Study finds high levels of PFAS in school uniforms

https://phys.org/news/2022-09-high-pfas-school-uniforms.html

by PaulHoule • 4 years ago

46 31 4 years ago

phys.org

PaulHoule4• 4 years ago

... and I used to like Scotchgard so much.

giardini• 4 years ago

The article doesn't mention Scotchgard. Is Scotchgard harmful to humans?

PaulHoule4• 4 years ago

Scotchgard contains PFAS

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotchgard

They reformulated it in 2003 with a PFAS which is less persistent than what it was before but there are still questions about it. If textiles are contaminated with PFAS I'd think they are treating them to get an effect similar to Scotchgard.

dylan604• 4 years ago

When I was a kid, my parents Scotchgarded everything. Maybe that explains some things about me?!?

cptcobalt2• 4 years ago

Are there any at-home PFA tests? Like a test strip you could rub on fabrics/pans/etc? Seems like we're getting to that point.

Actually, imagine 40 years in the future: will we treat PFAS the same way we treat, say, asbestos?

garblegarble• 4 years ago

Are there any at-home PFA tests?

From everything you hear about their ubiquity, that test could almost just be a slip of paper with "Yes" written on it.

I've switched to stainless steel & cast iron pans, but there are plenty of PFAS in wrappers[1], etc. so I'm not sure if there was any point in trying to avoid them in cookware (other than stainless steel is delightfully simple to clean)

1: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/mar/24/revealed...

cptcobalt2• 4 years ago

Definitely +1 on stainless steel pans.

Also, Carbon Steel > Cast Iron. It requires about the same maintenance as cast iron, but is much more familiar for those used to cooking on non-stick pans. It isn't yet ubiquitous in the home, but is a de-facto standard in restaurants, so you can get very good pans for incredibly cheap. I have a pan that's about 6 months in that's very well seasoned, and its surface feels just as non-stick as anything else I've used.

hombre_fatal• 4 years ago

PFAS are so ubiquitous that I suppose the only interesting thing about TFA is that some children are required to wear the uniforms.

Though I can appreciate an article on PFAS that doesn't just have everyone hyperfocusing on their cooking pan.

scythe• 4 years ago

Uniforms don't sound like a terrible idea in principle: you give the students something nice to wear, it contributes to trust / cohesion and reduces (but can't eliminate) style peer pressure / bullying. In practice, though, we were always given uniforms that were ugly and uncomfortable, yet somehow still expensive. The overall effect of the uniforms I was made to wear was a lifelong resentment towards Land's End.

So it seems characteristic that they would contain PFAS.

vel0city• 4 years ago

you give the students something nice to wear

Uniforms aren't often given out freely in my experiences. Often uniforms mean a few allowed colors of non-branded polos with no other graphics and khakis. Often tied with a preferred vendor, but as long as the colors are close enough its OK.

smegsicle• 4 years ago

style peer pressure / bullying

and if this doesn't seem like a big deal to you, remember that your social group is not primarily highschool girls

daniel-cussen3• 4 years ago

So I came to terms with teflon. It's the most dangerous object in the kitchen. Much more than the oven, the fire, the knives, the blender. Bar none the pan is the most dangerous. Sneakiest of all.

But I do have have a pan. So I got it all figured out. Strict. If any metal touches the CF I will discard it. Like only plastics, like actually read the whole info-packet (someday) the disclaimers they do tell you what to do if you're wise to how powerful it is. Fear it so much, so much respect for it, but a kitchen is a kitchen. I am made of food, we're both biomass, for the cutlery to cut what I eat it can cut me as well. Like biting your tongue, the American approach these days is like padding everything everything has to be blunt, like blunt scissors no that sucks. Or like labeling literally every single mug saying it's known to the State of California to cause cancer. There has to be an alternative, otherwise I just...I just don't care, like I guess that means "the State of California knows you will get cancer" not "you must spend more money if you want to avoid cancer". Telling me I'm doomed. Like the uniforms. Like first off dirt contains every metal, like purification even of gold is very difficult different gold coins look darker or brighter, all of them .999 fine, dude "gold of Parvaim" (KJV, II Chronicles 3:6) was the most beautiful, but the Temple was destroyed. The concept of purity and the idea that only Nature gets contaminated, but humans are safe. Bananas are radioactive, well cigarettes one of the many many ways they cause cancer is not cleaning out the radiation. So the Tobacco companies could in fact apply some acids and stuff to the tobacco leaf to wash it and cut the radiation way down, but it apparently would affect the taste.

Not big into taste frankly, like ate raw eggs a couple times, no problem. Just like in Rocky. Keep the prep time low. But the lowest prep time is simply not even using a glass, mongoosing the egg, which is what you do on a desert island if you're so lucky to find an egg. Like if I knew a cigarette was just as stimulating (and alkalizing, which I approve of, another synergy with other stimulants) not only would I buy that kind and no other, I would adapt to its taste and soon enough more radioactive cigarettes would taste terrible. Happened to me with bitterness, I now prefer bitterness to sweetness. Happened to me with gatorade, dex makes Gatorade taste like Coca-Cola. And in general taste is an indicator of toxicity, that's the whole fucking point of that sense. You get a whole sense dedicated just to dodge poison, like eat the sugar (first and foremost blood sugar, dex, you can't go a second without it but you can go a month with that water and nothing else) and not eat shit, so heh yeah no it's always wrong. Stupid. Childish.

So personally I used to smoke I wish I still could but it just sucks way too sticky a habit, like expensive, bad return on investment, plus a medical student at one point just said, like smoking is the worst. Like if you cheat on every test in medical school somehow, read nothing learn nothing at least buy a pack of cigarettes, throw out all the cigarettes, and read the entire box for the health warnings. That is valuable knowledge. There, the warnings are good, like nagging a bit, come on. So in practice it's hard to rebel against chemical oppression, like PFAS, flourine in water (like they want you to buy bottled water no bottled water is flourinated whereas all tap water is fluorinated, very interesting), cigarette addiction, high-fructose corn syrup (like again more expensive bottle, Gatorade, low-fructose sugar), well commercial street drugs obviously, and worst of all being poisoned by shrinks with valproic acid or clozapine, and who knows what else, the classified amnestic drugs, what are they called, they told me once, but I forgot.

PaulHoule4• 4 years ago

The reason to be afraid of raw eggs is that they contain

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avidin

which binds very tightly to Biotin and could cause B7 deficiency if you ate raw eggs all the time. The affinity of Avidin to Biotin is exceptional for a protein so I like the name which could be associated with "avid" (binds tightly) and "aves" (latin for bird)

no-dr-onboard• 4 years ago

Reading this was a wild ride.

moistly• 4 years ago

You remind me of Neal Cassady, I think, but maybe I’m remembering the writings of Jack Kerouac or Ken Kesey. I suspect most of HN is too lazy to make the effort to appreciate your beat poetry/prose.

purpleblue• 4 years ago

Using old-school lye will get rid of PFAS on your clothes. I wonder if that was considered during these tests.

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/new-way-destroy-p...

PaulHoule4• 4 years ago

+ DMSO and high temperatures. Lye will probably wreck your clothes too.

Last time I played around with DMSO I made an ibuprofen ointment similar to the diclofenac ointments there were expensive and prescription-required back then.

I'd apply some to my skin and it would absorb very quick and I'd get digestive upset even more quickly than if I took ibuprofen pills so it was a success and a failure at the same time.

pacaro• 4 years ago

Memories of my first job, between high school and university, I worked as a technician in a pharmaceutical formulation lab. Our main project was a topical Diclofenac preparation. We worked on both creams and an aerosol (post foam) dispenser. Balancing solvents, waxes, surfactants, and propellant (also a solvent) to create a foam that dissolves at the right speed was an interesting challenge. I have no idea whether our product ever went to market as I moved on to university and other things.

IIRC we explicitly didn't use DMSO because of concerns with toxicity, and just accepted that the absorbance rate was astonishingly low, clinical trials suggested that it took 24-48 hours for the active ingredient to be detected in the blood.

My recollections are hazy, this was over 30 years ago

addingadimensio3• 4 years ago

Can you own that is waterproofed, stainproofed has pfas in it. Rip tents

jjtheblunt2• 4 years ago

Not true anymore : look at the specs on the arcteryx site, for example, and I think REI as well, for articles.

addingadimensio3• 4 years ago

You mean short-chain pfas? Im sure that will be determined to be very healthy ten years from now. /kicks can

ndlso• 4 years ago

And don’t get me started about fluoride in water …

FreeFull• 4 years ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31jDgwAuIv8 I found this video about fluorinated solvents (Novec™) rather illuminating about the potential dangers of PFAS and related compounds.

aurelien• 4 years ago

Made by who? Does that country have interest to make different generations stupid ?

Originami• 4 years ago

Can we just ban fluorine compounds from being used on clothes, household objects, food packaging or preparation, firefighting, de-icing?

leobg• 4 years ago

Currently, PFAS can be filtered out of water

Does a reverse osmosis system at home filter them out? And is there a way to test how much you have in your water?

Study finds high levels of PFAS in school uniforms

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