<story><title>Toxic ‘Forever Chemicals’ in Drinking Water Leave Military Families Reeling</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/22/us/military-water-toxic-chemicals.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>apo</author><text>&lt;i&gt;Blood testing has emerged as a sticking point. Specifically, a growing movement of veterans and others, united in advocacy groups with names like Fountain Valley Clean Water Coalition and Need Our Water, are asking the military test their blood for the chemicals, hoping to bring results to their doctors or use them in lawsuits.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Strange that the article is being so cagey about why this might be the case.&lt;p&gt;Every human blood sample tested since the 1950s has shown detectable perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA aka C8, a member of the PFAS class of chemicals mentioned in the article). The problem was so bad that DuPont had to search high and low for blood samples that &lt;i&gt;weren&amp;#x27;t&lt;/i&gt; contaminated with PFOA. They did eventually find clean samples - archived from a group of recruits for the Korean War.&lt;p&gt;A little about the chemistry. Think of most forms of grease as a greasy, long, water-repellant chain of carbon-hydrogen bonds attached to a small water-attractive &amp;quot;polar&amp;quot; head. PFASs replace all of the carbon-hydrogen bonds in the greasy tail with carbon-fluorine bonds. This makes the molecule repel grease (great for non-stick coatings throughout the house). But the carbon-fluroene bond is quite inert, thus the name &amp;quot;forever chemical.&amp;quot; There are few environmental mechanisms that can degrade them - either exposed or inside a body.&lt;p&gt;This article fails to put the problem into proper context - making it sound unique to military bases. That not true. PFOA is a problem at numerous sites. Nobody knows the long-term consequences of releasing this much highly-inert, carcinogenic material into the environment. What is known is that those unfortunate enough to have worked on PFOA production and who received high exposure to it developed horrific problems including cancers.&lt;p&gt;The Intercept did a massive series on this:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;theintercept.com&amp;#x2F;series&amp;#x2F;the-teflon-toxin&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;theintercept.com&amp;#x2F;series&amp;#x2F;the-teflon-toxin&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Netflix documentary &amp;quot;The Devil We Know&amp;quot; is also worth watching:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.netflix.com&amp;#x2F;title&amp;#x2F;80997719&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.netflix.com&amp;#x2F;title&amp;#x2F;80997719&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>amelius</author><text>That&amp;#x27;s a nice explanation. But what I don&amp;#x27;t get is: if the chemical is highly inert that means it doesn&amp;#x27;t react easily with other substances, so how then can it be carcinogenic?</text></comment>
<story><title>Toxic ‘Forever Chemicals’ in Drinking Water Leave Military Families Reeling</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/22/us/military-water-toxic-chemicals.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>apo</author><text>&lt;i&gt;Blood testing has emerged as a sticking point. Specifically, a growing movement of veterans and others, united in advocacy groups with names like Fountain Valley Clean Water Coalition and Need Our Water, are asking the military test their blood for the chemicals, hoping to bring results to their doctors or use them in lawsuits.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Strange that the article is being so cagey about why this might be the case.&lt;p&gt;Every human blood sample tested since the 1950s has shown detectable perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA aka C8, a member of the PFAS class of chemicals mentioned in the article). The problem was so bad that DuPont had to search high and low for blood samples that &lt;i&gt;weren&amp;#x27;t&lt;/i&gt; contaminated with PFOA. They did eventually find clean samples - archived from a group of recruits for the Korean War.&lt;p&gt;A little about the chemistry. Think of most forms of grease as a greasy, long, water-repellant chain of carbon-hydrogen bonds attached to a small water-attractive &amp;quot;polar&amp;quot; head. PFASs replace all of the carbon-hydrogen bonds in the greasy tail with carbon-fluorine bonds. This makes the molecule repel grease (great for non-stick coatings throughout the house). But the carbon-fluroene bond is quite inert, thus the name &amp;quot;forever chemical.&amp;quot; There are few environmental mechanisms that can degrade them - either exposed or inside a body.&lt;p&gt;This article fails to put the problem into proper context - making it sound unique to military bases. That not true. PFOA is a problem at numerous sites. Nobody knows the long-term consequences of releasing this much highly-inert, carcinogenic material into the environment. What is known is that those unfortunate enough to have worked on PFOA production and who received high exposure to it developed horrific problems including cancers.&lt;p&gt;The Intercept did a massive series on this:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;theintercept.com&amp;#x2F;series&amp;#x2F;the-teflon-toxin&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;theintercept.com&amp;#x2F;series&amp;#x2F;the-teflon-toxin&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Netflix documentary &amp;quot;The Devil We Know&amp;quot; is also worth watching:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.netflix.com&amp;#x2F;title&amp;#x2F;80997719&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.netflix.com&amp;#x2F;title&amp;#x2F;80997719&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>whalabi</author><text>&amp;gt; This article fails to put the problem into proper context - making it sound unique to military bases&lt;p&gt;From the article:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; While the military has used the chemicals extensively, it is far from the only entity to do so, and in recent years, companies like DuPont have come under fire for leaching PFAS into water systems.</text></comment>