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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
Thanks, I'll look them up. I have read Jack Kerouac, On the Road, great book. [Flashback 20:57 Sep 25, Jack Kerouac, (this means I just remembered the memory for the first time since the lobotomy 13 years ago, specific distinct sensation that happens the very first time I follow a pointer to that memory). Yeah that's me. Let me say here my words are poetry really, in prose format. Prosetry.
So for an explanation, the same thing happened to me that happened to August Rodin.
Too literal. His statues were too literal so he made sculptures to the point he was accused of literally putting molds against the subject's skin to shape it, which is easy. Nobody really buys this story. Everybody--even at Stanford, which has Rodin statues everywhere, in the places of most honor, largest collection of Rodin statues outside Paris, talk about Rodin a lot but--disbelieves the story.
Let me vindicate him now. I had too literally perfect an American English, and that meant everybody assumed I understood how the system worked, when I also assumed I understood how the system worked--different system. So in Chile it's like an egg, there's a shell, as long as the shell hasn't been cracked they respect you, honor contracts, you're set. Chile would have given me a trial in my lynching no matter what. Literally no matter what. In fact I was counting on a trial no matter how kangaroo--kangaroo court would have still been court, plenty good for me, in Chile the courts aren't kangaroo so much as intensely Kafkaesque, but with loopholes for literally one in a million to be spared. I in fact did that, 200000 Chilean students finished high school 2007, I got the best college results by Hacker News standards and in hindsight also. Counted on being the Harvard black of Chile, one slot for the country, got it. Nobody can believe it. Dude no American no matter how racist bigoted like WASP dude Mayflower nothing sees me as anything other than American. That is not where the discrimination is coming from.
That was a problem, I couldn't communicate to the administration my copious copious copious evidence or talk to witnesses, nothing. Well it was a lynching, might as well have been speaking Chinese.
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)
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.
Haven't digged too much. But is there any research on polymerization products on carbon steel pans? I guess they could be carcinogenic too. And cooking things like tomatoes will cause losing some of it to food.
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.
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.
+ 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.
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
Though I can appreciate an article on PFAS that doesn't just have everyone hyperfocusing on their cooking pan.