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

cnn.com

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

#71

It's high time for a big awareness campaign for things like this: cleaning up our water should be an immediately funded government project. Needs a interactive map with historical data, sort of like https://app.electricitymaps.com/map does for historic grid energy cleanliness. Surely, clean water—something we all need—should be an apolitical bipartisan issue, right? ...right?

Cleaning up? With what?

We've barely figured out how to even detect a tiny portion of PFAS, and even then can't quantify it, we don't have any way of removing PFAS specifically, the best general purpose technology we have is reverse osmosis which is not economical. If it's in the ground water it will be in the drinking water.

What we need to do (as in the human race because this stuff just propagates around the globe), is to stop manufacturing them, immediately, because this stuff accumulates. The mentality of "shoot and ask questions later" in the name of industry, technological progress and "my wallet" needs to stop. Prevention is the answer, not more technology to fix a technology that should have already have been deprecated over a decade ago - and to be clear i mean all PFAS, until individual formulas can be proven ecologically and biologically safe.

To prevent history from repeating itself new chemicals beyond the thousands of PFAS should go through ecological and biological testing before allowing them to be manufactured at scale and released into the environment. In the same way we test products for human consumption, we need to learn that the environment is an extension of us, and if we disregard it, it will come back to bite us.

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

#73
post #59

I advised people I know not to buy non stick pans for a very long time. It's not an easy task though

How many years of your life would you give up to save you the trouble of cleaning sticky pans every day? Asking seriously. I don't know how many I'd give, but it's definitely greater than 0.

you can sauce your pans though

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

#74
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because I’m paraphrasing your reply, which aligns with that mentality. You didn’t explicitly say that because you know your own behavior is inappropriate — and pretend to condemn it in other contexts. But Democrats are commonly hypocritical — eg, claiming to protect minority rights while being frothing mad they’re told they can’t use 1950s arguments about “too many Asians and Jews” to engage in systemic racism at uni…

Ok, but quotes tend to imply something literal, or nearly-literal, and it's not something I said, nor did I imply it, at least not intentionally. I've personally always hated when certain groups are "not allowed" to have an opinion on given topics, for whatever reason, and I have pretty actively said as much when people have told others to "sit down and shut up", so in your particular case you're responding to a stra…

> when I very decidedly (and purposefully) didn't say that

I think perhaps the reason you had that thought of writing it explicitly was because it was the mentality behind your entire comment.

Ie, it was what you wanted to write; but you knew that was wrong, so you made a bad faith personal attack instead. (The one I called out.)

But the purpose of that bad faith reply is to shame them into sitting down and shutting up about being othered and vilified.

Edit:

> I tend to vote left, so I guess it's fair to lump me in with Democrats in a consequentialist sense.

I’m applying your standard:

You support institutional Asian hate in the same sense that the person you replied to supports the things you accused them of supporting.

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

#75
post #21

This statistic is meaningless without a discussion of the detection limit and whether it differs from the minimum harmful dose.

I've been out of the loop but the last I read about PFAs was "They accumulate, we don't know if they're toxic or at what dose". That appears to have changed. Once upon a time CSPINet was good for info like this, but I haven't found any details yet.

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

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bottled water is typically tap water filled with microplastics, so that’d be worse for you.

At least in California, if you see a picture of a mountain on the label then it must be from a natural source, it can't be tap water.

That’s probably not going to help you avoid PFAS though. The natural reservoirs are where the contamination is happening.

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

#77
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> or that does not excessively and punitively tax business and "the rich" Your bias is showing a bit there.

As someone who was a life-long liberal, but worked their ass off to become a 1%er, I 100% believe that the Democrats are using people like me as scapegoats and it makes me furious. I worked and studied when my classmates or coworkers were partying, made good choices, and now I enjoy a nice life because of it. But now all of a sudden, because I make over $400,000 I "don't pay my fair share of taxes", according to Eliz…

> But now all of a sudden, because I make over $400,000 I "don't pay my fair share of taxes", according to Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden?

Why do you feel the need to lie about the position of politicians when they are so easily available?

https://elizabethwarren.com/plans/ultra-millionaire-tax

Specifically:

> Zero additional tax on any household with a net worth of less than $50 million (99.9% of American households)

So unless you're sitting on a fat nest egg, Sen. Warren thinks that you are indeed paying your fair share of taxes. I'm sure Sanders and Biden agree. Stop lying.

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

#78
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, but quotes tend to imply something literal, or nearly-literal, and it's not something I said, nor did I imply it, at least not intentionally. I've personally always hated when certain groups are "not allowed" to have an opinion on given topics, for whatever reason, and I have pretty actively said as much when people have told others to "sit down and shut up", so in your particular case you're responding to a stra…

> when I very decidedly (and purposefully) didn't say that I think perhaps the reason you had that thought of writing it explicitly was because it was the mentality behind your entire comment. Ie, it was what you wanted to write; but you knew that was wrong, so you made a bad faith personal attack instead. (The one I called out.) But the purpose of that bad faith reply is to shame them into sitting down and shutting…

I really think that you're prescribing stuff to me based on stereotypes you have in regards to other lefties. That's fair enough, I do that sometimes as well, but I really just think you're wrong. I do not agree with the statement "sit down and shut up" in really any regard.

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

#79
post #43

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)_/¯

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

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 is true; it is expected then that in a country with higher average consumption of fluoride, we would, consistently, see lower average IQ.

> Above-average consumption of tea, as recorded in Great Britain, could result in fluoride intakes as high as 8.9 mg per day [4];

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.

Maybe somehow women in the UK consume 20x less Fluoride when they are pregnant (what's the prob of this?), maybe people in the UK are just built different and their superior genes compensate and without the Fluoride they'd be at 104-105ish. Given history and similarity between societies, this looks unlikely.

So until a causal mechanism is found, I am inclined to disagree over the "proven fact" statement.

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41390-020-0973-8

[2] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/...

[3] https://wisevoter.com/country-rankings/average-iq-by-country...

[4] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jsfa.2740340...

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

#80
post #59

I advised people I know not to buy non stick pans for a very long time. It's not an easy task though

How many years of your life would you give up to save you the trouble of cleaning sticky pans every day? Asking seriously. I don't know how many I'd give, but it's definitely greater than 0.

> the trouble of cleaning sticky pans every day?

> Asking seriously.

I know this will sound harsh, but this is probably a skill issue, not a hardware issue. I used to struggle a LOT with pans getting fouled up with whatever I was cooking.

The only thing that got me to figure it out was forcing myself to exclusively use the same cast iron pan for everything, and to practice cooking scrambled eggs on it every morning. Once you master the temperature, timing, etc., cleaning the pan literally takes 3 seconds (paper towel into trash can, pan on hook).

Regardless, teflon is not going to fix this in a meaningful way. If you are bad at temperature control, it might save the eggs from sticking but they're still gonna burn and you are risking vaporizing the coating. Cast iron isn't the best thing to get super hot either, but it is much safer if you do.

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