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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

#401

Post by papito »

mnm1 wrote: post #392
GcVmvNhBsU wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d argue that 12 years of schooling does get people to play as a team, it’s just that the team is smaller and more local. If I grow up in a smallish town in South Dakota I will go to school with and know people who mostly look like me. I won’t meet someone from a big coastal city and get to learn their worldview and how it was shaped. I won’t (probably) experience what it feels like to be in a minority role (as in r…

I think if we had a draft we wouldn't be in all these wars but we also wouldn't have much of an army. Short of an actual attack against the US like pearl harbor I cannot see people actually showing up. When you have millions of draft dodgers out in the open, what can you do? It's impossible to even arrest them all. Wouldn't even be worth trying. I think our military leaders know this. That's why we have no draft and…

If you raise a generation that is taught public service, and most importantly, sacrifice, perhaps we'd have medical care.

And the bar for sacrifice nowadays is seriously low. Six weeks of your time for your country, where you do not risk your life, is somehow a big ask.

Look at these divas in the Senate right now, walking out of impeachment proceedings where they are the jurors. You see, it's too much of a sacrifice. They are not vibing with the whole thing, dude.

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

#402

Post by hnick »

kikoreis wrote: post #389
hnick wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently learned a lot of 'compostable' plasticky items are not bio-degradable. They rely on a technicality to say they can be composted after being pre-treated or broken down with another chemical or process. Or something ridiculous of the sort.

As long as there is a process in place to ensure that is done post collection, why is that a problem?

Well I threw one in my own compost bin in my backyard before learning, since the bag didn't include fine print. I thought it was bio-degradable but apparently I need to do my research on each individual item. That's my problem.

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

#403

Post by dctoedt »

xyzzyz wrote: post #355
kasey_junk wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. But I think you can also attribute some of it to “the rich* have weaponized conservative politics.” They have the most leverage so a minority opinion can show outsized results. *apply all appropriate modifiers about not all rich etc

Where's their leverage? In media, which is dominated by liberals? Or in academia, which is dominated by them even more overwhelmingly? Where exactly are all these powerful conservative voices? Is Fox News and Breitbart so much better at getting their message across than almost everything else?

Fox and Breitbart tell their audiences what some (sadly, too many) want to hear about Those Wicked / Lazy / Stupid Others.

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

#404

Post by dctoedt »

tptacek wrote: post #348
dctoedt wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Aside from a brief dip during 9/11, a majority of the country listed "big government" as the "biggest threat" since the late 1980s. ... In part that's due to the incessant, implacable drumbeat from the you're-not-the-boss-of-me right wing (and their cheering sections in the wealthy and wannabe-wealthy) that government is always the problem and never part of the solution; that if we just leave people alone they'll a…

Isn't this a little like saying "in part that's due to the fact that conservatives are persuasive"?

> Isn't this a little like saying "in part that's due to the fact that conservatives are persuasive"?

At the risk of the No True Scotsman fallacy: Today's right wingers are more ethno-nationalist than Burkean conservative; they're persuasive mainly to others who are predisposed to believe the ethno-nationalist message and in the supposed superiority of their own in-group, which in the U.S. of course is mainly white Christian males.

(For context: I was an old-fashioned conservative Republican for most of my life. But then I worked my way around to the view that a corollary to the First Commandment is: Face the facts — live in the world wrought by the Creator, not the one that you wish existed. Then there's the notion that we're all created co-creators, to borrow a term used by Lutheran theologian Philip Hefner [0], working in the service of what you might call the Great Project, the continuing creation of a universe through natural processes, with the Summary of the Law being the two key rules for our effective participation [1], not unlike Conway's Game of Life [2]. Finally, life's experiences persuaded me of the wisdom of John Rawls's veil of ignorance [3], which incidentally seems to tie in nicely with the Golden Rule. All those things moved me decidedly away from conservatism, and eventually out of today's GOP entirely.)

[0] https://www.encyclopedia.com/education/encyclopedias-almanac...

[1] https://www.questioningchristian.com/2007/02/another_way_to_...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life

[3] https://www.questioningchristian.com/2019/10/revisiting-rawl...

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

#405

Post by mnm1 »

papito wrote: post #401
mnm1 wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think if we had a draft we wouldn't be in all these wars but we also wouldn't have much of an army. Short of an actual attack against the US like pearl harbor I cannot see people actually showing up. When you have millions of draft dodgers out in the open, what can you do? It's impossible to even arrest them all. Wouldn't even be worth trying. I think our military leaders know this. That's why we have no draft and…

If you raise a generation that is taught public service, and most importantly, sacrifice , perhaps we'd have medical care. And the bar for sacrifice nowadays is seriously low. Six weeks of your time for your country, where you do not risk your life, is somehow a big ask. Look at these divas in the Senate right now, walking out of impeachment proceedings where they are the jurors . You see, it's too much of a sacrific…

I'd say that things that are worth sacrificing for dwindled and disappeared first, then the will to sacrifice went. Can't blame people for not wanting to sacrifice when all the good things worth sacrificing for are gone. Maybe if we start focusing on fixing problems at home rather than forcing kids that don't know better to prepare for a war they'll never fight, we might be able to create a society that has things that are worth fighting for. This all comes from the top down. It's the American oligarchs, after all, who have taken almost everything from most Americans, including health, education, and hope for the future. Can't blame regular people for not caring anymore in a society that doesn't care about them. No amount of forced socialization is going to fix that.

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

#406

Post by pelliphant »

mcguire wrote: post #187
pelliphant wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

america uses a first past the post voting system. Please don't assume that every form of democracy has the same problems. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-past-the-post_voting

Absolutely! Other forms of voting systems have new and unique ways of failing. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/voting-methods/#VotiPara

Interesting article. Thnx for the link.

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

#407

Post by logfromblammo »

munk-a wrote: post #340
logfromblammo wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "...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.

And since it's priceable, doesn't it become an ethical question if the neighborhood should require such systems and possibly try and get federal subsidies to install them since they are required as a result of the military's actions? (And, specifically, completely non-essential actions - asking the military to clean up contamination caused by active national defense is a slightly different question)

That's a good point. The capital expenses should be recoverable via civil suit, with actual operating expenses so far, and possibly also projected future operating expenses over the expected lifespan of the installation.

But possibly not. Water rights in legal-land aren't always as fair or uncomplicated as ordinary non-lawyer folk--such as myself and most HN readers--might expect them to be.

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

#408

Post by logfromblammo »

gpm wrote: post #306
logfromblammo wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electrolyze water in one vessel. Combust the gases in another vessel, and condense the water vapor. Hilariously inefficient use of energy, but I think the only contaminants you are likely to encounter would be... nitrous oxide (N2O)?

I'd be less worried about the contaminants in the water, and more worried about the contaminants in the air. As I understand it electrolysis of water converts chloride salts (table salt) to chlorine gas (poisonous), fluoride salts (rarer) to fluoride gas (really poisonous), etc.

Electrolysis only produces chlorine to the extent that chloride ion is present in the water. If the charge-carrying ions are metallic positive and hydroxide negative, the chlorine produced will be negligible.

So to promote electrolysis, add KOH or NaOH (lye) instead of NaCl (table salt). Or don't add anything, and let your charge carriers be H3O+ and HCO3- from dissolved CO2.

The chlorine will come off first, and if you have a reducible anode, it will attack that first. If you have a graphite anode, you will get Cl2, which will oxidize pure hydrogen just fine. You'll get HCl in the combustion, which isn't dangerous when diluted (it's the same acid that's produced in your stomach).

Fluorine gas is not produced from aqueous fluoride salts because the oxygen is always oxidized first.

The half-reactions:

  2 H2O + 2 e- --> H2 + 2 [OH-]       (-0.83 V)
  2 H2O        --> O2 + 4 [H+] + 4 e- (-1.23 V)
  2 [Cl-]      --> Cl2 + 2 e-         (-1.36 V)
  2 [F-]       --> F2 + 2 e-          (-2.87 V)
Even if you do get a F2, it immediately reacts with the electrolysis water to produce oxygen gas:

  2 F2 (g) + 2 H2O (l) --> 4 HF (aq) + O2 (g)
In short, this is not much of a problem.

By the redox half-reactions, it looks like oxygen should be produced before chlorine, but there is also something called "overpotential" at the electrode. On a graphite electrode, the activation overpotentials for H2, O2, and Cl2 are -0.62V, +0.95V, and +0.12V, respectively. There is also a "bubble overpotential" of the tiny bubbles that form on the electrode. That pushes the preference towards chlorine gas. Tiny oxygen bubbles will form, but the energy required to grow them large enough to detach from the electrode and rise to the surface exceeds that required to form and grow a chlorine bubble.

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

#409

Post by jb775 »

stamps wrote: post #164
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…

Mind sharing the exact system?

Culligan Water is the company I used. Systems like mine are custom built depending on your house layout, the type of filtering you want, etc so the cost could fluctuate.

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

#410

Post by darawk »

kerkeslager wrote: post #329
darawk wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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.

I responded to the second part of your point right afterwards. I responded to the totality of what you said. Read it again.

You may not have intended for them to be broken out as I did, which would just be to say you didn't intend to say "Many people choose not to vote" in isolation. That's fine - I still responded to the second part of what you said in conjunction with the first in the very next point.

> 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.

You "showing" that I have no basis for that is you saying that you don't buy it? Democracy is the manifest will of the electorate. I gave specific supporting reasons for my point here, you could try to attack those if you had an argument.

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

I didn't say that it was. But there are many examples of 'democracy' in the world, with a great many different outcomes. Democracies are only as good as the will of their constituents.

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