Nearly half of the tap water in the US is contaminated with ‘forever chemicals,’ • Hacker News Board

Re: Nearly half of the tap water in the US is contaminated with ‘forever chemicals,’

#141

Post by tristor » Thu, Jul 06, 2023, 9:43 PM UTC

_throwaway882 wrote: post #31

Does anyone have a whole home, or under the sink water filter they'd recommend?

Get a 5-stage RO system without a tank. Tanked systems are only a good idea if you use enough water that the tank doesn't sit stagnant and you include UV, otherwise tanks can be a place that causes bacterial growth. The reason you want a system with more stages is that you can have multiple pre-filters before the RO membrane which allows the membrane to last longer and allows cheaper filters to be the most often replaced.

Re: Nearly half of the tap water in the US is contaminated with ‘forever chemicals,’

#142

Post by bobthepanda » Thu, Jul 06, 2023, 9:48 PM UTC

runjake wrote: post #101

bobthepanda wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably the Cascades only. Any sufficiently old DoD site is probably an environmental disaster that is known or waiting to be discovered. Like Hanford and Bremerton.

I am going by the map in TFA, which only covers PFAS -- and is a CNN article, so take it with a major grain of scientific salt.

Yeah, the Washington sites in the map are only along the I-5/Cascades corridor.

Re: Nearly half of the tap water in the US is contaminated with ‘forever chemicals,’

#143

Post by autoexec » Thu, Jul 06, 2023, 9:49 PM UTC

Clent wrote: post #122

tomxor wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> concealing data and facing minimal consequences. Yes, the delay in punishment is a huge problem. 3M is facing fines easily pushing them into bankruptcy... so even when the punishment is severe enough, it's too late, huge damage has already been done. The problem is that even this is not a disincentive, whether or not they know it, executives use these artificial constructs "companies" as vehicles to extract money,…

Until one can lose their MBA for an ethical violation, nothing will change. I trust a lawyer more than a CEO because a lawyer has ethical obligations.

And even lawyers get away with far far more than they should without losing their license to practice. It seems like accountability is at an all time low everywhere and we're all paying the price.

Re: Nearly half of the tap water in the US is contaminated with ‘forever chemicals,’

#144

Post by autoexec » Thu, Jul 06, 2023, 9:55 PM UTC

Rebelgecko wrote: post #29

robbywashere_ wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically there seems to be no shortage of fluoride conspiracy theories or “waters turning the frogs gay” but actual chemicals and toxins … ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I think it's just 2 sides of the same coin. Fluoride is an actual chemical, and the Alex Jones "turning the frogs gay" comment was about a study that linked the presence of atrazine (a pesticide legal in the US but banned in the EU) in a water supply with the demasculinization of frogs (FWIW there's been replication issues when other people ran the same experiment).

Tyrone_Hayes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrone_Hayes) and his research is a wild rabbit hole to get lost in. You can view his talks on youtube. The guy turned down a lot of cash to get the word out about atrazine. We could use a lot more scientists like him.

Re: Nearly half of the tap water in the US is contaminated with ‘forever chemicals,’

#145

Post by evanlivingston » Thu, Jul 06, 2023, 10:12 PM UTC

nisesen wrote: post #57

_throwaway882 wrote: post #31

Does anyone have a whole home, or under the sink water filter they'd recommend?

I have an APEC systems RO-90 in my parents home and an APEC RO-hi system in my house. They work fantastic and are easy to install. Brings me peace of mind knowing my drinking water is super clean

APEC doesn't appear to even be certified by NSF which is rather disconcerting.

https://info.nsf.org/Certified/dwtu/listings.asp

Re: Nearly half of the tap water in the US is contaminated with ‘forever chemicals,’

#146

Post by autoexec » Thu, Jul 06, 2023, 10:13 PM UTC

hombre_fatal wrote: post #98

ekleraki wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the ąrticle [1] references [2]: > fluoride intake levels (0.93 [0.43] vs 0.30 [0.26] mg of fluoride per day; P = .001). > Children had mean (SD) Full Scale IQ scores of 107.16 (13.26), range 52-143, with girls showing significantly higher mean (SD) scores than boys: 109.56 (11.96) vs 104.61 (14.09); P = .001. The average IQ of people in the UK is 99.12 and in Canada 99.52 [3]. Let us suppose that the hypothesis…

> We observe that the average consumption of Fluoride is about an order of magnitude larger in the UK, yet, IQs are almost identical. Which hints that if such a relationship exists, it is not as pronounced (5 IQ points) as the article claims. Ecological comparisons are towards the bottom of the evidence hierarchy because there are any number of cofounders at play. For example you could accidentally conclude that smok…

At least one study did make an effort to take things like income and other exposures into account. https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/19/health/fluoride-neurotoxin-ca...

At this point I think fluoride falls firmly into the category of "needs more research", but if you're pregnant it seems like actively trying to reduce your intake of fluoride is a sensible precaution since that's unlikely to have any negative effect on you or the kid, but if fluoride does cause problems you could dodge a bullet before the science catches up.

Re: Nearly half of the tap water in the US is contaminated with ‘forever chemicals,’

#147

Post by autoexec » Thu, Jul 06, 2023, 10:30 PM UTC

Clent wrote: post #114

purpleblue wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The chemical is atrazine and it tests it did turn frogs from male to female. We can quibble over whether or not dosage matters but I think it should also be uncontroversial that using a chemical that disrupts hormones like that should not be used on food that we consume.

I cannot imagine we'd have many chemicals left if we banned any that caused a hormone change in non-human biology. It is silly to be worried about things because the talking heads on the radio and tv told you to be afraid or worse because read it on the internet.

The company that makes atrazine (an aromatase promoter) knows that it causes increases in cancer in humans. That's why they (under other names) also sell cancer drugs that work by being aromatase inhibitors. They'll sell the poison and then sell you the "cure".

If you don't trust talking heads on TV or radio, what about scientists on youtube? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hu0IXMTFY9Q

Re: Nearly half of the tap water in the US is contaminated with ‘forever chemicals,’

#148

Post by blooalien » Fri, Jul 07, 2023, 1:07 AM UTC

As long as my favorite ultra-rich celebrity or politician isn't affected by it, everything is fine, right? After all, nothing else matters as long as the richest of the rich aren't gonna suffer at all. My life doesn't matter. Neither does any of yours. We're all just here to serve that small percentage of humans who are better than the rest of us.

Re: Nearly half of the tap water in the US is contaminated with ‘forever chemicals,’

#149

Post by kelipso » Fri, Jul 07, 2023, 6:22 AM UTC

boringg wrote: post #94

kelipso wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fluoride lowering IQ is not a conspiracy theory, it's a proven fact. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41390-020-0973-8

Your bar for "proven facts" is very low - you might want to reconsider what you read as truth and put a bit more of a filter on. I say this for your own benefit - as nothing you do bears on my life.

Right, I could say some nonsense about how your politically polarised mindset blinds you to obvious facts. It'll be very persuasive I'm sure. Instead I'll believe a bunch of dentists who have no expertise in neuroscience to put aside their egos and come to a consensus. Just a couple more decades no worries. It's like some Idiocracy thing where some group convinces a population to put a neurotoxin into the water supply. Art imitates life I guess, the movie did come out later than this.

Re: Nearly half of the tap water in the US is contaminated with ‘forever chemicals,’

#150

Post by refurb » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 10:04 AM UTC

iancmceachern wrote: post #67

refurb wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much is “a month’s worth” and how does that amount related to known toxicity levels? I mean, water naturally contains toxins like arsenic and lead. We don’t fret when it’s present (its present in most water) but only when the amounts cause toxicity.

Yes. Along many fishing shorelines there are signs posted that tell you how many of each type of fish you can eat per week, depending if you are a man, woman, depending on age range. Each state publishes them. Here is the one for Minnesota for example: https://www.health.state.mn.us/communities/environment/fish/...

Those limits are a mostly PCB and lead.

"They also take into account findings of low levels of Perfluorooctane Sulfonate (PFOS) in fish throughout Minnesota."

So I'm not sure how you could make a statement like "Eating a fish meal out of the Mississippi in Minnesota (by 3M) will give you a month's worth of PFOS if you were just drinking contaminated tap water."