Study finds alarming levels of ‘forever chemicals’ in US mothers’ breast milk

&quot;Among steps that the authors recommend pregnant women and mothers take to protect themselves are avoiding greaseproof carryout food packaging, stain guards like ScotchGard, waterproof clothing that uses PFAS, and cooking products with Teflon or similar non-stick properties, though manufacturers often do not disclose the chemicals’ use.&quot;<p>I wish Governments would do their jobs and simply ban PFAS in all products used for domestic purposes. This is a huge burden to place on individual consumers.

The article mentions to avoid greaseproof carryout food packaging, stain guards, waterproof clothing that uses PFAs, etc. but the problem is so much more than that.<p>I wrote a paper last year regarding forever chemicals for my work. The US water supply is contaminated with forever chemicals, if you&#x27;re drinking unfiltered tap water [1], you&#x27;re likely drinking forever chemicals as well. If you eat &#x2F;drink animal products, you&#x27;re likely ingesting forever chemicals. If you use cosmetics, those contain toxic chemicals such as phthalates. If you use plastic containers to store food, the plastic particles leech off into your food. When you take hot showers, you breathe in forever chemicals through the steam as the water is contaminated.<p>Even thermal paper, which is often used for store receipts, have been shown to increase BPA exposure in cashiers. [2]<p>All these chemicals are known to increase cancer rates, disrupt hormones, cause birth defects, etc. Is it any wonder that we&#x27;re seeing increasing rates of cancer, depression, etc?<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ewg.org&#x2F;interactive-maps&#x2F;pfas_contamination&#x2F;map&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ewg.org&#x2F;interactive-maps&#x2F;pfas_contamination&#x2F;map&#x2F;</a> [2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;toxicfreefuture.org&#x2F;handle-with-care-are-cash-register-receipts-giving-you-and-your-cashier-a-dose-of-bpa&#x2F;#:~:text=BPA%20and%20its%20close%20relatives,BPA%2C%20BPS%2C%20or%20BPSIP" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;toxicfreefuture.org&#x2F;handle-with-care-are-cash-regist...</a>.

These chemicals are one of the main suspects in the decline in human sperm count and sperm quality over the last few decades in much of the world. From the early 1970s to the early 2010s, sperm counts declined about 60% in North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand.<p>Other main suspects are obesity, poor choice of diet, and I believe a few other things. They probably all contribute somewhat.<p>It&#x27;s also possible that the chemicals have something to do with some of the other contributions.<p>For instance, the rise in obesity rates over the last few decades isn&#x27;t just a human thing. I&#x27;ve seen some research that found that animals are getting fatter, too. This includes lab animals that are fed controlled diets, so it isn&#x27;t just that fat humans are eating more, and so also have more scraps to toss to the pets.<p>This suggests some sort of hormonal change or disruption might be a significant factor in rising obesity, and when you look for candidate hormonal disruption sources that both humans and animals would be exposed to, those &quot;forever chemicals&quot; are going to be at the top of the list.

I was curious and looked up something for Germany: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.umweltbundesamt.de&#x2F;sites&#x2F;default&#x2F;files&#x2F;medien&#x2F;2546&#x2F;publikationen&#x2F;uba_sp_pfas_web_0.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.umweltbundesamt.de&#x2F;sites&#x2F;default&#x2F;files&#x2F;medien&#x2F;25...</a> (German)<p>Seems to be getting better though if you look at the graph on page 16.

This chemicals are terrible but they don&#x27;t kill quickly, they may not even kill you at all, they just make your health really bad but aren&#x27;t in general life-threatening.<p>But like they say, the dose makes the poison, so it might be just a matter of time (they&#x27;re extremely stable substances)<p>edit: why the downvotes?

This is bad.<p>I often wonder how to square such observations with the fact that life expectancy and quality of life are, in general, increasing.<p>It’s a noisy metric, but all in all it feels like the totality of human development is (for now anyway) increasing human welfare.<p>Caveat global warming etc.

But do people care?<p>We&#x27;ve know about this for decades. There have been studies on groups of people with high exposure, like that town in WV. We know this stuff is harmful, yet the majority public doesn&#x27;t really care. There won&#x27;t be protests or civic involvement of any kind at a large enough scale to make a difference. I fear this will be one of many issues that just gets ignored.<p>Edit: Why downvote?

Another example of what is possibly blatant regulatory capture over toxic chemicals in american water supplies:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;m.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=i5uSbp0YDhc" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;m.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=i5uSbp0YDhc</a>

One of my favorite bowls is made of wood; it’ll go back to the earth without disrupting other life much. Same for our ceramic bowls with less-toxic glaze (the cost of this is being limited to a mostly-brown color scheme). I grew up with neighbors who harvested the plants in our field for animal feed using machines made of metal, wood, and leather, pulled by horses. The only plastic was the milk jug of water (though it could be a glass jug in a cushioned box). We can return to using non-plastic materials for most things, reserving plastic for where its properties are most useful.

Finally something in biopersistent chemicals.<p>oh!..but look at those companies being all green and scores on their ESG ratings. Oh, and they are using green electricity.<p>CO2 has been used as greenwashing and mis-direction.<p>Yes. It is a problem. No - it will not harm you today - but these chemicals harm you and your children today and every day after that, forever.<p>Persistent chemicals that are hormone disruptors are killing humans, killing fish, killing bees, killing literally EVERYTHING alive on this plant - TODAY.<p>And all you hear from powers that be is global warming and CO2 that drowns out this very immediate, but such a profitable problem.<p>Disgusting.

50 Parts per trillion (ppt) detection is an awesome level of detction, It is interesting to compare to EPA limits of heavy metals in drinking water:<p>Mercury,Hg:<p>“ The EPA has established a limit of 2000 parts per trillion (ppt) of allowable mercury of drinking water. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has set a maximum permissible level of 1,000,000 part of methylmercury in a trillion parts of seafood.”<p>Lead, Pb: Flint water crisis had 15,000,000 ppt of lead, then after clean up it dropped to FDA ‘allowable’ 15,000 ppt (ideally would be zero).<p>Cadmium, Cd: EPA limits 5,000 ppt measurements of Cd in drinking water.<p>Arsenic, As EPA limit of 10,000 ppt in drinking water, short term exposure about 130,000 ppt can cause health effects.<p>Copper, Cu EPA limits of 1,300,000 ppt in tap water.<p>Elements functionally involved in human biology: “sodium (Na), potassium (K), magnesium (Mg), and calcium (Ca) that belong to main group of elements, and vanadium (V), chromium (Cr), manganese (Mn), iron (Fe), cobalt (Co), nickel (Ni), copper (Cu), zinc (Zn),”<p>This doesn’t exist, but I would imagine that the ideal water would have the exact ppt levels of these elements needed by the human body and nothing else.

This is concerning, but with a sample size of 50, I don&#x27;t think there&#x27;s enough evidence to claim that &quot;The study shows that PFAS contamination of breast milk is likely universal in the US&quot;.

Here&#x27;s a related 2016 article about PFOA and PFAS for anyone interested: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=27140589" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=27140589</a>