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FDA rejects petition to set PFAS limits in food

theguardian.com

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Re: FDA rejects petition to set PFAS limits in food

#111

Post by cucumber3732842 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #63
cucumber3732842 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much of this is real and how much of this is people stretching facts to get their farmland construed as polluted to make the solar development viable because over the years people like you have construed the laws and rules to punish greenfield development and agricultural redevelopment?

Is your argument farmers are lying about their farmland contamination to develop solar instead of selling this land for development or development? Please provide evidence and citations this is the case, versus documented contamination of hundreds of farms (in the case of farms in Maine, Michigan, Wisconsin, Alabama and Florida). "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." It seems very unlikely this is fr…

EPA (and worse, state) rules cooked up by people like you (plural) penalize greenfield development on purpose. Without high enough land values you can't redevelop agriculture into much else. Green energy gets exemptions so that's what gets pursued.

So if every single farm has PFAS you're only ever gonna hear about it on the ones where the regulators are jerks and they need to be a brownfield to get favorable enough regulatory treatment to make the project actually happen.

They're not lying. They're selectively mentioning it. Plenty of these farms did and probably could continue to perhaps go on to produce plenty of perfectly fine crops despite current or past contamination. They were never contaminated enough to "matter". Just contaminated enough to get better treatment by bringing it up.

Also it doesn't take a genius to figure out that spewing laundered shit onto fields is probably bad or at least risky for the same reasons you shouldn't eat a ton of tuna that was fished out of SF bay.

Re: FDA rejects petition to set PFAS limits in food

#112

Post by thisisit »

rayiner wrote: post #32

The EPA first issued health advisories around PFASs in 2009. Why didn’t these folks file this petition sometime during the 12 years since then where it likely would’ve gotten a more favorable reception?

whataboutism is a tiresome argument.

Lets agree that these folks are wrong and ideally they should have petitioned 12 years ago. The question to ask is - for an admin which loudly claims to make America healthy again and talk about making everything chemical free etc - why can't they pass this? Is it because they can't score brownie points with base or they are overtly corrupt and do the same thing they accuse others of doing? Or that they know their supporters will not look at the validity of the claim and instead discredit people by asking whataboutism and party line questions?

Re: FDA rejects petition to set PFAS limits in food

#113

Post by rayiner »

mhurron wrote: post #69
swed420 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why didn’t these folks file this petition sometime during the 12 years since then where it likely would’ve gotten a more favorable reception? Because then The Uniparty would look bad. Instead, we can prop up the illusion of democracy and point fingers at "the other side" of good cop / bad cop while elites poison everybody more. We wouldn't want people living too far beyond their working years, after all.

Ya, everything is a conspiracy. It couldn't be that the FDA has been working on PFAS related issues for 6 years now and this petition was more to speed things along in a way that would force progress. But no, everything is a big conspiracy.

It's not a "conspiracy." The way our government is currently structured, we have a permanent bureaucracy that mostly runs things. And there is a robust revolving door between them and the industry. While they'll take dramatic actions on things that are hot button political issues, like climate change, they are extremely resistant to rocking the boat on almost anything else.

Environmental pollutants like PFAS fly under the political radar, and there's very little incentive at places like FDA to regulate the problem boldly.

Re: FDA rejects petition to set PFAS limits in food

#114

Post by llm_nerd »

haussman wrote: post #95
llm_nerd wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

[flagged]

Astroturfing conspiracy? What a weird comment.

No, friend, I was pointing out that this criminal kleptocracy administration of pathetic self-dealing imbeciles is so indefensible that even its biggest supporters -- I mean, imagine still being gullible enough to think these clowns are on your side -- resort to these sorts of anonymous sneak attack comments. Hence the fresh new account to drop a little FUD.

And I mean, in isolation it might work. Sure, they're "studying the data" and making a concrete plan. Only in the face of the enormous environmental damage they're doing -- gestures broadly at everything -- it rings a bit untrue, and the most cynical takes need to get the most weighting. At this point it's clear it's all criminal delay tactics, almost certainly because the right bribes were paid.

Re: FDA rejects petition to set PFAS limits in food

#115

Post by tristor »

bijection wrote: post #103

Short of frequent blood donation, is there any reasonably adoptable life change a person can make to meaningfully reduce expected PFAS intake, or is it best to try not to think about it?

Yes, there are a few things you can do. In rough priority / proven benefit order:

1. Eliminate as many items as possible from your diet that make use of PFAS based components, such as plastic linings. This means don't buy groceries packaged in lined packaging, this means don't cook with Teflon pans, and it means don't drink water from plastic bottles or bottles lines with plastic.

2. Get a whole-home water filtration system that is certified (NSF 53 or similar standard) to reduce/remove PFAS and if possible, on top of this do under-sink RO for drinking/cooking which is certified (NSF 58 or similar) to remove PFAS and use glass or stainless steel reusable water bottles to take water outside your home.

3. Exercise regularly so that you sweat and drink lots of appropriately filtered water, donate blood and/or plasma regularly.

4. Eliminate clothing or other items in your wardrobe that are coated with DWR or similar coatings. Don't make use of any PFAS-derived treatments/plastics in your clothing. This is especially important during the process of washing your clothes, as this generates microplastics which are PFAS contaminated and you can ingest them via breathing.

Everything else is basically guesswork, these are the only things known to have any benefit. We mostly ingest PFAS due to contamination in the food and water supply. This contamination is unavoidable, but we can greatly reduce exposure by making smarter choices about packaging materials and cooking methods, and a big one is simply not drinking anything that you can't confirm has been properly filtered and packaged.

I'm a bit extreme, I even brew and bottle my own beer and other beverages like soda and water kefir/kombucha to avoid exposure to externally packaged products that may be contaminated with PFAS.

Re: FDA rejects petition to set PFAS limits in food

#116

Post by abirch »

tsimionescu wrote: post #76
seethishat wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes... travel, tattoos, drug use and sexual behavior can and should disqualify a person from donating blood.

With travel, I understand that there is a higher risk of lots of diseases, and testing against all possible infectious diseases is not feasible. Drug use is also obviously disqualifying. But why would you care about someone's sexual behavior? The blood must be tested for common drugs and common blood borne diseases regardless, and it's perfectly possible to engage in sexually risky behaviors and not have any venereal…

Unfortunately tests are not 100% accurate and there's a window between when the pathogen is present and when it's detectible. Add in that many viruses aren't directly detectable, the tests look for antibodies to the virus.

This is why they usually ask if you've had a new sexual partner in the past 3 or 4 months. This is the window period for detecting some STDs and other diseases.

Re: FDA rejects petition to set PFAS limits in food

#117

Post by llm_nerd »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #58
llm_nerd wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Based on his push ups and chinups, i hoped there would be a national mandate of exercise for children aka recess and gym class. I'm not usually classified as "incredibly stupid" so your comment is off tone and not aligned with HN's standards of conversation.

I made an objective statement of fact.

RFK Jr. has clearly been a dangerously misinformed clown for years, loosely holding a plethora of opinions straight from the dumbest parts of YouTube/Twitter. I cannot fathom the thought process of someone who would think "oh he is a nutritional nightmare, sounds like the high-school dropout uncle who gets all of his information from chiropractors on YouTube, but he does a couple of pushups so maybe he'll be alright".

Worse still, he was clearly a foolish pawn for Chairman Trump and his administration full of dismantle everything industrialists.

Re: FDA rejects petition to set PFAS limits in food

#118

Post by evilduck »

bigmadshoe wrote: post #66
seethishat wrote: post #4

Doing whole blood donations seems to significantly reduce PFAS in the blood. Here's one paper: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle... Edit: This also helps others who are in accidents, car wrecks, have Cancer, etc. Yes, we pass on the PFAS to others, but the immediate need for blood is more urgent than the potential long term impacts of PFAS.

Aren’t we just donating the PFAS to potentially sicker patients?

PFAS doesn't immediately harm you like missing a few pints of blood does.

And it's not like you're concentrating higher levels of PFAS into the recipient, they likely have the same average blood concentration levels as the donor does since we're all equally exposed to the same sources.

Re: FDA rejects petition to set PFAS limits in food

#119

Post by vablings »

sarchertech wrote: post #81
vablings wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of these things can mostly be tested. When I donated regularly in the UK after being in the southern US, they screen me for west nile virus but still take my blood and use it.

The UK also has a wait time for many countries including Mexico. https://my.blood.co.uk/eligibility/travel/article?id=47&titl... Granted it’s shorter, but there are longer wait periods depending on the country. It’s defense in depth because false negatives happen and some viruses take time to show up on tests.

"If you spent over 4 weeks in primitive or rural accommodation you have to wait for 4 months after your return before giving blood. However, if you were travelling and staying in places which are modern and clean, such as typical tourist areas, please wait 4 weeks from your return due to Tropical Virus risk which includes Chik V, Dengue or Zika risk providing you do not have symptoms of these."

Not quite the four years.

Re: FDA rejects petition to set PFAS limits in food

#120

Post by rayiner »

thisisit wrote: post #112
rayiner wrote: post #32

The EPA first issued health advisories around PFASs in 2009. Why didn’t these folks file this petition sometime during the 12 years since then where it likely would’ve gotten a more favorable reception?

whataboutism is a tiresome argument. Lets agree that these folks are wrong and ideally they should have petitioned 12 years ago. The question to ask is - for an admin which loudly claims to make America healthy again and talk about making everything chemical free etc - why can't they pass this? Is it because they can't score brownie points with base or they are overtly corrupt and do the same thing they accuse others…

In any economy, there is a slider you can move to make tradeoffs between environmental protection and ease of doing business. The parties openly campaign on moving the slider in one direction or the other. Regulating PFAS would have a major economic impact, because they're in everything. So it's not a surprise that the folks who favor moving the slider more to the ease-of-business side would be opposed to stringent regulation of them.

What I'm asking--as someone who thinks we should have draconian regulations around endocrine disruptors, costs be damned--is why there's not more energy around regulating PFAS from the side that generally favors protecting the environment even if that increases costs of doing business. The MAHA people seem to be the most energized about the issue, but they're in the wrong party to do anything about it. How did PFAS fall into this weird donut hole?

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