Well. It’s a guardian opinion piece. While I often find guardian language stilted, I find that there is value in reading it.
DuPont is one of the big daddies of the chemical industry. The few who control the poisons of the world also control our seeds.
Having said that, learning about the author is also important to understand the motivation :
[..] Rob Bilott is a partner at the law firm of Taft Stettinius & Hollister, LLP and author of Exposure: Poisoned Water, Corporate Greed, and One Lawyer’s Twenty-Year Battle Against DuPont.
His book was the story behind the film, Dark Waters and the documentary, The Devil We Know.
Rob is also a 2017 recipient of the 2017 Right Livelihood Award, also known as the “Alternative Nobel Prize,” for his work on Forever Chemicals.
On Thursday, Rob Bilott is participating in an online discussion on the need to regulate PFAS titled Dark Waters no more! Is it time for a global agreement on toxic chemicals?[..]
I had the same feeling. No info except 8 letters of chemical names and their relative longevity. The rest of article is just random pick from chest of horrors with awkward focus of recently fashionable scares (covid, vaccine efficacy).
[..] But if you are a sentient being reading this article in 2016, you already have PFOA in your blood. It is in your parents’ blood, your children’s blood, your lover’s blood. How did it get there? Through the air, through your diet, through your use of nonstick cookware, through your umbilical cord. Or you might have drunk tainted water. The Environmental Working Group has found manufactured fluorochemicals present in 94 water districts across 27 states (see sidebar beginning on Page 38). Residents of Issaquah, Wash.; Wilmington, Del.; Colorado Springs; and Nassau County on Long Island are among those whose water has a higher concentration of fluorochemicals than that in some of the districts included in Rob Bilott’s class-action suit. The drinking water in Parkersburg itself, whose water district was not included in the original class-action suit and has failed to compel DuPont to pay for a filtration system, is currently tainted with high levels of PFOA. Most residents appear not to know this.
Where scientists have tested for the presence of PFOA in the world, they have found it. PFOA is in the blood or vital organs of Atlantic salmon, swordfish, striped mullet, gray seals, common cormorants, Alaskan polar bears, brown pelicans, sea turtles, sea eagles, Midwestern bald eagles, California sea lions and Laysan albatrosses on Sand Island, a wildlife refuge on Midway Atoll, in the middle of the North Pacific Ocean, about halfway between North America and Asia.[..]
"Scientists have confirmed links between PFOA exposure and a variety of serious diseases, including kidney cancer, testicular cancer, ulcerative colitis, thyroid disease, and pregnancy-induced hypertension. And more recent studies are now raising concerns that some of these forever chemicals may negatively impact our endocrine system, our fertility, and our immune system – and possibly even the efficacy of vaccines."
A few moments spent checking out links to some of the issues mentioned above reveals enough 'actual information' to sink a boat. We can then make up our own minds as to whether the author is exaggerating. I vote for 'not'.
Almost any chemical you can think of has been linked to some type of cancer or other disease. The important question is, how much? If they don't estimate the level of risk, the claim is fairly worthless - indistinguishable from all those other low dose chemicals we're exposed to on a daily basis.
That is indeed a good question, and the answer (like many chemicals) is “extremely toxic at high concentrations and nobody really knows the long-term effects at smaller ones because this would require enormous scientific investments that nobody will pay for.” But PFOA/PFOS is different from other chemicals in that it’s extremely long-lived and so it doesn’t break down rapidly the way many other chemicals do. Putting something like this into the environment should demand the reverse of the evidentiary standard you’re describing: we should know exactly how safe it is before you dump it into the environment like DuPont did.
And that’s a valid position to take. However the tone of the article is extremely alarmist painting it as “this is the biggest problem ever” vs “this is an area of concern that I think requires immediate investigation”. The same line of FUD is used all the time with tech. See all the BS about 5G and even Berkeley’s general attempt to spread non-scientific FUD about RF. Now obviously this is a bit different because RF has far more research behind it and the lack of research here is the problem. All the appeals of “this causes cancer” is used to cloud the fact that the position taken in this opinion article is one of ignorance and encouraging decisions to be made as a result of said ignorance.
A valid position is one you’ve taken that the onus should be on the manufacturer to prove safety. However, it’s intentionally not the position of the government. Not just the US as I believe many/most/all countries err on the side of “it’s safe” without actually requiring evidence to that effect except for drugs and maybe some food production (such studies take a long time, are expensive, and often inconclusive).
If you are smart, dry facts are enough to persuade you and this kind of emotional 'manipulation' might actually deter you (it did me a bit). If you are on opposite spectrum, this might help to get story through. Obvious on whom it was aimed at
