Dark Waters is an entertaining movie about PFAS and PFAO
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9071322/
3M’s PFAS Crisis Has Come to Europe
81–90 of 101 posts
Re: 3M’s PFAS Crisis Has Come to Europe
#82After reading the series "A Chemical Hunger" by the blog Slime Mold Time Mold, I'm pretty convinced that chemical contamination is a global-warming level threat to humanity. The authors talk about the evidence that chemicals released into the environment by human activity (such as PFAS) are causing obesity, and they present compelling evidence that this is plausible. They are also working on research to confirm this…
When my mother moved in and we went on daily walks, she lost a pound a week for a year. Her entirely sedentary lifestyle (and that of most Americans I know) is a major factor for her obesity. Standing is now considered exercise it has gotten so bad. But people will blame anything instead of taking action, so…
While a sedentary lifestyle causing obesity may be true on an individual basis (and exercise is really really good for you regardless of your weight), it fails to explain why people who do manual labor tend to be as fat or fatter than people who have office jobs and why sedentary people of the past were not that fat compared to people today. There are a lot of reasons detailed in the series about why personal choice cannot adequately explain how it is we are getting fatter as a society. I think there are many good arguments for a non-chemical cause, like more and more appetizing highly processed foods.
But to say "people will blame anything instead of taking action" makes no sense. We have had decades of action trying to get people to eat healthy and exercise. It hasn't done anything. We have to accept that just telling people to lose weight doesn't work and start pursuing other options.
And there are so many good options! In Spain, for example, "staple foods" such as vegetables, meat, and bread are taxed at a lower rate while highly processed foods are taxed at the normal rate. In most developed countries, universal healthcare helps people prevent and manage the worst diseases associated with obesity such as heart disease and diabetes. And yes, we should investigate alternate explanations outside of the exercise/diet nexus such as chemical contamination! It may not be the reason but it is a testable hypothesis that would be "big if true."
Re: 3M’s PFAS Crisis Has Come to Europe
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just because a sedentary lifestyle is bad for your health, doesn't mean smoking is harmless. Do you know anything about these chemical? If so, please share. If not, well, ....
Smoking is an interesting example, Japan smokes a lot more and has less obesity and seems to have higher general health…
Japan has 18% smokers vs. 12.5% in the US. They have a five year longer life expectancy but they also have universal healthcare, so it's not really a fair comparison. Plus, Japan has good air quality and robust elder care.
On top of that, they may have chemical factors (such as no lithium mines) that differentiate them from other developed countries.
Re: 3M’s PFAS Crisis Has Come to Europe
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
When my mother moved in and we went on daily walks, she lost a pound a week for a year. Her entirely sedentary lifestyle (and that of most Americans I know) is a major factor for her obesity. Standing is now considered exercise it has gotten so bad. But people will blame anything instead of taking action, so…
What if the chemicals aren't making you fat directly, but messing with your neurotransmitters and sapping your motivation? Doesn't seem completely out of the realm of possibility.
This is what the series actually discusses as the most likely possibility. Essentially the idea is that PFAS or lithium could be making you hungry when you don't need to be. Hence the name "a chemical hunger."
Re: 3M’s PFAS Crisis Has Come to Europe
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
What if the chemicals aren't making you fat directly, but messing with your neurotransmitters and sapping your motivation? Doesn't seem completely out of the realm of possibility.
That would be an interesting study. I wonder if one could find an ethical human study that could parse out a molecule and its effect on demotivation compared to the effect of media, sunlight exposure, obesity, etc.
The bloggers are working on designing such a study. The good news is that weight loss studies almost all show small effect sizes so if remove a chemical exposure factor is the solution you would expect the results to be pretty obvious. I mean, if getting rid of PFAS "prevents obesity" but a McDonalds ad undoes the effect, then it was probably the McDonalds ad causing the obesity, not the PFAS. The bad news is that preventing chemical exposure is really hard to do.
Re: 3M’s PFAS Crisis Has Come to Europe
#86*Stands on soapbox* I've been kicking around an idea I've been tentatively calling "techno-conservatism". The tl;dr: "Like Amish, not Luddites." It's becoming more and more clear that each of our technologies has trade-offs, and the uncritical acceptance of those trade-offs has lead us to poison ourselves and the world in several fairly significant ways. This would seem to me to make a more considered and conservativ…
I like that idea. But because of the way these chemicals get everywhere, we need pretty much everyone on board. That won’t change unless we change incentives and negative externalities are felt by the actors that decide to use the chemicals. How do we do that? Same question for nuclear war, fossil fuels, and any other tragedy of the commons type situation.
My hope is that this "techno-conservatism" would reflect and facilitate a mass movement which could then generate enough of a political and economic mandate to leverage us out of destructive applications of technology using existing systems of government. I feel like a lot of people, especially young people, are kind of already leaning this way. But I'm fairly apolitical myself, I don't want to start a revolution, y'know? If I run this up the flag pole and no one salutes, so be it.
"Techno-conservatism" isn't a political stance. Ecological harmony isn't a political goal, it's a prerequisite of any durable regime at all. The thing is living in harmony with nature is fun and economical so I would hope it's very popular once you've experienced it. (E.g. we have some hydrogen-powered buses here and the exhaust they put out is not smelly poison, it's actually refreshing! It has a delightful not-quite-aroma, it's moist and oxygenated. You only have to stand upwind of one once to realize that ICE vehicles are inferior.)
In the short-term, and on the personal scale, I'm imagining something like a neighborhood or small town as a kind of experimental zone or context. ( Check out Village Homes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Village_Homes ) You're right that this wouldn't mitigate truly global issues like "forever chemicals" or global warming, but it's an improvement on what we're doing now. I think once there's a kind of "theme park" you can visit that shows what it's like to live well without messing up the environment it would really convince people to do it.
Re: 3M’s PFAS Crisis Has Come to Europe
#87After reading the series "A Chemical Hunger" by the blog Slime Mold Time Mold, I'm pretty convinced that chemical contamination is a global-warming level threat to humanity. The authors talk about the evidence that chemicals released into the environment by human activity (such as PFAS) are causing obesity, and they present compelling evidence that this is plausible. They are also working on research to confirm this…
There is a whole lot of mild panic going on. Here’s the deal, you’re going to die. It’s going to happen for one reason or another, and if you eliminate one reason, there will be another one lined up not so long after. If your purpose in life is to maximize the number of days you live, I guess you do you, but it doesn’t seem like a very high quality life to me. We take risks, we accept them, there’s middle ground betw…
>You know what causes obesity? Availability of food.
As discussed in the article, this fails to explain why there have been societies with almost no obesity and almost unlimited access to food (e.g. the Mbuti people of the Congo who get 80% of their calories from a copious supply of honey but have no documented cases of obesity, or rich people in developed countries prior to about 1980).
Death is only one part of the equation. I want to be healthy while I live.
>The toll from worrying can be much worse than what you're trying to avoid.
Absolutely. I don't do any of the things the series lists as their recommended ways to lose weight (even though I am overweight). I haven't tried the all-potato diet and I haven't moved to the top of a mountain. I just keep exercising and limiting my sugar intake. And what has happened is exactly what the series said would happen: I lost about 15 pounds and then leveled out. Which I'm fine with - all the evidence points to the fact that just losing 15 pounds does quite a bit for your health, and that's enough for me! I'm happy to focus the rest of my energy on living life and enjoying it.
But I think someone should be doing the research. Why are dollars going to weight loss PSA campaigns and studies showing that this or that diet might help people lose weight? These approaches haven't worked for decades and we could be funding research into some theories like chemical-mediated hunger.
Re: 3M’s PFAS Crisis Has Come to Europe
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm pretty sure daily walks (no heart rate elevation, not HIIT, no muscle being built, etc.) didn't contribute significantly to your mother's weight loss. Moving around is not a significant contributor to weight loss[1]. Diet is the most significant contributing factor to gaining or losing weight. Moving in with someone new, new environment, new dietary changes, etc. might've done significantly more. 1. https://www.n…
Weight loss is simply calories in - calories out. If she walked an hour a day and ate the same amount, she was burning around ~300 extra calories a day. Pretty sure her daily walks did contribute significantly to her weight loss.
Calories in - calories out fails to explain why people consume and expend as many calories as they do. As the series discusses, many calorie sinks such as fidgeting and body temperature are subconscious or autonomic and seem to be used by our bodies to help regulate our weight. And some people clearly have very strong hunger drives.
Clearly something has changed over the past hundred years. Saying that we got richer fails to explain why the rich people of yore, while fat by the standards of their day, are not fat by modern standards. Saying we have gone down hill in terms of sticktoitiveness is not really a verifiable claim and does nothing to offer a solution. So it is absolutely worth further investigating what is going on.
Re: 3M’s PFAS Crisis Has Come to Europe
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just because it doesn't cure everything doesn't make it useless, bodybuilders do it as well to control blood pressure. Kinda like how those bubonic plague masks don't make covid masks useless.
Are you saying because bodybuilder use bloodletting that it's a good solution to blood pressure issues?
I'm saying exactly what I said. In some cases, where a person has high blood cells, it might be a good option. Talk to your doctor first or whatever.
Re: 3M’s PFAS Crisis Has Come to Europe
#90*Stands on soapbox* I've been kicking around an idea I've been tentatively calling "techno-conservatism". The tl;dr: "Like Amish, not Luddites." It's becoming more and more clear that each of our technologies has trade-offs, and the uncritical acceptance of those trade-offs has lead us to poison ourselves and the world in several fairly significant ways. This would seem to me to make a more considered and conservativ…
[deleted]