See also 86 comments a day ago: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37256484">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37256484</a>
This smells like astroturfing in favor of plastic. The fact that something contains "traces" of PFAS is not that much of a revelation. Unfortunately, thanks to tragically insufficient environmental regulation, PFAS have gotten everywhere nowadays, so most naturally sourced ingredients will contain traces of PFAS.<p>It is important to know how much PFAS they contain, whether those amounts are higher than the wood feedstock (i.e., are PFAS being added), whether the amounts are medically relevant, and whether the amounts are more than the alternative. (And lets not kid ourselves, stainless steel straws are not a viable alternative.)
Paper straws are the perfect example of human hypocrisy. It sounds so convincingly good for the nature and makes everyone forget that the oceans are polluted with fishernets.<p>Effectively, paper straws are really really bad when it comes to recycling. Since paper doesn't have the right qualities for a straw (it will soak up all the liquids pretty fast), they are usually coated inside. That makes it problematic for recycling since you somehow need to reverse that coating. Besides, recycling paper costs a lot of water.
Plastic on the other hand doesn't need coating and is pretty easy to recycle (a bit harder if it's colored). The reason why this doesn't happen is simply that new plastic is much cheaper than recycled one. I'm afraid with the de-icing of Greenland this trend will continue with all the new sources of oil.
This is one of the few issues where I feel I'm the only sane person on the planet: you can just drink from the cup.<p>We survived the first 600 million years of multicellular life without straws, and we can last a few more.<p>People are at each other's throats over nothing. We could've been a type 2 civilization by now if we spent as much time researching energy extraction as we do talking about straws. </hyperbole>
My uncle has Parkinson's disease attributed (in part) by Veterans Affairs due to Agent Orange exposure in Vietnam.<p>He can only drink out of a cup using a straw due to the trembling and shakes.<p>Also, straws are fun.
Which brands? Cant get at the supplementary materials.<p>I bought a set of those IKEA bamboo straws, said to be 100% natural, and indeed I don't see why pfas would be needed on those; solid bamboo.
i think the bigger issue is probably that the paper straws are about an order of magnitude higher in mass, virtually 100% organic chemicals, and so represent about an order of magnitude higher resource consumption<p>the bigger issue than that is that disposable straws, even after that order-of-magnitude increase in impact, are an absolutely insignificant issue in ecological terms and yet have somehow become a political issue and spawned new laws and ridiculous greenwashing marketing
I'm sure someone probably feels strongly about this, but I will ask anyway:<p>Do we as a society even need straws?<p>I never use a straw at home.<p>The only time I would consider wanting one would be for a milkshake maybe, due to its thickness making it hard to sip otherwise.<p>I am not anti-straw, just think it is sort of a weird thing for our society to use when I stop to think about it.
All this stuff sold to us as eco alternatives are horrendous.<p>They are harmful imo as they detract from the ideal and usually attainable solution of reducing consumption.
when I see the words "forever chemicals" in some writing I assume the use of emotive language is simply there to try to manipulate me and so whatever the opposite of what the article says is likely the truth
But so does our drinking water afaik. The real news is that<p>> PFAS are sometimes used as a water-resistant coating [on "paper" straws]<p>Surprised Pikachu that paper isn't water resistent (though then why do they melt in your mouth? Are those straws the pure paper variant?). What we need is for people to be able to reuse the things. Return the reusable straw to any McDonald's worldwide for dishwashing and reuse, for example, if we can't get people to bring it from home (the latter is my solution atm). Single use paper straws isn't more greenhouse gas efficient than single use thin plastic straws anyway, that was never going to be the answer even if it alleviates a decimal of a fraction of plastic trash issues
From the paper(<a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19440049.2023.2240908" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19440049.2023.2...</a>):<p>> PFAS were detected in almost all paper-based straws, with highly variable concentrations between brands, ranging from < LOQ(level of quantification) to 7.15 ng/g (Figure 1). PFOA was the most frequently detected component. Specific concentrations can be found in Supplementary Table A3. In the other types of straws, more often all PFAS were below the LOQ. In bamboo straws, PFAS were detected in the range < LOQ to 3.47 ng/g in four out of five brands. In glass straws two brands showed concentrations above the LOQ, ranging from < LOQ to 6.65 ng/g, while the concentrations for the other brands were found to be below the LOQ. In the stainless steel straws, no PFAS concentrations above the LOQ were observed in any of the brands. Finally, three out of four plastic straw brands contained quantifiable PFAS concentrations, ranging from < LOQ to 0.924 ng/g. There was a significant variation in PFAS profiles between straws from the same materials. This variation, in combination with the relatively small dataset, made it impossible to compare statistically the materials and continent of origin (CO) for each PFAS individually. Therefore, we used the ΣPFAS concentrations instead.<p>Is this a lot? What do these levels mean? "Detectable" isn't really a useful threshold for many chemicals. Also, how much of these chemicals am I likely to ingest? Does it depend on the type of drink, it's temperature and chemistry?
Any place which serves paper straws (in my area) gets an automatic no-go.
Not interested in a business virtue signaling to superficial ecology preservation. It is akin to anti-gunners betting all in on stopping made up categories of firearms (assault weapons) which make up a tiny portion of murders. Whereas if they were serious they would focus on restrictions of hand-guns. The two stats of crime committed with both are NOT the same levels.
Consumer solutions for saving the planet result in greenwashing (distraction from actual meaningful change), new poisons, and growing waste through growing demand. Ecology isn't simply making correct purchasing decisions even if they feel good.