Penguin 'Toxicologists' Find PFAS Chemicals in Remote Patagonia
ucdavis.eduTwo notes for cynical HN crowd:
1. Why you/penguins should care about this: PFAS suppress immune function and reduce reproductive success in birds [1]. They transfer from mothers to eggs and disrupt thyroid hormones and immune organ development in avian embryos [2]. In humans, IARC classified PFOA as a Group 1 carcinogen in 2023, which means there is the highest classification (i.e. International Agency for Research on Cancer is convinced PFAS causes cancer). A 2x increase in serum PFAS is associated with a 49% drop in vaccine antibody levels in children [3]. These are the same compounds showing up in >90% of penguin samples in remote Patagonia. They don't break down. They bioaccumulate up the food chain. And the "safer replacements" like GenX are clearly reaching the ends of the earth too. This is bad for penguins and for people.
2. This is a problem I'm taking seriously. My startup, NeutraOat (neutraoat.com) is developing a modified oat fiber that selectively binds PFAS and plasticizers in the GI tract without stripping nutrients like charcoal does. It will also remove PFAS from the blood. Early-stage, binding data is promising. Clinical trial happening in ~6-9 months. Website has our early data and a pre-order signup form.
[1] Vendl et al., "Profiling research on PFAS in wildlife," Ecol Solut Evid, 2024. https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002... [2] Halldin et al., "Developmental exposure to a mixture of PFAAs affects the thyroid hormone system and the bursa of Fabricius in the chicken," Sci Rep, 2019. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-56200-9 [3] Grandjean et al., JAMA 2012;307(4):391–397. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22274686/
Interesting, best of luck with this, microplastics really are the modern lead.
You said it removes them from the blood: does the body dump microplastics in the gut for your product to remove them from the blood or how does it work (if you can answer due to proprietary reasons)?
Are saunas and blood donations not also effective for this?
PFAS (and, to a lesser extent, plasticizers) circulate from the blood to the gut ~5 times per day through enterohepatic circulation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterohepatic_circulation). This is why cholestyramine was shown to be effective at reducing serum PFAS by up to 60% in a Swedish trial.
Blood donations are also somewhat effective, saunas less so. Also, to be clear, PFAS are very different from microplastics. PFAS are the Teflon chemical.
> the Teflon chemical
Teflon is PTFE, which is fully fluorinated but is also very much a plastic: it’s a highly unreactive solid at reasonable temperatures (which sadly do not include temperatures commonly encountered on stoves).
By “the Teflon chemical” are you perhaps referring to the various nasty liquid, water-soluble surfactants commonly used in factories that make or process PTFE? Those include PFOA, PFOS, and the newer and not obviously any safer “GenX” compounds.
Yes, they are referring to PFOA/PFOS; they're talking about PFAS which is the broad class of chemical compounds that includes PFOA/PFAS. And PFAS are not plastics.
>Blood donations are also somewhat effective, saunas less so. Also, to be clear, PFAS are very different from microplastics. PFAS are the Teflon chemical.
I wonder if there's a safe way to equip people to just do simple bloodletting if they have high exposure to PFAS. I mean obviously it's better to donate, even in that case, given the steady state of most blood banks. But it's still a bit of a pain in the ass.
It's a common misconception, but microplastics and forever-chemicals (PFAS) are not the same thing. They're two similar, but distinct pollutants.
> Are saunas and blood donations not also effective for this?
Yes, plasma & blood donations are good at reducing PFAS blood concentration. Some(?) firefighting foam contains PFAS, so they tend to have high blood concentrations. Donations have shown to significantly reduce that: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8994130/
All the older firefighting foam did. Some of the new stuff does. There's also some amount of "poisoning" from the old equipment to the new foam.
Unfortunately, PFAS sticks around forever, so everywhere that the old firefighting foam was deployed (e.g. air force bases) still has high levels of PFAS contamination.
There was a scare in 2024 where high levels of PFAS were found in the water supply in the Blue Mountains region of NSW. It took months, but they traced it to a single fire in 1992 where foam was deployed. Scary stuff.
So avoid using dry teflon lubricant spray? Will do!
Blood donation helps the donor, but what happens to the recipient? Would it not be possible to accumulate PFAS in your blood stream by receiving PFAS-concentrate blood? Is it that simple?
Yes, but since blood donations are not tested for this you don't know what you get so people are already getting PFAS contaminated blood.
You could just do phlebotomy (blood letting) where your blood is discarded in case you have insanely high PFAS.
> They're two similar, but distinct pollutants.
They aren't particularly similar.
Honestly, the way the two are conflated is quite annoying. You should be terrified of PFAS. You should be mildly worried about microplastics, mostly because there isn't enough research on the effects yet.
In PFAS's defense, we really needed to poison the whole planet. Otherwise people would have occasionally needed to get wet in the rain, or perhaps scrub their pots and pans. Really, these extremely minor conveniences are worth the devastating cost to ours and future generations.
To people that see this: yes, cast iron is as non-stick as teflon, but you are generally told not to soak or put it in the dishwasher. I don't think you're supposed to put teflon in the dishwasher, but people do.
Regardless, the main thing about cast iron is to use it all the time. If you really, truly use cast iron all the time, it will never have food stick to it, you'll never need to "scrub" it. Hot water in the pan, let it sit for 10 seconds, scour with a normal dishes brush or whatever you use, put the pan on the stove, heat till there's no water, hit quickly with an oil spray. Notice i didn't mention soap. It takes EXACTLY the same amount of time as cleaning an older teflon pan, less the heating part. I just look at the heating as sterilization, and i don't worry about it.
I have 3 induction hobs, i switched to 100% cast iron and stainless cookware, and i'm happy. I just got tired of being upset about flakes/damage to my cookware from other people using it. MIL gave me a set of lodge she didn't want, plus i had 3 pans from ages ago that we re-seasoned and started using. Cast iron griddle, cast iron flat weight.
If my arthritis gets so bad i can't lift the pans at all, i might consider carbon steel or something, but i haven't used it yet. I'm better at cooking on cast iron than stainless, but i can make stainless work, too; it's just more hands-on than cast iron or teflon.
I've used peanut, rapeseed, olive, coconut, avocado oils; butter, bacon and other rendered fat. All work fine, although butter i'd put some other oil in with it. I only use avocado, peanut, olive, and bacon, in that order these days because of diet and other concerns.
To go down the rabbit hole of cast iron...which seemingly is not that deep.
We use cast iron daily, but I have been unable to find any health studies that looked at the quasi plastic polymerized fats that make up the cast iron cooking surface. Not even studies to determine what they are exactly. I wouldn't be slightly surprised if it's found that eating the bits of scraped up "seasoning" while cooking leads to cancer or something.
So I think that leaves stainless steel as the ultimate health conscious cooking pan.
so many things contain it, like plumbing tape that a plumber might use right in your water supply - to fix a leak leading to your tap :/ and then the ski waxes until recently. it is really strange lots of these products are still sold all over
PTFE plumbers tape is not the cause of people getting PFAS in their bloodstream. The PRIMARY source of PFAS for most people is via the water supply [1][2] and the food supply, directly. The food supply is contaminated because the water supply is contaminated and these compounds bio-accumulate in vegetation that is irrigated with contaminated water and in animals that consume that vegetation or drink that contaminated water. As someone very concerned about this issue and that takes precautions that put me very much in the long-tail of the population, I also still use PTFE plumbers tape when doing home repairs. PTFE/Teflon is not a risk factor as long as it is not exposed to high temperatures (>350F) (and yes that means you should throw out your nonstick cookware and learn how to use cast iron and stainless steel for cooking).
In order to reduce contamination in my home's drinking water, I have a whole-home water filtration that's lab certified to NSF 53 standards (and beyond) to remove PFAS, and then for drinking and cooking usages, I further filter water via a 5-stage RO system that's certified to NSF 58 standards (and beyond). Not just drinking/cooking incurs contamination, water is aerosolized and breathed in while showering as an example. I only cook using bare metal; cast iron, carbon steel, stainless steel, glass and ceramic bakeware. Even with these precautions, I still get PFAS exposure just via the foods I eat, and being exposed in the overall environment (e.g. through rainfall).
[1]: https://www.usgs.gov/news/national-news-release/millions-us-... [2]: https://www.ewg.org/interactive-maps/pfas_contamination/
thanks for the comment and links.
PTFE tape is perfectly safe to use on threaded fittings for domestic water lines, both hot and cold.
Saunas helping with any kind of detox is complete hocum.
Blood donations clearly do.
Microplastics and PFAS aren't synonyms however.
What isn't established is a dose dependant harm from PFAS. Some things are harmful in minute quantities to the point it doesn't matter if you have a lot or a little.
Lead has a clear dose response but a relatively low threshold for noticeable harm. It's not clear what PFAS curve will look like.
I won't restart the linear no threshold flame wars about radiation harm but let's just say it's not always intuitive.
There is plenty of evidence that sauna does in fact help with detox, specifically phthalates. It's not magic or some intrinsic property of sauna though, just sweat. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3504417/
That’s a great idea. Have you compared the effects of your product with non-modified soluble fibers? Afaik, soluble fibers not only from oats but also from vegetables and beans already have solid effects on toxin-binding in their natural state.
Wow a non-AI startup doing good for the world (no gambling) in 2026? Ycombinator, someone get OP some money!
Seriously though, amazing idea I love this.
If they’re heading towards clinical trials in 6-9 months, tech investors are the last group of people you want involved.
How are GLPs bad for the world?
He thinks it's bad to inject drugs, rather than managing calories in/out.
I'm not into GLPs, but I could see a reasonable case made for supporting them. For most of the past 50K years, we either had to hunt, walk around, farm, split wood etc. which means burning 500+ calories daily. Now, most of us sit in offices 8 hours a day using 0 calories and 0 muscle, surrounded by calories.
It's not surprising really that the default in this situation is obesity.
you're right its my own annoyance with the ads, updated my comment
>no GLP's
GLPs are similar to gambling?
some people are very bad at reading, I see
My hypothesis is that PFAS and microplastics are responsible for the drop in female fertility, drop in male fertility, drop in testosterone levels, increase in obesity, etc. These chemicals are pervasive in the environment, causing disruptions to the endocrine system that regulates our body. This is why higher elevation areas seem to lag the trends, as they are not getting as much down stream accumulation in the environment. My sister hypothesis GLP-1s are a chemical that is undoing some of that disruption. If what you are doing works, it'll imo be a modern day Norman Borlaug.
Excellent!
I've signed up and look forward to following your success.
Your mission is near and dear to my heart- I grew up on an US Air Force base that is a PFAS superfund site and didn't find out about it until much later in life. Recently I've jumped into research linking PFAS contamination in dog food to canine Addison's disease.
We've been pretty cavalier with PFAS and it's horrifying.
Looking at the studies on the site I’m only seeing comparisons vs placebo and activated charcoal - why not compare to non modified regular beta glucan that is in most oats?
Impressive and I wish you the best! Hoping you get noticed and get funding.
PFAS, aka endocrine disruptors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endocrine_disruptor
This is a massive oversimplification and is not anything even approaching settled science.
They fitted some penguins with chemical-sensing silicone passive samplers.
Did they wear gloves when installing the samplers?
One of the issues I see with PFAS testing is that the legal limit is right at the lower limit of detectability for most test equipment. Signals at that level are difficult to read reliably and the accuracy of detection at that level is worse than at higher levels.
It's almost like legislators saw that the machines could ostensibly detect 4 parts-per-trillion and decided that should be the limit without continuing to read the machine manual to describe the reduction in accuracy at that threshold level.
The levels in this test were close to this threshold and there was one outlier sample that severely changed the average results. The testing methodology also involved several laboratory steps where contamination could have occurred.
I don't tryst penguin toxicologists, I've never heard of any reputable penguin colleges or labs.
That's speceist. The whole idea with good science is that you don't need to trust the person. You can evaluate the penguins' study's results and reasoning on its own merits.
That's an abstract ideal. In practice, it is not feasible for most people to verify a study. It is difficult enough for colleagues in the field. Hence why we have to use proxies like trustworthiness of a source.
It’s a joke
Are they sure it's not from their gloves?
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/03/260329222938.h...
Outdoor gear also contains pfas.
Is this going to be like the micro-plastics-are-actually-contamination-from-lab-gloves news all over again?
I'm all for removing PFAS and similar chemicals from the many places and uses they aren't needed, but if people don't care about PFAS in their tap water, they certainly aren't going to care about penguin PFAS.
> if people don't care about PFAS in their tap water
People don't? Sounds to me like they need to look at history a bit more.
To me, this looks very much like some of the other magical materials...
Lead in gasoline, asbestos as building material, tobacco etc
Most people don't care. PFAS is only voluntarily being phased out in food packaging, rather than being banned. People cook with teflon-coated pans for the tiny convenience over a nitrided, ceramic, or seasoned cast iron pan. Outdoors enthusiasts want PFAS rain jackets and PFAS ski waxes, rather than the alternatives.
I definitely agree they need to look at history, consider what they're being exposed to, and understand how simple and easy some of the substitutions/mitigations could be. There's 0 reason why manufacturers are getting 5+ years to phase out a forever chemical in something like ski wax or dental floss.
> tiny convenience over a nitrided, ceramic, or seasoned cast iron pan
Or stainless steel?
Once you go stainless you don’t go back. None of the hassle of cast iron, and eggs don’t stick with just some basic skill. Very easy to clean, no need to be gentle like with cast iron ceramic or non stick pans.
I don't think it's that people don't care, I think it's that people are ignorant. I also don't think that's an accident, I think we're in the midst of a multi-decade project to create a populace that's as dumb as possible, because the more aware and educated people are, the less likely they are to allow the kinds of behaviour that are destroying the health of people, animals and the environment.
The ideal societal conditions for, say, a petrochemical company that is creating toxins that are genuinely "forever" for all intents and purposes, is a society where people are exhausted from their terrible job (or two jobs, or job + gig economy side hustle) and spend their leisure time glued to their phones, scrolling AI slop on instagram and gambling away their meagre savings on sports betting and prediction markets.
These are not people who are going to get educated about chemistry.
Scientific expertise is derided as elitism. The president lies constantly by issuing "truths" on his social media platform. Public education gets defunded and IQ scores are declining. Either this is just random societal decay, or this is serving the interests of the rich and powerful. I know where I stand on it. And yes, I'm cranky.
No it’s because lots of us grew up in the 70s with asbestos, lead, chlordane, ddt, etc… and we are still alive and thriving. We played with radioactive chemistry sets and even made our own plastic animals inside enclosed areas and loved to breath in the vapors : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thingmaker
PFAS is the least of our concerns.
>PFAS in dental floss
Jesus Christ.
Speaking of which, it occurs to me that my toothbrush is also made of plastic, and that most toothpastes are also mildly abrasive...
Toothbrushes wear down against your teeth anyways.
> People cook with teflon-coated pans for the tiny convenience over a nitrided, ceramic, or seasoned cast iron pan.
...which has absolutely nothing to do with the PFOA that you might reasonably be concerned about. Teflon is chemically inert. It's literally used for human body implants. Teflon-coated pans are not your enemy. Fire-fighting foam, on the other hand -- you probably shouldn't bathe in it.
Any test that "detects" teflon in the generic category of "PFAS" is a hopelessly flawed test [1]. Unfortunately, a great many of these papers don't make the distinction, whether intentionally or due to incompetence, or simply because it's far easier to do that, and it gets better headlines.
[1] Important aside: historically, several of the major manufacturers of teflon had problems with PFOA contamination around the factories due to manufacturing processes. This is unrelated to your personal use of a Teflon pan, and also, the process has been changed. If you want to argue that the new process is also polluting, fine, make that argument -- but don't assert that the use of the final product is itself unsafe.
Plenty of people will use those pans and
Overheat them, which means the stuff gets into the air. Many many pet birds have died of this only because they're more susceptible
Use the wrong material in them meaning the start to scratch the Teflon layer.
I'm not saying you cannot use them right, but too many people don't and the product isn't safe when improperly used. This is true for many products but in this case plenty of people aren't aware they're holding it wrong.
> Overheat them, which means the stuff gets into the air. Many many pet birds have died of this only because they're more susceptible
And again, this has nothing to do with PFAS or PFOA. The principle cause is a complete breakdown of teflon into fluorinated small-molecule gases, such as hydrogen fluoride and tetrafluoroethylene. You're literally burning the coating off. It has as much relationship to PFOA as wood smoke has to wood.
> ...which has absolutely nothing to do with the PFOA that you might reasonably be concerned about. Teflon is chemically inert. It's literally used for human body implants. Teflon-coated pans are not your enemy. Fire-fighting foam, on the other hand -- you probably shouldn't bathe in it.
Unfortunately, that is not the case. Yes, Teflon is inert but only when it's not exposed to high temperatures (>350F). When heated, such as in a non-stick pan, Teflon gives off fumes which contain byproducts including breakdowns back into PFAS compounds. So /YES/ the use of the final product (as cookware) /is/ unsafe. NOBODY SHOULD BE USING TEFLON NONSTICK COOKWARE.
> Teflon gives off fumes which contain byproducts including breakdowns back into PFAS compounds.
Completely incorrect. Overheating (aka "burning") completely destroys the molecule, and releases small molecule gases, like hydrogen fluoride. These have no relation to PFAS, they can't turn back into PFAS, and they look nothing like PFAS.
It's like saying that the smoke from burning wood is, in fact, wood.
Teflon does not burn at 350F, it melts between 620F and 662F. At 350F and above, however, it starts off-gassing carbonyl fluoride, carbonyl difluoride, hydrogen fluoride, and various fluorinated alkanes and alkenes. PFAS is a broad term for Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances which includes several of the compounds that off-gas from overheating Teflon. Off-gassing accelerates into partial decomposition as you cross 500F until it begins melting between 620F and 662F, after 662F you can begin burning Teflon.
As a general rule, if something gives off toxic fumes that kill birds, probably don't use it to cook your food, regardless of what specific compounds its emitting, "canaries in coal mines" and all that.
Teflon is not inert at very high temperatures. Nobody ever overheats a pan?
This has nothing to do with PFAS. When you heat teflon to 500C+, the molecules break down into small molecule fluorinated gases. These molecules are not PFAS, in any way.
the concern is not about immediate effects of using products, but the fact that they are now everywhere in the environment, including water supplies and our own blood streams.
Future archaeologists are going to chronicle humankind's stupidity by the lead layer, the atom bomb testing fallout layer, the PFAS layer, etc. All of these were made possible by a misplaced sense of scale. Yes we can poison the whole planet. That little blue dot.
Geologically speaking it's just one really cool layer.
It's also got my pogs in it!
Yes, it could be (I posted the article about the gloves), but PFAS are different from microplastics, and not all the studies are contaminated by gloves.
The interesting part here is using the animals as “scientists” to collect samples in their habitats for years (2022-2024) instead of sending humans to collect samples. This is far more reliable in my opinion
The animal angle is fun and interesting, and my quip about the gloves is mostly a joke. My frustration comes from the fact that we don't (or shouldn't) need to know that PFAS is in Patagonia to care about it.
45% of US households contain PFAS, apparently, but no mitigation or even manufacturing bans are required for years.
In the US, one side cries about regular flouride in the water, but is meh to PFAS. Meanwhile, the other side is supposedly pro-environment, but can't even get the fortitude to ban PFAS ski wax.
The point for the lay reader is that the pollution has reached extremely remote places, so the stuff is absolutely pervasive and/or the method of travel should concern us.
And my point still remains that people don’t even care that it’s in their tap water, to-go food containers, and dental floss.
The research is academically interesting, but immaterial to actually doing anything about the issue of PFAS.
No, they-are-not-actually-contamination. Some studies might have inaccurate numbers due to contamination. That's all.
Important to correct for, but doesn't invalidate the whole microplastics concern.
Just like how people never cared about lead in their tap water.
you missed the full jab -- "most people" did not care about lead pipes for drinking water. It does not take much effort to blankly state that the public "does not care" and proceed to spend less than one minute of thinking capacity to self-confirm and move on. IMHO That is what you see in some of the comments here -- "ignorance" in true form, on display here in a erudite and modern forum. Functional definition of "ignorance" for this topic? I do not know that and I do not care, end of discussion.
> on display here in a erudite and modern forum.
I wouldn't overestimate the quality of this forum. It certainly has its uses, but I wouldn't overstate the quality of discourse here. It's not that great.
Because lead doesn't readily leach into water. Your water supply has to be real fucked up for that to happen.
Anectodal but my tap water in downtown Budapest, in an old house, had lead. I had the tap water tested and lead levels were multiple times the limit.
That's from the source then. Drinkable water does not dissolve lead.