<story><title>Rainwater everywhere on the planet is unsafe to drink due to chemicals (2022)</title><url>https://phys.org/news/2022-08-rainwater-unsafe-due-chemicals.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nostrademons</author><text>I went and did some research, and have a friend who&amp;#x27;s a material scientist.  The harms of PFAS are pretty substantial.  Teflon is nasty; if you can do without it in your cookware, you probably should.&lt;p&gt;However, statistically the things that are most likely to prevent you from passing on your genes are:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  1. Not making enough money.
  2. Anxiety&amp;#x2F;depression
  3. Drug overdoses
  4. Car accidents
  5. An unhappy family life
  6. Swimming pools
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
And on that list of offspring averted, PFAS basically don&amp;#x27;t register.  You are much better off making sure you get into a good career, talking to your kids about drugs, being very careful when you drive, and otherwise not sweating the small things than obsessing about forever-chemicals in the atmosphere.</text></item><item><author>hn_throwaway_99</author><text>I feel like that&amp;#x27;s taking the commenter&amp;#x27;s quote out of context, or at least missing the point. They aren&amp;#x27;t arguing that PFAS aren&amp;#x27;t everywhere, or even that they aren&amp;#x27;t harmful. They&amp;#x27;re arguing that, in the grand scheme of things, the harm produced by PFAS to humans is relatively inconsequential, especially when you consider all the improvements that technology, broadly, has brought to the human condition.&lt;p&gt;To emphasize, I think that point is very debatable, but I don&amp;#x27;t know enough about the real harms of PFAS to comment. But I &lt;i&gt;do&lt;/i&gt; think it&amp;#x27;s valid to have a substantive debate on the true harms of PFAS, even if the other side of that debate is that comparing ourselves now to a time when the majority of kids died is the wrong yardstick.</text></item><item><author>tomxor</author><text>&amp;gt; I think what&amp;#x27;s changed most is our standards.&lt;p&gt;PFAS didn&amp;#x27;t exist 75 years ago. Now we&amp;#x27;ve almost permanently contaminated our environment and atmosphere with it, that&amp;#x27;s quite a big change.</text></item><item><author>nostrademons</author><text>&amp;gt; However, Cousins noted that PFAS levels in people have actually dropped &amp;quot;quite significantly in the last 20 years&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;ambient levels (of PFAS in the environment) have been the same for the past 20 years&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &amp;quot;What&amp;#x27;s changed is the guidelines. They&amp;#x27;ve gone down millions of times since the early 2000s, because we&amp;#x27;ve learned more about the toxicity of these substances.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I think what&amp;#x27;s changed most is our standards.  Used to be if you survived to reproduce, you were doing pretty good.  Extra points if you got to watch your kids grow up.  Now the standard is basically &amp;quot;Every substance that can be demonstrated to have worse health outcomes than its absence is toxic&amp;quot; - which on a technical level is &lt;i&gt;true&lt;/i&gt;, and might even be what you &lt;i&gt;care about&lt;/i&gt;, but you also need take a bigger-picture perspective and weigh it against all the other risks of ordinary living you face.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nonrandomstring</author><text>What is remarkable here is that every single thing you say is correct.&lt;p&gt;Everything on your statistical list looks right, and can probably be
proven by a stack of peer-reviewed scientific studies from medicine,
sociology, psychology...&lt;p&gt;And yet as an &lt;i&gt;argument&lt;/i&gt;, it&amp;#x27;s worthless. Worse... it&amp;#x27;s dangerous.&lt;p&gt;Because in your schema, the impact of climate change, pollution and
other threats that will &lt;i&gt;end this species&lt;/i&gt; each rank as zero!  You get
to &amp;quot;pass on your genes&amp;quot; merely to consign a few hundred of your
descendents to a miserable death.&lt;p&gt;This is the tyranny of instrumental reason that you so cleverly use
against the goal (reproduction of genes) that you purport to champion.</text></comment>
<story><title>Rainwater everywhere on the planet is unsafe to drink due to chemicals (2022)</title><url>https://phys.org/news/2022-08-rainwater-unsafe-due-chemicals.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nostrademons</author><text>I went and did some research, and have a friend who&amp;#x27;s a material scientist.  The harms of PFAS are pretty substantial.  Teflon is nasty; if you can do without it in your cookware, you probably should.&lt;p&gt;However, statistically the things that are most likely to prevent you from passing on your genes are:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  1. Not making enough money.
  2. Anxiety&amp;#x2F;depression
  3. Drug overdoses
  4. Car accidents
  5. An unhappy family life
  6. Swimming pools
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
And on that list of offspring averted, PFAS basically don&amp;#x27;t register.  You are much better off making sure you get into a good career, talking to your kids about drugs, being very careful when you drive, and otherwise not sweating the small things than obsessing about forever-chemicals in the atmosphere.</text></item><item><author>hn_throwaway_99</author><text>I feel like that&amp;#x27;s taking the commenter&amp;#x27;s quote out of context, or at least missing the point. They aren&amp;#x27;t arguing that PFAS aren&amp;#x27;t everywhere, or even that they aren&amp;#x27;t harmful. They&amp;#x27;re arguing that, in the grand scheme of things, the harm produced by PFAS to humans is relatively inconsequential, especially when you consider all the improvements that technology, broadly, has brought to the human condition.&lt;p&gt;To emphasize, I think that point is very debatable, but I don&amp;#x27;t know enough about the real harms of PFAS to comment. But I &lt;i&gt;do&lt;/i&gt; think it&amp;#x27;s valid to have a substantive debate on the true harms of PFAS, even if the other side of that debate is that comparing ourselves now to a time when the majority of kids died is the wrong yardstick.</text></item><item><author>tomxor</author><text>&amp;gt; I think what&amp;#x27;s changed most is our standards.&lt;p&gt;PFAS didn&amp;#x27;t exist 75 years ago. Now we&amp;#x27;ve almost permanently contaminated our environment and atmosphere with it, that&amp;#x27;s quite a big change.</text></item><item><author>nostrademons</author><text>&amp;gt; However, Cousins noted that PFAS levels in people have actually dropped &amp;quot;quite significantly in the last 20 years&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;ambient levels (of PFAS in the environment) have been the same for the past 20 years&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &amp;quot;What&amp;#x27;s changed is the guidelines. They&amp;#x27;ve gone down millions of times since the early 2000s, because we&amp;#x27;ve learned more about the toxicity of these substances.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I think what&amp;#x27;s changed most is our standards.  Used to be if you survived to reproduce, you were doing pretty good.  Extra points if you got to watch your kids grow up.  Now the standard is basically &amp;quot;Every substance that can be demonstrated to have worse health outcomes than its absence is toxic&amp;quot; - which on a technical level is &lt;i&gt;true&lt;/i&gt;, and might even be what you &lt;i&gt;care about&lt;/i&gt;, but you also need take a bigger-picture perspective and weigh it against all the other risks of ordinary living you face.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>joe8756438</author><text>Swimming pools because of drowning or chemical exposure?</text></comment>