I've alluded to the fact that I spent many years working on a nation-wide(US) water testing project once and that I don't own the results, they were never published, and I can't specifically give away those results that I don't own. All of this recent talk about PFAs in water is absolutely killing me. This new water testing is going to take place over the next three years, and it's important to note that it's *only* talking about a handful of chemicals.
I've found that particularly US-based people really think their water is great and vastly overestimate how great it is. It comes out of the tap, you drink it and you don't die of waterborne illnesses. Woohoo. Really, it's an accomplishment.
But until you spend time in a water testing lab you don't really begin to realize how much isn't tested for in that water you drink and bathe in. It's just not possible.
People would ask me all the time "How do I get my water tested for everything?" You can't. Think of the story recently about how many chemicals are in plastics, for instance. 16,000-ish and over 4,000 that are potentially hazardous. Basically zero of those are tested for in any way whatsoever. To get something tested, someone has to care enough that it's there in the first place. Then someone has to create testing procedures and standards. Then there has to be a market for that test.
Let's JUST talk about PFAs. You know how many there are? Ballpark is ~15,000 different PFAs. You know how many are tested in this new EPA program? 25.
Now that we've established that, just how likely is it that testing will find PFAs in YOUR water in the US?
https://www.ewg.org/interactive-maps/pfas_contamination/
Pretty likely.
While I can't really talk about what states are likely to find if they honestly look, what I do talk about, and have for probably 20 years now, is what I did when I realized what's really in your water. I put in a whole home filter outside of our home to filter out a lot of stuff for showering and hand washing. No one so much as cleans vegetables here unless the water comes from the reverse osmosis system in our kitchen. Drinking water, ice, pasta water, fruit and veggie washing water, etc all comes from that.
I'm very sensitive to the fact that not everyone can do all of that. It's a step in the right direction that the EPA is beginning to do something about this, but it's far later than it should be and doesn't go nearly far enough. All I can say is that you should demand better, and not just about PFAs, but all contaminants in your water supply.
And before anyone asks, yes, the spring water on the homestead is about as clean as you can find anymore. Under 10 TDS and no contaminants that I've found to date. Again, can't test for everything even if you wanted to and had a million dollars to throw at it. It was a major selling point on the property for us.
I'm back with more on this. You might wonder if I'm going to ever let this go, and the answer is, no. I have decades of rage built up over this that can only safely begin to come out now that more of this is becoming widely known.
I just learned something that I actually didn't know about this before, and I think it's worth sharing.
By now we all, hopefully, know that DuPont made billions on PFAs, all while knowing since the 60's that the mice they tested with PFAs died, and since about the 70's that the people in their manufacturing facilities who worked with PFAs were dying.
I also recommend reverse osmosis as the most comprehensive solution to getting it out of your water. Whether that's from your local water utility or in your own house is yet to be determined. Please keep an eye on what your local utility chooses to do, and encourage them NOT to use the full 5 years they're allowed to use to deal with this.
What I did not know until now, is that DuPont, realizing that everyone would have to get THEIR chemicals out of YOUR water bought one of the leading manufacturers of reverse osmosis technology, so the could profit on the back end of killing people. They're planning on making upwards of 4 BILLION PER YEAR from the cleanup if they can convince utilities to use their products.
Do not give any money, whether yourself(I'm not even sure they make direct to consumer products) or your local utilities to Desalitech Ltd.. That's just stuffing more money in DuPont's pockets after THEY did this to YOU.
There's a pretty good article today on Vox about this. I distinctly remember the author being on NPR shooting down immunity debt once, because she interrupted the host mid-introduction when she said "post-pandemic" to say "mid-pandemic" and I had so much hope. Then she said something wishy-washy about masks and suggested washing your hands better. But, that was at least a couple years ago and not a lot of people were actively shooting down immunity debt, so good for her.
Anyway, onto the article today. Overall it's good. It details some risks, what to do, recommends reverse osmosis as your best bet. There's a lot of good info here.
What do I hate? This:
"While their health risks are concerning — and scientists still have a lot to learn about them — it can be helpful to think of PFAS in the context of some other common toxins, says Ducatman. If you had “the choice between smoking a pack [of cigarettes] a day or being in one of those high-PFAS populations,” he says, “high-PFAS population is way safer.”"
I really don't know why anyone feels the need to compare every health threat to smoking a pack a day. Like, what is this? 1985?
Avoid PFAs wherever you can.
https://www.vox.com/even-better/24135052/pfas-forever-chemicals-health-testing-exposure
I did aquatic toxicology studies for the DoD in the early 2000s. Making clean water was an ordeal.
Prior to that, in 1982, I moved to Midland, TX. I immediately got sick and it didn’t take long to figure out it was the water. I’ve used reverse osmosis since no matter where I live. Of course RO water is stripped of minerals and has an acidic pH so I add minerals back in.
It’s complex. I use different filtration processes depending on what the water is for.
It really is complex. My basic strategy is just "as clean as possible" for home use, but you can definitely go down a whole rabbit hole on water, and believe me, I have before.
@BE ewww. Do you know if the water filters you attach to a kitchen faucet filter out all that? That's what I have.
NSF/ANSI 53 means it's certified to remove at least some PFA/PFOAs. The removal limit for certification varies based on location, but, that's the code you're looking for in a filter.
@BE ok thanks, I'll look at that. I've thought about getting a whole house filter. Are they hard to install?
Most of them are just an inlet and an outlet in the end. I didn't install our current one, so I can't really speak to it. We did it while we were moving into this house, and I think the plumber knocked it out in a couple hours overall.
I'm seeing a counter top filter system with a rating NSF/ANSI 58, is the higher number more effective?
And a few weeks ago on our evening news was a report that boiling water removes PFAS, so the next day I boiled water before drinking it, but when I thought about it, it made no sense, so I stopped...
Do you know if sparkling water beverage cans are plastic lined?
(Sorry, I have a lot of questions, and am excited to see you posting on this topic...)
Don't be sorry! I love the questions.
NSF 58 is specifically about reverse osmosis systems. There's a handful of different NSF certifications for different types of water filtering.
https://d2evkimvhatqav.cloudfront.net/documents/water_58_insert.pdf
Think of it as a minimum requirement. Most systems that meet the standards, surpass it.
I can't think of any reason that boiling water would remove PFAs. That's wild. They're way too stable to break down in boiling water(thus, forever chemicals) and they're not alive, so they don't die like bacteria, for example.
But, boiling kind of brings up something that should probably be discussed and that's distilled water. Distilling water alone won't remove all of the PFAs, despite some bad info out there. Distillation separates things based on boiling points, and some PFAs(remember, there's 15,000+) have boiling points around 100C. If you have lab quality distilled water, maybe, but I wouldn't do it at home and expect pure water. Just an FYI at what they might have been getting at there.
The sparkling water question is fantastic, and off the top of my head I don't know! I know sodas and other acidic substances(think tomato sauce) have used various linings to protect the aluminum can, and often those have had toxic substances that leech into the food/drink. I don't know about sparkling water, though.
Thank you so much!
The boiling water thing made me wonder if the PFAs were somehow adhering to the interior of the teakettle, which also didn't seem good. Otherwise I think it would just concentrate them, as the quantity of water was reduced through steam...
I had hoped that canned water was better than (plastic) bottled water. It has no metallic taste, but I do wonder.
I'm looking at getting the RO counter top filter system, but need to save up a little for that.
We mostly drink & eat from glass or ceramic ware, and cook/store food in the same (plus metal, for stove top cooking), but it can all still feel overwhelming.
I absolutely hear you. Little bit at a time is all you can do. We removed all non-stick PFA stuff a long time ago. After that we went item by item removing plastics. It's a whole thing, but, you either consent to industrial pollution or you don't!
@BE @FiddleSix I read about that boiling water thing too and thought "what." But then I came across this article that explains a study about boiling water then filtering it. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/boiling-tap-water-could-help-remove-80-percent-of-its-microplastics-study-suggests-180983874/
I've started switching all my kitchen storage to glass or ceramic with the cloth/beeswax tops. What do you think of silicone storage containers?
That makes sense about microplastics and I'd never seen it before. Thank you for sharing it!
We went all glass storage, too, a while back, and either cast iron or ceramic coated cookware. I always say, though, that someone CAN legally sneak one or more of the 15,000+ PFAs into your kitchen by claiming "PFOA free" or even "PFA free" and then using GenX or PTFE because of legal definitions. It's always a shell game with some of these companies.
Silicone is a perfect way to discuss something I like to bring up. You just don't know what you don't know when it comes to "stuff" in your products. When companies aren't required to say exactly what's in their products, they tend not to, and then how do you know what to look for?
I use silicone spatulas and a few storage containers. You have to trust the seller at this point of the game with them. They're often made with varying amounts of methylsiloxanes. The toxicity of which isn't well studied, but, I feel comfortable using the ones I have.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412018318105
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4884743/
Important to note, the second source mentions "In conclusion, it should be noted that the safety of application decreases with the decrease in silicone particle size" and that's why you might have heard that methylsilioxanes in car emissions are thought to be quite toxic.
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.3c03797
tldr; Silicone >>> Plastic > Non-stick overall to me.
@BE @FiddleSix i also recently switched to ceramic skillets. I use silicone spatulas since they don't damage the skillets but I've seen some silicone food storage things. I think I'm going to get some of those for hiking and stuff like that, i currently use plastic for those activities since I need something lightweight that can't shatter
I use silicone ones for hiking. Great use case. I also don't use the refrigerator ice maker, so I make blocks of ice each night to make iced tea with the next day in silicone storage containers.
@FiddleSix @BE it seems like a lot of outlets saw the study headline about boiling water but didn't bother to read it to find the part about having to filter it!
@FiddleSix @BE I just saw this cartoon that relates ...
https://mastodon.social/@jensorensen/112231730367033010
So true 😂 And you have to laugh, because otherwise....well, blame the companies that made those choices for you without your consent.
@BE I only drink water that's been through a British Berkefeld gravity filter (ceramic 10 micron? and activated charcoal).
Would that get rid of PFAs or are they ionically dissolved and therefore impossible to get rid of by filtration (or just potentially too tiny)?
That's a great question, and to the best of my knowledge I don't think either of those would remove a high percent of PFAs.
I wasn't familiar with this filter, so I dug into it just a little bit, and it seems more geared towards heavy metal removal, while it does do other things.
If you can find specs on it that specifically list amounts of different materials it filters out, link to it here because now I'm curious about it.
@BE Here's some data for their pressurised systems (which should be similar). They've had proper independent testing done too, I'll try to root that out.
OK, so, better on some organics than I would have thought, but, nothing specifically on PFAs after a quick look through.
It's certified for NSF/ANSI 401 which NSF says is:
"This standard offers up to 15 specific contaminant reduction claims. Some of the most popular categories include prescription drugs, over-the-counter medications, herbicides, pesticides and chemical compounds."
https://www.nsf.org/knowledge-library/nsf-ansi-42-53-and-401-filtration-systems-standards
@BE I just read this, it's pretty alarming and reminded me of your post.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2024/04/pfas-drinking-water-maine/678040/
Thank you! That's an excellent article and includes the elusive primary source of the 15,000 PFAs info, too!
https://comptox.epa.gov/dashboard/chemical-lists/PFASSTRUCT
Two thoughts - One, there's no way Maine thought spreading that around was a good idea in 2016 unless they simply didn't consult anyone. We've known PFAs were bad for decades before that.
Two - I'd change the headline from "The U.S. Is About to Uncover a Crisis in Drinking Water" to "The U.S. Is About to Uncover a Crisis in Drinking Water If It Honestly Looks"
@BE I wondered why anyone would think it was a good idea to use that sludge for food fertilizer 🤢
We can’t ever stop thinking about forever toxic chemicals. Thanks for the helpful shares.
I was thinking about remediation with fungi and did a very quick search. I haven’t read this through, yet, but this is one thing I found from 2022. Do you think it’s a possibility?
I'm a big fan of fungi, and algae, based systems for breaking down PFAs and plastics. While I think we should immediately(or 30 years ago) get reverse osmosis systems working for everyone's water, because it'll remove more than just PFAs that people don't know about yet and the technology is there and waiting, I think the most likely scenario in which we actually clean up plastic and PFA pollution probably lies in being able to scale up nature-based remediation.
There was an article about PFAs in Maine.
Thank you for sharing! That's funny, someone else linked what appears to be the same article above, but they changed the title from "The U.S. Is About to Uncover a Crisis in Drinking Water" to now "Maine Is a Warning for America’s PFAS Future"
I wonder if someone decided that uncovering a crisis was too spot on and if they changed anything else in the article itself.
@BE Strange they would change the title on the fly.
Yeah, I agree. You reminded me to go look at the internet archives on it, and it looks like they changed the title sometime within the first 3 hours it was out.
Someone asked me if I could source some of my info on PFAs, and the EPAs decisions, and that's entirely fair. Anyone who reads my posts knows I generally put links to everything. I *may* have been rage posting, while simultaneously trying to be careful about what I was saying, about this yesterday.
First - Are there really 15,000 different PFAs?
It's a pretty widely cited number, and I'm going to admit that I don't know exactly how many there are from a direct source. I think you'll find that number cited any time you look it up.
In lieu of having a source for that info specifically, here's a paper on what the class of chemicals is comprised of:
https://setac.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ieam.258
Second - I keep reading that only 6 PFAs are in the program, but you said 25.
I'm a lab chemist at heart. When I said 25 that's how many are in the *testing* protocol.
".In December 2019, EPA published Method
533, which includes a total of 25 PFAS (14 of the 18 PFAS
in 537.1 plus an additional 11 “short chain” PFAS) and
specifies isotope dilution quantitation."
https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2020-01/documents/pfas_methods-sampling_tech_brief_7jan2020-update.pdf
The limits that are imposed don't even cover all of those 25, but just the 6 *categories* that you see being reported, which are only comprised of 5 actual PFAs, and a mixture thereof:
PFOA, PFOS, PFHxS, PFNA, HFPO-DA and "Mixtures containing two or more" of those first 5.
https://www.epa.gov/sdwa/and-polyfluoroalkyl-substances-pfas
Third - Is this a serious attempt to do something? Or just some placation?
Putting my words down carefully, the EPA is regulating 5 chemicals in a category of over 15,000 in which over 1,400 of them are known to be in common use as of 5 years ago.
https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2020/em/d0em00291g
I'm glad to see some other sources have picked this up and are thinking about it critically. Here's a few I read today:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/11/pfas-limits-epa-drinking-water
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/epa-first-ever-drinking-water-regulations-pfas-forever-chemicals/
https://theconversation.com/pfas-forever-chemicals-why-epa-set-federal-drinking-water-limits-for-these-health-harming-contaminants-227621