fyi Consumer Reports found toxic PFAS chemicals in several popular water brands, especially carbonated ones
https://www.consumerreports.org/bottled-water/whats-really-in-your-bottled-water/

*promote the end bit by Danny DeVito

Promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Monday, October 4th, 2021 12:18am PDT - promote requested by eric3579.

People who frequently eat meals prepared at home have lower levels of PFAS chemicals in their blood compared to those who often eat fast food, takeout, or restaurant meals, according to a new study published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives. https://www.consumerreports.org/food-safety/to-reduce-pfas-levels-in-food-cook-at-home/

I hate it when the uneducated try to explain a complex issue and do a piss poor job of it. Is PFAS a problem? Sure. Are ALL PFAS compounds a problem with regards to their toxicity? No. The small molecule species are problematic because of mobility. The polymeric species are stable as fuck, that's why they were invented and why we use them as seals and barrier layers to isolate corrosive liquids and gases, and why we use them in such things as medical implants. The polymers excel because they are inert and largely unreactive. So - are they all bad? No. Are they all good? No. But it's too late - the fuckwits like Oliver have fueled the Emotional Response bus, and society won't stand for outdated concepts like scientific investigation or rational thought. Eight member countries of the EU are presently on track to restrict or ban all PFAS in any form, sweeping all compounds into the same category with no differentiation between a water soluble perfluorinated molecule like perfluorinated PVME and a one million molecular weight PTFE polymer. If it has a -CF2- moiety in it, it's subject to being banned. Good science doesn't matter any more, the knee-jerk fear mongerers are now making the decisions.

To be fair, most of your complaints were addressed in the piece.

For instance, medical implants, fairly stable, yes, but not in extreme heat like cremation, so as used they’re toxic to the environment despite being considered stable and inert.

The reason to ban them all was also explained, banning one toxic substance at a time means one chemical bond difference and the company can go ahead with Cancer causer 2.0 for a decade until it’s banned for being toxic, and then repeat. It’s how they’ve operated for decades.

I’m fine with outlawing the entire class and putting the onus on the chemical companies to prove any new variants are safe instead of forcing the hamstrung epa to prove they’re unsafe. I also think any company that dumped it into waterways should be instantly and completely forfeited to pay for cleanup. No company has the funds to pay for cleanup, but their assets are at least a start.

What's wrong with using stainless steel, cast iron, etc to cook? Banning non-stick is no big deal even if I currently use it for some low heat cooking, don't mind perma switching.

Right there with you…That’s what I do. I have one small Teflon pot for sticky sauces. I’ve never wanted more.

I’ve had friends forget their Teflon pans on the stove until they burnt up. One had a parrot in the house, it died from minimal exposure to the fumes that night.

I’ve left my cast iron on the stove….it cooked off its oil and I had to reseason it. No big deal.

Also, I’ve never scrapped off little bits of cast iron into my food. Every Teflon pan I’ve ever seen ended up shedding Teflon eventually. (Edit: on reflection, that's incorrect. I do scrape off tiny, microscopic fragments from cast iron....it's a good thing. Doctors may suggest using cast iron for patients with low iron levels. It's one reason my iron levels are always high when I give blood.)

Howdy - I don't know if "addressed" is the right word. Commented on, but not given sufficient perspective. Having said that, the problem is incredibly complex, so there should be no expectation that Mr. Oliver's video or any other single thesis on the topic could possibly suffice.

Your "one chemical bond difference" is an appropriate consideration, but with recognition that once we reach on the order of C20-C40 length dispersable or emulsifiable molecules as surfactants / surface energy modifiers, the insoluble polymers come into play, with not 30'ish bonds growing one at a time, but leaping to 20,000 or more. No doubt the pool has already been irreversibly pissed into by the irresponsible producers that convert small molecules into very, very large ones, but with some control, responsibility, and integrity in our industrial process owners (yes, hell just froze over) there is no reason why we could not safely continue to produce the polymeric forms of PFAS. We do so for substantially more toxic chemical conversion processes today.

It's interesting to note the (usual) examples brought forward by others in this post (Teflon cookware), just waiting for someone to mention Gore-Tex, but by far the biggest impact won't be on consumer goods that we all touch regularly and recognize the name brands of, but will be on the industrial / commercial uses of these polymeric families that are pervasive in the systems / processes that we all derive benefit from every day. Ironies exist, that perhaps confuse the "all PFAS are bad" premise ... consider - effectively every seal, gasket and control valve in a water purification plant is most commonly made of a PFAS polymeric compound, PTFE included, all tested to rigorous specifications and compliance by specific agencies that do nothing other than deal with potable water (thankfully not the EPA - it's National Sanitation Foundation (the other NSF), or Water Research Advisory Scheme (WRAS) in the UK etc.) .

So my contention and the view of many in the end user community is that it's not the final form of some of these compounds that are bad, it's the horrendous messes we leave producing them. We can't unwind our Clock of Dumb, but killing the entire crop just to get rid of the long ago seeded weeds doesn't solve the actual problem, it makes it much, much larger.

Thanks for your comments.

Our society also cant handle cow burps.

Releasing dangerous chemicals, knowingly against established rules, into water, is one thing (a crime).

Banning materials just because they share some chemistry with said chemicals is throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

They’re banning materials because they can’t be made without the toxic, easily spread, impossible to remove chemicals, and aren’t ever made without illegal dumping of the byproducts of their creation, according to the reporting….not simply because they share some chemistry.
Everything in the universe shares some chemistry with everything else, chemistry is the mechanism through which matter functions….it gives matter it’s properties.

Lead paint shares chemistry with other lead products….and a chemical. It’s that chemical’s toxicity that makes it appropriate to ban substances that contain it. Same thing here. These materials share a toxic substance (or toxic variant of the same substance). Less toxic substance than lead, sure, but still toxic, and much more widely spread. Contaminating the entire planet. As if we weren’t already in a mass extinction, we feel the need to create more toxic pollution for a tiny bit of convenience.

Perhaps you aren’t bothered by having every waterway near any manufacturer that uses these chemicals becoming toxic for animals and humans forever…most people are bothered by that kind of permanent environmental destruction or degradation.

That’s why humans don’t deserve to survive. As a species, we’re so irresponsibly self centered it’s going to kill the planet and us with it, all for nothing worth having.

Actually it’s both. The final forms aren’t stable in the real world, they shed particles that are ingested, vapors inhaled, who knows, they are likely absorbed through the skin from many products.

Assume they aren’t actually toxic, functioning as designed they coat digestive systems and, if the report is to be believed, individual cells in extreme cases, leading to things like digestive issues and vaccinations not working. In developing children, it sounds disastrous…and it’s everywhere and in everyone….often in high levels.

This is akin to a crop that’s mildly toxic, not one adjacent to a pre existing separate toxic weed. You can’t plant this crop without permanently contaminating the field, and adjacent fields, and the local water sources, and to lesser extent anyone who uses the crop. There’s no separate toxic weed here, just a toxic crop we keep planting in new places, making the contamination much much more widespread at constantly increasing levels with no way to clean it up and little knowledge of the long term effects of such contamination. Pretty big gamble to take with the entire planet just so your thin rain coat doesn’t leak, don’t you think? Especially with a non biodegradable easily spread but impossible to remove toxic chemical with relatively unknown cumulative effects and no method whatsoever for removing it from people or the environment….like this one.

By that logic, Newt, its back to caves and eating berries for everyone. And 7 billion people need to die to make planet Earth sustainable.

Everything civilization does is toxic in some way. Even living in caves was deadly, ask the Mammoths.

I like how youre taking everything responsibly but in this case you might be lumping too many things into one problem. If we strive for any progress at all we have to take risks.

Maybe the consensus will be that we cant handle the production problems and need to ban the poly stuff, but this video was not the compelling analysis that would even push me in that direction.

Nonsense. Pre industrial agriculture wasn’t very damaging in most cases…and when it was it was on a minuscule scale compared to industrial agriculture.
Pre industrial building wasn’t excessively environmentally damaging in most cases, certainly not to the point where it endangered the planet or it’s atmosphere.

It's utterly ridiculous hyperbole to say we have to be cavemen to not destroy our environment. We don't even have to revert to pre industrial methods, we just have to be responsible with our actions and lower the population massively. With minor exceptions, pre industrial farming caused little to no permanent damage, and it was almost all easily repairable damage. (With a few exceptions like Rapa Nui that may not have been over farming but cultural damage, we aren't exactly certain what happened there).

I eat berries now, don't you? I grow raspberries, blackberries, black raspberries, blueberries, strawberries, and Tay berries myself. People would be healthier if they ate berries, and they're tasty too. What?!

Yes, around 7 billion need to die (without procreating first). Better than all 9 billion.

There’s a huge difference between being occasionally deadly and so insanely toxic we destroy our own planet in under 200 years to the point where our own existence is seriously threatened.
Edit: toxicity levels matter as much as exposure levels. Cavemen impacted their environment at levels well below sustainability (mostly….the idea they killed the mammoths or mastodons off by hunting is, I believe, a myth….natural environmental changes seem much more likely to be the major influence in their extinction.). Per capita, modern humans have a much larger, more detrimental footprint than premodern humans, exponentially larger….and there’s like a hundred thousand times as many of us (or more) too. We need to reverse both those trends drastically if we are to survive long term.

Yes, progress includes risk, but risk can be managed, minimized, and not taken when it’s a risk of total destruction. We totally ignore risk if there’s profit involved.

This is a night time comedy show, not a science class. I think you expect WAY too much. It points out that there is a problem, it doesn’t have the time, or the audience to delve into the intricate chemical processes involved in the manufacture, use, and disposal of them. It touched on them, and more importantly pointed out how they’ve been flushed into the environment Willy nilly by almost everyone who manufacturers with them.

The EPA just today announced plans to set actual enforceable limits for drinking water contamination by the two most common variants, hopefully well below the 70/1000000 unenforceable recomendation they previously issued, before the 2023 deadline, and to study the health effects of other variants and regulate them.
They also announced plans to force polluters to clean up the places where they dumped, which seems to be impossible considering the size and mobility of these molecules, and the fact that they've already migrated everywhere so can't possibly be fully removed.