Something's Poisoning America's Farms. Scientists Fear 'Forever' Chemicals
nytimes.comSo this has been going on for more than half a century now. Wisconsin started using Milorganite in 1926:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milorganite
"Since its inception, over four million metric tons of Milorganite have been sold"
Teflon was trademarked in 1945:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polytetrafluoroethylene
Everything alive has likely been poisoned, including children and pets. Certain diseases have been on the rise for a long time, this might be part of the explanation for why. It sounds like the solution will be to stop manufacturing PFOS and related chemicals until there is a scalable way to destroy it and then control its use and destruction, find a way to get it out of people, and probably dilute it where it is found in the environment (it is not possible to chemically process 1/5 of all the soil on agricultural lands. Is it in water tables?) Then hope what remains doesn't do too much damage. Milorganite is only sold in the US so perhaps only the US is contaminated, though I'd suspect the EU may have adopted similar practices. Possibly the US will have to outsource a lot of food production for a long time, though a lot is already outsourced.
> estimates from the Environmental Working Group suggest these harmful chemicals could be polluting nearly 20 million acres of cropland, more than 20% of all U.S. farmland.
At least in Maine, they are siting solar on contaminated farmland in order to eek some use out of contaminated land that cannot be used for agriculture within the next 30 years.
https://www.ecos.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/PFAS-in-Bios... ("PFAS in Biosolids: A Review of State Efforts & Opportunities for Action")
Why do they think that thirty years will be sufficient? PFAS won't degrade in the environment for centuries to over ten thousand years. Various remediation techniques exist, but they can require growing something on the land to slowly take up the PFAS, and this is not compatible with using the land as a solar farm. In practical terms, without prolonged remediation, the land is finished for agricultural use. At some point, they sure will try to regrow and sell PFAS-poisoned food though to unwary consumers.
30 years is typically the lifetime estimated for a utility scale solar facility (with leases for land following the same duration), at which point it can either be repowered or everything torn out and the land returned to original state.
It’s possible this land is permanently tainted for agricultural use, but too early to assume, as PFAS remediation technology might advance quickly.
> but they can require growing something on the land to slowly take up the PFAS, and this is not compatible with using the land as a solar farm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agrivoltaics is a potential implementation if bioremediation proves both feasible and scalable. Perhaps the land is ready to go back into ag use if remediation can be performed in parallel with the thirty year lifespan I mentioned. If not, it carries on as solar production.
I spent 7 years getting rid of the PFOA-derived chemical across all our product lines. they are super useful, but they cross the placental barrier and have a half-life of 6.5 years or so. They were replaced by not-PFOA chemicals that had similar chemical properties so not sure that it did a whole lot of good in the long run.
What chemicals are these replacements, if you can divulge that?
The manufacturers would not disclose it to us beyond it was "not-PFOA", but they did agree to disclose it to the FDA upon request.
The application requires a small, inert molecule, which PFOA was, in spades. They simply made a slightly different small molecule that was almost as inert.
Small is a problem because it becomes mobile. Inert is a problem because it doesn't easily break down. Now, instead of having one "forever chemical" we have a host of them in the environment.
Not sure what the right answer is and whether we are actually better off as a result of all that work.
Ugh. So they're replacing the "OA" bit, not the troublesome "PF" bit, and now suddenly it's all fine, dandy and legal. But still persistently toxic of course.
Also: weird (suspect?) that they didn't disclose the exact identity. I guess if you have the equipment it takes about an hour to run a gc/ms, are they just hoping to not scare people by saying upfront "it's another polyfluorinated thing"?
They are under no obligation to disclose 100% of the composition of their products. Under REACH and ECHA, they might be required to disclose if (IIRC) they export > 1 tonne of the product into the EU. Typical formulations look something like
50% water 35% solvent 5% colorant (with pigment name) 10% Proprietary / Trade Secret PTFE
PFOA was used in the PTFE mfg. process, so we asked for equivalent PTFE formulations that were not mfg. with PFOA. The revenue they get from medical devices was trivial compared to non-medical (waterproofing) applications and accounted for 90% of Regulatory risks, so they often met requests with a "take it or leave it" response.
Given the sclerotic pace at which government agencies move to approve changes of magnitude, and given the MASSIVE testing burden required, this effectively meant "take it".
This is very common, one chemical gets banned so they make a more convoluted version
Welcome to capitalism fellas.
You wasted seven years getting rid of PFOA when you should have been getting rid of all PFAS, not just one. You are right - it did no good at all.
How cute.
PFOA was the only chemical in that class that was in use in our products. <facepalm>
Joel Salatin's Beyond Labels podcast had a good episode talking about this a few months ago. I can't find a good URL, their site is focused on paid subscriptions, but it was episode #145 from June 13th.
Its pretty amazing what regulators meant to protect the public allow in and on our food, even with labels like "organic."
For the record, we're already dumping hundreds of millions of kilos of poison on our food in the form of glyphosate and other pesticides, albeit not PFAS. Whereas the shock here is that we're already so full of poisons that our own sewage is untenable for use as fertilizer.
PFAS is added to many pesticides:
https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news-release/2023/06/maine...
and to some herbicides:
https://pfasproject.com/2021/03/05/pfas-in-pesticides-a-prob...
Given the absence of effective biosolids/pesticides regulation by the FDA/EPA/USDA, with PFAS levels increasing in soil, the US will become unable to grow food that isn't poison.
> … we're already so full of poisons that our own sewage is untenable…
Do you have a reference? This sounds terribly fascinating.
it's literally what TFA is about. read the first paragraph at least
I remember being the "general public" unaware of PFAS. Anything "non-stick" contains it, you realise that it's everywhere in modern society.
Blissful ignorance was nice while it lasted.
It was intentional ignorance. 3M and DuPont knew these chemicals were in human blood samples for decades.
"How 3M Discovered, Then Concealed, the Dangers of Forever Chemicals"
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/05/27/3m-forever-che...
Totally. Same for Monsonto and their glyphosate.
"Merchants of Poison: How Monsanto Sold the World on a Toxic Pesticide" https://foe.org/resources/merchants-of-poison/
I'm not disagreeing, but Glyphosate is not a pesticide. You're talking about the pesticids that are forbidden in europe but allowed in the States and forced in Canada/Mexico (i have seen a documentary about what the US force on Mexico to allow them in Nafta, honestly Trump wanting to pull out of Nafta was a great, great idea for Mexicans medium to long-term).
Glyphosate cause other issue, it isn't a neurotoxic (most pesticids are, that's why weed and tobacco were used as natural pesticids before chemistry). It only work as a chlorophylia suppressor, an EDC for plants if i may (it's not really, but close enough). In small quantities, it does not seems to have any effect on human hormones. But while the half-life is "only" a few months, the quantities used (especially in gardening and arboriculture) mean the human exposition is stronger than in tests, but also that huge amount are washed into rivers where it kills plant life and ultimately fishes.
Also it push non-productive GMO, and in my opinion, non-productive GMO (basically more water efficient plants, stuff like golden rice) should be avoided.
Glyphosate may not be a pesticide but it is suspected of harming bees in subtle ways.
https://e360.yale.edu/features/bee-alert-is-a-controversial-...
Yes, but the issues once again seems to stem from overexposition and continuous usage (in gardening and arboriculture). I'm not saying we whould continue to use it as we are, we ought to limit it, but reasonable usage exists, like to enhance direct seeding under a vegetative cover (basically you kill your winter vegetative cover with glyphosate and a roller, wait a week, seed under the dying cover). You don't even have to use glyphosate here to be honest, but small quantities really facilitate the work and allow to use a diversified cover.
We should ban glyphosate in gardening and arboriculture though.
Significant other was studying removal methods for those chemicals and as soon as I learned enough about them, I threw all of my non-stick pans away.
Learning to coat steel pans in oil to make them non-stick-ish has been a great help.
> Learning to coat steel pans in oil to make them non-stick-ish has been a great help.
Doesn't this involve cooking oil into harmful polymers?
I use high-temperature oils in general so I’m not sure if those get turned into harmful polymers. Do you know of any studies on that?
I found this article to be interesting and well sourced: https://examine.com/articles/are-cast-iron-pans-unsafe/
It doesn't find documented evidence of harmful effects of oil seasoning. Buy likewise for Teflon coating in normal heat conditions.
What I didn't expect is the part about iron leaching and its effects!
They’re also in your furniture, your takeout containers, your paper cups, paper straws, fire retardant fabrics (required for all children’s sleepwear!)
Eggs over-easy on steel all-clad are the bane of my existence on some mornings.
Heat up pan (higher heat) until water droplets start sliding around instead of sizzling out and then add a little bit of oil. Crack the eggs and cover for a bit. When the whites are all done, scrape the eggs off the pan and they should come off mostly clean.
Well seasoned cast iron is no problem for eggs. Keep your steel for acidic foods.
Two helping words: Cast Iron.
The original non-stick
Great, since the FDA won't do anything I can't for the day that whole foods to start selling non-PFA grade food.
Biosolids should be completely banned for agricultural use. They will never be safe to use. It is literally just dried sewage. Use it once and the land is contaminated for ten thousand years.
There is a right way to do it though, which is to compost what's compostable, grow good soil using it, then test it thoroughly for PFAS, heavy metals, pharmaceuticals, etc., and only then consider using it if all tests pass. Each batch has to be tested.
What I'd worry about is not PFAs, but excreted drugs. Some drugs (or their byproducts) are persistent, and have been deliberately selected to have biological effects.
I take metformin. This drug is mostly excreted in feces. The dry mass of feces might be 1% metformin for someone taking typical doses. The drug does break down in the environment, but only slowly.
This is already a known issue and waste water plans have treatments to address some of the impacts. I found an article from 2012 where they specifically talk about cost of addressing the contraceptive pill's impact on British water systems.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/jun/02/water-sy...
But how could such treatments work? The drugs are a wide range of organic chemicals mixed in with the literal crap of sludge, which is also a wide range of organic chemicals. Just how is this supposed to separate out or degrade the drug residues without also destroying the sludge?
PFAS have exceptional properties that make them difficult to degrade, especially when it has been ingested. As a result, exposure to them will lead to bioaccumulation. Wastewater is treated to remove things like metformin, and anything that eludes that can be metabolized normally.
WWTPs have not proven successful at removing metformin or its metabolite.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221334372...
Granted, this particular chemical partitions into water, not the solids, so it isn't the best example here.
Artificial estrogen comes to mind as well