Simple mix of soap and solvent could help destroy ‘forever chemicals’
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Re: Simple mix of soap and solvent could help destroy ‘forever chemicals’
#2> What’s left behind, Trang says, is mostly easily captured fluorine ions, and a mixture of harmless, naturally occurring carbon and oxygen containing byproducts, her team reports today in Science.
> Roughly 40% of PFAS compounds contain carboxylic acid groups, and thus could potentially be degraded by the new approach, Trang says. Though it has yet to be tested in the field, she adds that the most likely strategy would be to use conventional means to filter PFAS chemicals from, say drinking water, and then treat them off-site.
> The method doesn’t work on all types of PFAS, however. Compounds used in flame retardants and batteries, for example, contain a sulfonate group instead of a carboxylic acid group and won’t break down with this approach.
Re: Simple mix of soap and solvent could help destroy ‘forever chemicals’
#3Now that Teflon got sued and switched to a different, probably more harmful, chemical I wonder if we'll want to go back to the OG "forever chemicals"
Re: Simple mix of soap and solvent could help destroy ‘forever chemicals’
#4The paper: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abm8868
The "soap and solvent" is sodium hydroxide (lye) and DMSO at 120 degC. Those are... fairly... well behaved chemicals, but lye is stout stuff and DMSO attacks nitrile gloves.
You could imagine a remediation process that uses this process but the combo ain't exactly Dawn dish soap. I'd almost prefer pyroprocessing over it.
Re: Simple mix of soap and solvent could help destroy ‘forever chemicals’
#5Now that Teflon got sued and switched to a different, probably more harmful, chemical I wonder if we'll want to go back to the OG "forever chemicals"
That's honestly one of the things I wish we could get a handle on.
Company gets sued for using and hiding the danger of a compound they learned fairly quickly was toxic. Goes and invents another compound and switches to it without having to prove its safety. After it becoming public that they were intentionally hiding dangers for a half century, I feel we should take away their ability to be given the benefit of the doubt.
All I think they learn from these lawsuits is that they need to get better at identifying and removing people who will call them out on their bullshit.
Edit - I know the whole thing with DuPont was using PFOAs in the manufacturing process and leaking (intentionally dumping) them into the environment, but it's not like the final product (Teflon) is safe to ingest either, which as a cooking surface, you most definitely will in some quantity.
Re: Simple mix of soap and solvent could help destroy ‘forever chemicals’
#6Slightly off topic, I’m keen to dispose of our Teflon frying pan. Does anyone have a good recommendation for an alternative, ideally one that doesn’t take too much “maintenance”?
We also have a Teflon milk pan but that is never used at a high tempriture so I’m less concerned about that.
Re: Simple mix of soap and solvent could help destroy ‘forever chemicals’
#7Now that Teflon got sued and switched to a different, probably more harmful, chemical I wonder if we'll want to go back to the OG "forever chemicals"
The new chemical is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GenX and while I'm not a chemist as best I can tell, it also contains a carboxylic acid group, so this method would work on it.
Re: Simple mix of soap and solvent could help destroy ‘forever chemicals’
#8Slightly off topic, I’m keen to dispose of our Teflon frying pan. Does anyone have a good recommendation for an alternative, ideally one that doesn’t take too much “maintenance”? We also have a Teflon milk pan but that is never used at a high tempriture so I’m less concerned about that.
You could get a new pan with 'ceramic' coating. It's just like teflon in basically every way.
Re: Simple mix of soap and solvent could help destroy ‘forever chemicals’
#9Slightly off topic, I’m keen to dispose of our Teflon frying pan. Does anyone have a good recommendation for an alternative, ideally one that doesn’t take too much “maintenance”? We also have a Teflon milk pan but that is never used at a high tempriture so I’m less concerned about that.
High temperatures do not bother Teflon, there's no reason to dispose of it because of that.
According to the EPA Teflon frying pans do not leech any PFOA into food, that's not where people are exposed.
I've noticed that for some reason a ton of people think they get exposure to PFOA from cookware, and that's simply not true. PFOA exposure mainly comes from waterproofing coatings, slippery coatings (like the bottom of skis), and firefighting foam.
Paper dishes (plates, straws, etc) are a big source of exposure because they need to make them waterproof. Make sure to ask for plastic.
Re: Simple mix of soap and solvent could help destroy ‘forever chemicals’
#10> What’s left behind, Trang says, is mostly easily captured fluorine ions, and a mixture of harmless, naturally occurring carbon and oxygen containing byproducts, her team reports today in Science. > Roughly 40% of PFAS compounds contain carboxylic acid groups, and thus could potentially be degraded by the new approach, Trang says. Though it has yet to be tested in the field, she adds that the most likely strategy wo…
Batteries contain PFAS? Now I gotta test everything.