PSA: Check your bike lube. I was shocked to find out mine was basically just PFAS I'm dumping into my garage/the forest trails. I have to think bikers care more than average about nature/where they ride, and apparently we don't care all that much.
I appreciate your concern, however, as a cyclist, I have a good idea of how many oils and solvents I use and it is chicken feed compared to what car dependent people use. What next, concern about the dust coming from the brake blocks on my bicycle and the plastic nanoparticles that come from the tyres?
I use WD-40 on occasion and I think the nudge is needed to not breathe that stuff. But again, the aerobic benefits of cycling outweigh the problems of breathing WD-40 needed to lube the cables every winter or so.
But I like the idea of the American driving his two tonne monster vehicle to the trail to then be concerned about a speck of PFAS dropping off the bike onto the trail.
There is bike shedding with the original article too. I don't eat processed foods including candy bars so those wrappers are not something that ever get into my house. However, I see the toxins as the refined sugars, variously saturated fats and other non-food ingredients in this garbage. Worrying about the PFAS chemicals in the wrapper is a bit silly when you regard the whole product as toxic.
A similar bit of bike shedding goes on with 'pesticides' sprayed on crops. People worry about a bit of glycosphate sprayed on their lettuce but overlook the fact that most of what they eat is definitely not healthy. They worry about the 'pesticides' on the lettuce and ignore the burger, 'cheese' and bun, none of which are what the body needs.
Do you not clean off/lube your chain somewhere you care about, whether the forest or your home? Just because cars suck doesn't mean I don't want to be aware if I'm handling liquid PFAS and dumping them directly into my living space.
Do you not think it's worthy talking about a food company dusting their packaging in (potentially obscured as to not be detected) forever chemicals? If nothing else than as reinforcement of 'oh yeah, this is why I choose inconvenient snacks over convenient'?
Because sometimes I really want cheap/easy/junkfood. A bit extra calories or fat, I'm going to give in. But straight coated in obscured forever chemicals just because (the article says there really isn't even a purpose for them in this situation). Nah, I'm good bro. We have snacks at home (the snack, a bad batch of frozen humus I put too much lemon in).
I lube my bike on rare occasions, when it gets to the stage of dry/orange chain or gear levers that risk thumb injury to use. Then it is minimal effort with WD-40 by the bins. I then ride on actual roads that are heavily polluted by car dependent people before getting to the 'bike superhighway' that is the canal path, which I mostly use to get me where I want to go.
If there was excess oil on my bike then I am okay with it dripping off on the stupid junction they built for the car dependent people. It is an industrial waste ground.
I only got into the avoidance of processed food on a whim, to see if I could last a week without added sugar. I was buying garbage in the supermarket at the time, not sure what junk to buy, and I just thought to give vegetables a try. I had never gone a day of my life without refined sugar to that point. I felt so much better after that week that I decided to keep going, and I researched it, to find that there wasn't anything wrong with a modest amount of sugar, however, it was the rubbish that came with it in processed foods that I was also avoiding. Again, on their own, there is nothing wrong with things like palm oil.
I started buying vegetables that I had never bought before, even if I had eaten them. I now feel ashamed to have lived for so many years without buying vegetables that I now consider essential. Right now I haven't got any swede in the cupboard (rutabaga in American English), which is a problem since I eat that almost every day. Before my accidental nutrition experiment I had never bought swede. I also always have beetroot on hand, whereas there was a time when I only bought it pickled in jars. Nowadays I have no interest in the processed form, there was nothing wrong with it pickled, but my preference is to have a fresh bunch of beetroot, give it a scrub and get it in the pot for lush, succulent flavour.
All of these vegetables have phytochemicals in them, which I never really appreciated. But I did have pale, pimply skin then, whereas now I have skin that never gets the slightest blemish and has a glow to it, as if I have caught the sun. I have gone from feeling mildly ashamed of my body to being a bit vain, which is far better. I eat all that I want without any feelings of remorse such as those I might feel after demolishing a large chocolate bar or big bag of crisps (potato chips).
For me there is no such thing as too much fruit. Notionally in the UK you are supposed to eat 'five a day', as in portions of fruit or veg. I am on something way upwards of that because almost everything I eat is in the 'five a day' category. This is to the detriment of perfectly healthy foods such as pasta and rice, I just don't have room on my plate for such things.
Animal products became a bit of a chore and I found that I didn't really need them. So all of that went too. I found out that all the nutrients, micro or macro are far more abundant in vegetables and other plants. I thought I needed animal products for protein but I eat so many pulses, legumes, beans and whatnot that I am probably getting way too much protein just from my favourite plants.
I ended up not needing a fridge or a freezer. Both are turned off at the wall with no conceivable need to turn them on. All the vegetables have phytochemicals in them that keeps them good at room temperature, plus they aren't refrigerated in the supermarket.
I get a few plastic bags and a few tins, with a few glass jars for herbs and nut butters. I use a bread machine so there are a few paper bags from flour. Most of my waste is vegetable trimmings or fruit peelings, all of which can go back in the ground. I reuse the plastic bags that potatoes come in for my waste, so, rather than drag out a huge, smelly black bag of rubbish, I just have a football sized bag of vegetable matter to take out. I don't have a bin as such, just a small re-used bag on the counter top that I take out every couple of days. The small box of recycling will take about a month to have enough worth taking out. I should say that I am not even trying to reduce my waste, it is just a happy bonus that I have cut that down by at least ninety percent.
I have had one or two bad apples, but, apart from that, I have no food waste. Gone are the days of wholesale fridge clearances, taking out rotting things. This is curious because I do not use a fridge or freezer, yet my food is unbelievably fresh with nothing going to waste. Again, there is nothing deliberate about this.
I also question the convenience of convenience food. At the supermarket I only have to go in and out to pick a few vegetables and a bag of fruit. I have no shopping list, as, if I forget potatoes then I just make do with sweet potatoes, nothing is that crucial, I can just buy what is new season, on offer or what I fancy. I keep all of my receipts because I just happened to keep my first receipt from the 'experiment'. Coffee went at an early stage and I reckon that my entire food and beverages bill is far less than what I used to spend on coffee. Electricity and heating bills are down too.
I do not see myself as deprived of any processed food goodness and I don't see chocolates or even coffee as desirable. I want those phytochemicals in vegetables and only see downsides in junk. The whole digestive tract changes considerably from tastebuds to bacteria in the gut so I am not eating fruit out of an obligation to eat 'five a day' but out of genuine desire. I get genuine pleasure, as in a high, from eating really tasty food. With the processed food I had not been getting such sensations for a long time, just that feeling of loathing that you get from doing stupid things like gambling (where you lose all your money, I am not a gambler, but I have put money in a slot machine before).
There is also the small matter of 'the streak'. The pandemic set me on this journey, in a roundabout way. Before then I always put deadlines and others first, so nutrition was always something that 'was not me'. But nowadays, as I see it, a whole food, plant based diet, moderate exercise, maintaining an optimal weight and no alcohol is the way to go. I have never felt better and, touch wood, I never have days of sickness. This is my 'streak' and a desire not to break it is a motivator. That fateful day in the supermarket putting the junk back on the shelves to back up to the vegetable aisle was purely a whim, but I have not looked back. I just wish I had that thought twenty years earlier.
I did ask Google where animals get vitamin B12 from, which is bacteria or supplements. In the UK we have a yeast extract product fortified with vitamin B12 and that is the only processed food I buy. That and iodised salt covers me for what can't be obtained from plants. I do have some vitamin D supplements that I dabble with, but that is about as 'health nut' as it gets. I am not eating kale with quinoa and chia seeds blended into a smoothie with side portions of blueberries, just standard greengrocer stuff.
My point is to not sweat the small stuff. We only have so much decision making bandwidth and back to basics nutrition comes with consequences. I don't have to fear my teeth falling out or excuse myself from a meeting because of strange bowel movements, worry about forever chemicals or worry about the ethical minefield of animal welfare. It is easy to over-complicate our lives. Simplicity requires a very different skill, but a skill my grandma had all along.
Not sure for all the PFAS but Teflon (PTFE) is often added in “winter lube”.
The "summer lube" have better performance, but they wash after some rain.
Winter lubes tends to be slightly heavier (depends on brands), got additifs (PTFE and so) and last longuer under the rain but get eventually washed anyway. The performance is a bit worse but common mortals shouldn’t feel the difference.
Most bikes I repair in the workshop craves for oil (poor performance) OR got way to much (sand stick in it and wear your chain).
A best practice is to put 1 drop in every barrel (round stuff between two links) or 2, on the inner side of the chain only. That’s it. When the chain turns black the oil is dirty. Clean it (or swipe with a cloth, not great but way better than not cleaning at all) and apply new oil.
Also:
- belts are great, clean, silent and long lasting. But they require a frame with them in mind
- avoid lube sprays!!! Or use supercarrefully with protections and so. People tends to (without wanting to) lube other parts that doesn’t need it: frame, derailleur, gears and wheel in the best case. Tire, brake rims and disk in the worst case (this is very bad). Lube bootles are cleaner, cheaper, smaller, last longer, fast (10 sec once you used to it) and easy to apply.
I ride ~120km/week in dirty-oily Paris and swipe+oil my chain every two month on summer and one month in winter (probably slightly not enough). I use summer oil only because don’t want drop more PTFE on the road.
Edit: how to know if your chain needs oil: it should look slightly shiny but not greasy, oily or dirty or matte.
Same with some granite countertop sealer I bought in a spray bottle. Had to dig online for a while before I could figure out what it's made of, which is almost pure PFAS. Crazy considering we prepare foods near it.
A bunch of the lubricants that are FDA approved for incidental food contact contain PTFE. It’s unclear how harmful the teeny tiny particles of PTFE are.
They bioaccumulate because the “forever” part means they don’t break down. The reason they’ve been banned in food wrappers is that they accumulate to levels that become toxic. We should avoid them every way we can.
you don't absorb quartz through your skin and is inert if it gets into your stomach. small particles won't hurt your guts and will get pooped out; ingesting dirt is something that is not uncommon with animals, including people.
There are much newer products than boeshield which have a lot higher wax content, preform a lot better, and don’t have the nasty stuff in them like naphtha.
Silca ss drip, ufo drip, flower power wax are all drip on lubes that all test better than boeshield (last longer, less chain wear, etc).
FWIW: TriFlow contains PTFE, which is an exceptionally inert PFAS. the process of manufacturing it involves some nasty PFAS chemicals which are then dumped into the environment, though.
I looked into it a couple years ago and can't find anything. I believe it does though.
It doesn't have the consistency (or price) of a ceramic and it's not an oil or wax. It's something suspended in a volatile liquid. If you spill some it evaporates quickly and you can inspect the residue which is the actual lubricant. I don't know what else it would be but PTFE or PFAS.
To work towards eliminating PFAS in everyday products, I envisioned a service where people could send in things they own to have them tested, and the results would be published on a website/app and searchable via barcode. Win/win: users get free PFAS testing, and the service gets free products to test to create a database.
I researched how to perform rigorous PFAS testing but it looks like the best method is PIGE which requires a particle accelerator, which aren’t exactly easy to come by.
Anyway just posting this in case anyone has thoughts or would be interested in working on something like this.
I love the idea. Kind of like harm reduction through drug testing. Except the drugs are legal and don’t give you a high.
I would probably rather advocate for Which (UK), Consumer Reports (US) and various similar organisations to work on this than start a new org.
Unless you just use this as a marketing strategy for a commercial lab (in which case you will simply forget the noble initial goal and end up simply operating a testing laboratory business.)
PFAS has made me terribly suspicious of lubricants and waterproofing agents, and things that have been lubricated/waterproofed. “Compostable” paper food containers especially. Can it really be ok to eat bread that doesn’t spoil on a paper plate that doesn’t soak through?
I exclusively purchase wax coated paper plates and cups. They generally work just great for picnic stuff, but don't work at all for hot stuff like soups/coffee/hot chocolate.
They're at least twice as expensive, but I think it's worth it.
Recently, I've found myself trying to avoid any food that touches any plastic mostly for this reason. It's so hard to do - even aluminum drink cans are coated with plastic on the inside, apparently.
I don't think this is true, the scare about aluminum came from the 70s/80s when it was thought to be linked to Alzheimer's. However, this was found to be untrue.
Very high levels of aluminum can cause poisoning, for sure. But it has to be more than you can get from anodized cooking equipment or drink cans. It's around the 13th most abundant element in earth, it's in water and food, and our bodies are pretty good at getting rid of it.
Don’t conflate plasticizers (such as BPA) with pfas. While keeping plasticizers and microplastics out of your diet is beneficial, pfas are a different beast. They accumulate over time and cause a whole host of problems such as organ failure.
Pfas are used in waterproofing, grease proofing, and fire suppression.
Paper straws, the coating of paper cups, the paper around cupcakes, takeout containers, waterproof clothing, lubricants, sealers.
But yeah I hear you. I’ve been trying to stick to glass and it makes me feel like a weirdo-hippy avoiding so many common packaging materials.
We haven't come so far from the time of the Romans who drank from lead pipes. We're just wrestling with different chemicals and different physical, environmental and social effects.
With all the new information coming out, it seems like there really is no choice but to avoid everything you can't grow and package yourself... or ensuring your environment can be safer in terms of air cleaning, as well as food.
I dont think the consumers of cheap candy products care tbh. Hershey and similar tiered chocolate all have emulsifiers like polyglycerol polyricinoleate and lecithin. If something is sold at a gas station, its bad for you.
No level of "clean lab report" healthiness would convince me that the mediocre-at-best tastes and feel-kinda-crappy after-effects of cheapo chocolates were worth paying for.
Lmao, how is this downvoted? I'm not even on the "all American food is bad" but Hershey's is disgusting. Full of butyric acid. I remember standing in a German chocolate museum, reading about post-war American chocolate and realizing why I feel like I have post-vomit "heartburn" after eating 2 whole squares of Hershey's. It's gross. I'll die on this hill.
That can dilute what's circulating in your bloodstream, but not what's already accumulated in your brain, lungs, liver, kidneys, and probably some other organs that weren't studied yet.
Not necessarily. I visit our local medical vampire every 3 months to drain a pint due to high levels of ferritin (hemochromatosis issues). I asked what they do with the blood. They destroy it by ashing it. The tech said they do this with any blood drawn from someone with a known disease state. So if phlebotomy becomes a common treatment for PFAS loads, I'd guess the draws would be destroyed. I hope.
A. Stop production world wide. Start decomposing PFAS in the environment (there are some chemical methods). You'll probably need a new liver. Wait lots of years.
B. Go to space. Don't come back. You'll probably need a new liver. Also wait years.
C. Cremation
This is something we are probably going to be dealing with for 10s of generations...
They commissioned the testing by independent labs. Scroll past the disclaimer. The results should be surprising & they are bad news.
One interesting remark, although not nearly the most damning item in the article:
> Our expert heading this case believes that HSY deliberately uses uncommon, harder-to-detect PFAS compounds to avoid detection and bans, while the negative health implications of such uncommon substances remain similar.
You can be sure Hershey will throw a supplier to the wolves if they can point a finger and be reasonably sure there's no way to trace the decision back to Hershey.
It's also an activist short seller. They make money by publishing negative research reports on companies they've shorted. It's a valuable service.
The disclaimer amounts to "we're not insider trading and we really believe this stuff" many different ways. Insider trading is illegal so they are scrupulously careful to stay away from MNPI (and want you to know that). Really believing this stuff is important because if they turn out to be wrong, it's sort of ok to be honestly wrong, it's not okay to be knowingly wrong and put out the report anyway to manipulate the stock.
And so paragraphs and paragraphs of
>"Reports are based on generally available information, field research, inferences and deductions"
We're not insider trading
>"Our opinions are held in good faith, and we have based them upon publicly available facts and evidence"
We really believe this stuff, also we're really not insider trading.
> "We conducted research and analysis based on public information in a manner that any person could have done if they had been interested in doing so."
Well perhaps if these companies didn’t all have skeletons in their closets, they may be able to avoid the bad press, lawsuits, stock prices issues, etc. That is probably the best way to avoid all this
They're probably being extra careful to protect themselves from defamation lawsuits. I have more trust in the information reading this, because I can assume they're willing to say things that put them at risk of being sued by powerful organizations.
You can trust the information. That's a personal choice. But that doesn't make it journalism-driven news - in the textbook definition sense - for everyone else.
As honest goes: "We are an op-ed oriented information sharing site. We do not adhere to normal journalistic standard."
It's very worrying that consumer protection against poisoning in the US comes from a for-profit company that makes money by short selling companies they found to have issues and then covering their back this way against lawsuits, which any less aggressive reviewer would face.
The investigating is great, the problem is who is doing it and for what reason.
If the misdeed is done by a non-public or poor company there is no money to be made so they would never even investigate it. And not accepting a payoff that returns more than the short position would be ignoring fiduciary responsibility, so some investigations could disappear.
Most Newspapers are profit driven. The only difference is how the profit is derived. It seems to me that the choice is to have this information come to light or not have it all.
Defamation is when the information being spread is false. You're saying you trust them more because they're willing to say things that are false. That doesn't make sense.
