are basically toxic forever. There's not much you can do if you need fabrics with these properties, you just need to pick you poison.

Sodium is a precursor to table salt and it’s highly toxic. Would you consider table salt dangerous?

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

#329

Post by kerkeslager »

darawk wrote: post #308
kerkeslager wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > Many people aren't voting at all > Choosing not to vote is a vote. Ugh, seriously, you didn't even bother to copy/paste the entire sentence? This is not how an intelligent conversation happens. Please don't do this. > Sure. My point isn't that our democracy is perfectly implemented. My point is that its current incarnation is its most democratic yet. Until Obama, candidates were basically selected by the fiat of…

> Ugh, seriously, you didn't even bother to copy/paste the entire sentence? This is not how an intelligent conversation happens. Please don't do this. I broke the sentence apart by points, and responded to each separately. > Okay. I'm not sure I agree with your point, but if that's your point, who cares? It's a point without implication: even if things really are better than they ever have been, we still shouldn't st…

> I broke the sentence apart by points, and responded to each separately.

No, you didn't. The sentence was one point, and your "response" to the first half of the sentence is only seems like a response if you ignore the second half of the sentence. I'm not going to dignify this silliness: you quoted me out of context, and have yet to respond to what I actually said in context.

> My point is that if you think "what we need is more democracy" you're going to be very disappointed in the results.

That wasn't remotely clear from your previous post, but it's pretty easy to show that you have no basis for saying that.

1. I don't buy that this is the most democratic point in US history.

2. The US certainly is not the best example of a democracy, and better examples of democracy have gotten better results.

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

#330

Post by nabakin »

bradstewart wrote: post #82
CptFribble wrote: post #67

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...

There's a movie, Dark Waters, about this as well. Great watch. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9071322/ EDIT: Spelling.

Saw this last night, completely agree. Everyone should watch it
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