
Toxic Substances Portal - Perfluoroalkyls - devhead
https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/tp.asp?id=1117&tid=237
======
xxpor
One story about how PFOAs screwed up a town in WV, and how DuPont tried to
cover it up:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/10/magazine/the-lawyer-
who-b...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/10/magazine/the-lawyer-who-became-
duponts-worst-nightmare.html)

~~~
jamestimmins
Phenomenal read. Really terrifying that people in authority within DuPont are
comfortable poisoning so many people in the name of profits. At some point
you'd expect guilt/decency to kick in, but apparently not.

~~~
smt88
I'm genuinely surprised that this would be something that raises an eyebrow
for someone. Chemical companies all have extremely spotty histories (I suggest
reading about benzine and the auto industry).

Tobacco, oil, and Coca-Cola execs learned their products were dangerous and
chose to bury the research. They even funded biased studies to conclude the
opposite.

Those are all on the scale of billions of victims, and in the case of oil, the
potential for harm includes most life on Earth.

~~~
mincedWerdz

      billions of victims
    

Within the scope of tobacco and soda pop/soft drinks (since coca-cola isn't
the only actor, even if they are a stand-out case, if not _THE singular_
stand-out example) the victims aren't victimized in a visceral sense, in that
people have options in front of them, and they make their choices.

It's a really long, slow process of injury, with plenty of time to change
course, and no one is intimidated or forcibly coerced to behave as they do. So
it comes down to broad conventional, normalized availability and scales of
supply that outpaces natural demand, coupled with deceptive propaganda and
misinformation. But the victimization is soft, subtle and really only harmful
over decades or generationally. Compared to the daily realities faced,
throughout the twentieth century, it's silly to bat an eye at these things.

Suffice to say, alcohol is so much worse than either, short-term and long-
term. And look at what came of prohibition.

Fossile fuels, on the other hand, and petrochemicals in particular, encompass
a misery inducing nightmare so complete, and have enabled pretty much every
modern horror experienced, to the point that it begs disbelief. The word
"victims" barely scratches the surface, and number "billions" would be
shocking if it weren't numbing and obvious at a conceptual level.

------
xkcd-sucks
In general, the attractive properties of fluorinated hydrocarbons is also what
makes them nasty. C-F bonds are incredibly stable, so they stick around
forever. So, fluorination imparts a practical toxic liability to compounds
that otherwise are too short-lived to be "toxic" in the "real world."

In addition, any process energetic enough to break C-F bonds will generate
incredibly reactive intermediates which then attach to whatever biology is
nearby.

~~~
08-15
The same "nastiness" makes these compounds essentially non-toxic, too. Since
nothing less reactive than oxygen radicals seems to attack C-F bonds, these
compounds just sit there doing nothing. Which is what the report's summary
says: they found the more common compounds everywhere, but they just sit
there. (The summary(!) has awfully low information density, I am not going to
look at the full report.)

------
Xeoncross
> Perfluoroalkyls have been released to air, water, and soil in and around
> fluorochemical facilities located within the United States (3M 2007b, 2008a,
> 2008b; Barton et al. 2007; Davis et al. 2007; DuPont 2008; EPA 2008a).

> Since the early 2000s, companies in the fluorochemical industry have been
> working in concert with the EPA to phase out the production and use of long-
> chain perfluoroalkyl compounds and their precursors.

> ..have been phased out by the eight corporations in the
> perfluorotelomer/fluorotelomer industry (Arkema, Asahi, BASF [successor to
> Ciba], Clariant, Daikin, 3M/Dyneon, DuPont, and Solvay Solexis) as part of
> the EPA’s PFOA Stewardship Program (DuPont 2008; EPA 2008a, 2016a).
> Industrial releases of these compounds in the United States have declined or
> been totally eliminated based on company reports submitted to EPA.

[https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/tp200-c5.pdf](https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/tp200-c5.pdf)

------
zaroth
> The EPA has set drinking water levels for PFOA and PFOS of 70 parts per
> trillion.

Per _trillion_? Seems like pretty nasty stuff.

~~~
jcranmer
By LD50, it's 1/10th as toxic as Vitamin D, which is to say you'd need 10× as
much PFOS to kill you as Vitamin D.

Part per trillion isn't particularly impressive for drinking water standards.
There is one chemical where the standard is 30 parts per quadrillion.

~~~
rhizome
So you're saying that some substances are more dangerous than others, by
volume.

~~~
jcranmer
Actually, by weight, not by volume.

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donohoe
Excerpt:

A major environmental health study that had been suppressed by the Trump
administration because of the “public relations nightmare” it might cause the
Pentagon and other polluters has been quietly released online.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published the
controversial 852-page review of health dangers from a family of chemicals
known as perfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS — manmade chemicals used in
everything from carpets and frying pan coatings to military firefighting foams
— on its website this morning, and will publish a notice in the Federal
Register tomorrow.

The study upends federally accepted notions for how much of these chemicals
are safe for people — recommending an exposure limit for one of the compounds
that is 10 times lower than what the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has
maintained is the safe threshold, and seven times lower for another compound.
The stricter exposure thresholds are similar to those established by state
health agencies in New Jersey and Michigan. All told, the report offers the
most comprehensive gathering of information on the effects of these chemicals
today, and suggests they’re far more dangerous than previously thought.

Source: (ProPublica) [https://www.propublica.org/article/suppressed-study-the-
epa-...](https://www.propublica.org/article/suppressed-study-the-epa-
underestimated-dangers-of-widespread-chemicals)

------
driverdan
> Delayed report on toxic water contamination report released

This subject is vague and incorrect. This is specifically about PFAs in the
environment, not just "toxic water contamination."

Is this new info? I thought PFAs were widely understood.

~~~
tzs
It also is redundant. Either the "report on" near the front or the "report"
near the back should be deleted...unless it is actually intended to mean that
there are _two_ reports, one on toxic water contamination and another report
about the first report.

------
mschuster91
Hopefully this gets mirrored worldwide, and that _fast_ , before the Trump
administration can order its takedown. Would that actually be possible/legal?

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Trump could get it taken down off the .gov site. It's possible, and it's
probably legal (but IANAL).

Trump could not get it removed from the net. It's gone. If you viewed it, you
probably have a cached copy on your hard drive. So do several hundred other
people.

If Trump tries to shut this report down, it will go viral (see "Streisand
Effect").

