Plastic Canisters Poisoned Your Body with Nano Particles

Did you know that all plastic canisters poisoned your body with nano particles, these “tubes” as an polymer synthetic elementaire reach you blood vascular vessels and brains. This is in fact the Fibonacci sequence Toroidal spins as the opposite frequency vibrations waves to reject your Krystal frequency energy. This will cause inflammatory all over your body what gives you itches on your skin and other heavy problems as tiredness and anxious behaviours. Aggressive response to hold you in a flow of low frequency! 

It’s better to take natural glass (Kristal) or copper, clay. 

Humanity underestimated the problem of the way of living in this evil system. Take your responsibility NOW and throw it away as much as possible. Even bottles by the process of solvating by light and moisture will cause the same damage to your body.

Microplastic Fibres were Found Deep in the Lower Lungs

Study finds plastics found in masks present in patients’ lungs

By Amanda Brown Apr 17, 2022  3

Microplastic fibres were found deep in the lower lungs of living human beings in almost every person sampled in a recent UK study.

The study from Great Britain discovered microplastic particles — present in many COVID-19 masks — in the lung tissue of 11 out of 13 patients undergoing surgery.

Polypropylene (PP) and polyethylene terephthalate (PET) were the most prevalent substances present in the lungs.

The microscopic plastic fragments and fibres were discovered by scientists at Hull York Medical School in the UK. Some of the filaments were two millimetres long in patients undergoing surgery whose lung tissue they sampled.

The plastic dust and microscopic debris comprises the same plastics used to manufacture the ubiquitous surgical masks worn by hundreds of millions of people around the world as mandated by governments in an attempt to halt the spread of COVID-19.

The material most commonly used to make these masks is PP — PP fabric is made from a “thermoplastic” polymer, meaning that it’s easy to work with and shape at high temperatures.

Blue surgical masks can also be made of polystyrene, polycarbonate, polyethylene, or polyester, all of which are types of fabrics derived from thermoplastic polymers.

Disposable blue masks are to be found littering almost every city street in the developed world after two years of COVID-19 mandates ruled that masks should be worn in most indoor environments much of the time. Healthy adults, children, the immunocompromised, and the elderly have all been subject to mask mandates.

Microplastics were detected in human blood for the first time in March, showing the particles can travel around the human body and may become embedded in organs. The impact on health is still to be determined.

Researchers are concerned because microplastics cause damage to human cells in the laboratory and air pollution particles are already known to enter the body and cause millions of premature deaths each year.

Mask under a microscope. Image courtesy E.P. Vicenzi/Smithsonian’s Museum Conservation Institute and NIST

“Airborne microplastics (MPs) have been sampled globally, and their concentration is known to increase in areas of high human population and activity, especially indoors. Respiratory symptoms and disease following exposure to occupational levels of MPs within industry settings have also been reported,” the UK study said. “In total, 39 MPs were identified within 11 of the 13 lung tissue samples… These results support inhalation as a route of exposure for environmental MPs, and this characterization of types and levels can now inform realistic conditions for laboratory exposure experiments, with the aim of determining health impacts.”

“We did not expect to find the highest number of particles in the lower regions of the lungs, or particles of the sizes we found,” said Laura Sadofsky, at Hull York Medical School in the UK, a senior author of the study. “It is surprising as the airways are smaller in the lower parts of the lungs and we would have expected particles of these sizes to be filtered out or trapped before getting this deep.”

“This data provides an important advance in the field of air pollution, microplastics, and human health,” she said.

The research used samples of healthy lung tissue from next to the lung region targeted for surgery. It analyzed particles as small as .003mm in size and used spectroscopy to identify plastic types.

It also used control samples to account for the level of background contamination. The study has been accepted for publication by the journal Science of the Total Environment.

An older study published in 2020 looked into the risks associated with mask-wearing and the inhalation of microplastics. The study concluded:

• Wearing masks poses microplastic inhalation risk, reusing masks increases the risk

• Wearing N95 masks poses lowest microplastic inhalation risks in the long term

• Wearing masks, except for N95, poses higher stripe-type microplastic inhalation risk

• Wearing masks poses considerably lower spherical-type microplastic inhalation risk

• Wearing masks leads to lower gross microplastic inhalation risk in the long term

“Surgical, cotton, fashion, and activated carbon masks wearing pose higher fibre-like microplastic inhalation risk, while all masks generally reduced exposure when used under their supposed time (<4 h),” the study said.

Chris Schaefer is a respirator specialist and onsite training expert based in Edmonton, Alta. He has been teaching and conducting respirator fit testing for more than 20 years with his company, SafeCom Training Services Inc. His clients include government departments, Canada’s military, Alberta Health Services, educational institutions, and private industry. Schaefer is a published author and a recognized authority on the subject of respirators and masks.

The Western Standard asked Schaefer if he believed surgical masks of the type used by millions of Canadians, and people throughout the world, presented a significant risk of microplastic inhalation from the masks themselves. He began by clarifying that the face covering generally referred to as a ‘mask’ is not, in fact, a mask, at all.

Schaefer refers to COVID-19 face coverings as “breathing barriers.”

“What has been mandated in hospitals and through the general public through this whole COVID-19 agenda, are not masks. They don’t meet the legal definition [of a mask,] “Shaefer said. “A [proper] mask has engineered breathing openings in front of mouth and nose to ensure easy and effortless breathing. A breathing barrier is closed both over mouth and nose. And by doing that, it captures carbon dioxide that you exhale, forces you to re-inhale it, causing a reduction in your inhaled oxygen levels and causes excessive carbon dioxide. So they’re not safe to wear.”

“As far as whether it could cause somebody to inhale the polypropylene fibres that are used to make this and synthetic polymers that are used to make the filtration of these devices — absolutely. Take a pair of scissors and cut one open. You can see that in between the two main covers that are encapsulating, these loose fibres are breaking away. They’re becoming dislodged from the cover itself, just through normal wear and tear and the agitation of putting it on and taking it off,” Schaefer said.

“The heat and moisture that it captures will cause the degradation of those fibres to break down smaller. Absolutely, people are inhaling [microplastic particles]. I’ve written very extensively on the hazards of these breathing barriers the last two years, I’ve spoken to scientists [and other] people for the last two years about people inhaling the fibres. If you get the sensation that you’ve gotten a little bit of cat hair, or any type of irritation in the back of your throat after wearing them,” said Schrieffer. “That means you’re inhaling the fibres.”

Schaefer said we will have to wait to see the the long-term effects of the inhalation of microplastics from masks.

“So we know that people are inhaling the fibres. What the risks are going to be, what the effects are going to be — it could be anything — but it could definitely cause lung inflammation and could cause full-body inflammation. Absolutely,” Schaefer said.

“This is not normal. Anybody who would normally be exposed to any type of synthetic polymers or polypropylene fibres [in an occupational environment] would have to wear approved respiratory protection. These breathing barriers are not respirators. These fibres break down to between .2 mm, and the large ones are five mm. So they’re totally inhalable, they break down very small and and, well, what that’s going to do to people in the in the form of lung function — as well as toxicity overload in their body — I guess we’ll know in a few years.

Although the latter study assessed the masks’ abilities to filter incoming environmental microplastics, the study did not assess whether particles were shed from the construction of the mask fabric itself on its alternate side — particles that would enter the lungs of a wearer.

Sumber :

https://www.westernstandard.news/features/study-finds-plastics-found-in-masks-present-in-patients-lungs/article_056590f2-0615-5bc9-aab0-730e7704634e.html

Plastic Diminishes the Mind

Yesterday decided to dabble into the lead and copper rule of 1991. This rule focused on reducing the amount of copper and lead in the public water supply.  But this rule never addressed the toxic fluoride, pesticides, or chemical runoff. What is interesting is more than 2/3rd of the country has lead or copper pipes. If it was as toxic as we were told a majority of the population would have been gone long ago. 

Now what is also interesting is how copper benefits the mind while plastic diminishes the mind. 

It makes me wonder if lead and copper (being part of the 7 sacred metals) have something to do with our overall health. Just my thoughts on this topic. What are yours? Do you have lead or copper pipes by you?

Researchers in the Field of Brain Plasticity

When the elderly start to be forgetful, it is usually regarded as the first sign of Alzheimer’s disease or dementia. According to the guidelines issued in 2019 by the World Health Organization (WHO), “getting regular exercise, not smoking, avoiding harmful use of alcohol, controlling one’s weight, eating a healthy diet, and maintaining healthy blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar levels” apparently helps to reduce the risk of developing dementia. 

This claim is purely hypothetical!

Neurologists argue that Alzheimer’s is an age-related “neurodegenerative disease” that affects the functions of brain cells, whereas brain researchers argue that the memory impairment is caused by brain atrophy or enlarged ventricles. According to Dr. Hamer's findings, a brain atrophy is the result of repetitive scarring processes in the brain due to continuous conflict relapses of any biological conflict. Enlarged ventricles are linked to the choroid plexus and the distress of having difficulties memorizing (“the thoughts don’t flow smoothly”). Hence, it is not the large size of the ventricles that causes dementia, as suggested, but the other way around, namely that the short-term memory loss activates a Biological Special Program that enhances the production of cerebral spinal fluid (in the conflict-active phase) leading, eventually, to an enlargement of the ventricles (see internal hydrocephalus).

In conventional medicine it is assumed that dementia is somehow related to “plaques” in the brain (“Although the cause of Alzheimer's disease is not known (sic!), plaques are often found in the brains of people with Alzheimer's”, (Mayo Clinic). In reality, these “plaques” are calcium deposits that form over time due to constant conflict relapses that interrupt the healing process; here shown on both hemispheres of the (post)sensory cortex, the area of the brain that corresponds, biologically, to separation conflicts. Typical separation conflicts are the death of a life-long spouse, the loss of a partner or friend, little or no contact with the immediate family (children, grandchildren), or having to move to a senior’s or nursing home.

A concurrent Kidney Collecting Tubules Constellation, when abandonment/existence/refugee conflicts and separation conflicts occur together, adds confusion and disorientation to the memory loss. The result is the typical clinical picture of Alzheimer’s disease. Behavioral changes such as belligerence, social withdrawal, or depressed moods indicate further conflicts and additional constellations. 

In 1986, David Snowdon, an epidemiologist at the University of Kentucky, began a research project that became known as the Nun Study (published in 2001). The goal of his investigation was to determine the causes of Alzheimer’s disease by focusing on a group of 678 Catholic sisters who are members of the School Sisters of Notre Dame congregation in Mankato, Minnesota. The participants were between 75 and 107 years of age. The homogeneous lifestyle and environment of the sisters made the nuns an ideal population to study. In addition to assessments of their medical records and regular testing of their physical and cognitive performances, the participants agreed to donate their brain after death for research purposes. The outcome was remarkable! The postmortem examination of the nun’s brains revealed that a significant number were showing pathologies of Alzheimer’s in their brain, even though the sisters never exhibited signs of memory loss during life. Researchers in the field of brain plasticity suggested that the nuns’ mental activities favored the development of new neural networks that eventually assumed the work of the degenerated brain cells. The science of GNM takes a different approach. Based on the findings that every disease is caused by a biological conflict (First Biological Law), the memory decline, as seen in Alzheimer’s patients, does not originate in the brain but instead in the psyche, precisely, from lasting separation conflicts leading over time to dementia.

Mikroplastik Dibalik Kemasan Botol dan Gelas Plastik

Selasa, 9 Mei 2023 13:03 WIB

Kandungan mikroplastik dari hasil penelitian atas tiga merek air mineral dalam kemasan saat diteliti di laboratorium FMIPA-Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Rabu (14/3). Air minum dalam kemasan (AMDK) plastik yang kita minum ternyata mengandung mikroplastik berbahaya. Konsumen menelan butiran plastik tak kasat mata dalam AMDK botol atau gelas plastik yang dikonsumsi sehari-hari.

Hal ini terungkap dari hasil penelitian global yang dilakukan oleh State University of New York at Fredonia dan didukung oleh organisasi media nirlaba di Amerika Serikat, Orb Media. Penelitian ini menguji 259 botol air minum dari 11 merek yang dijual di delapan negara, termasuk air minum yang diproduksi salah satu produsen AMDK di Indonesia. Hasilnya, 93 persen AMDK yang menjadi contoh, ternyata mengandung mikroplastik.

“Indonesia menjadi salah satu negara yang diambil sampelnya karena memiliki pangsa besar air minum dalam kemasan. Tim peneliti mengambil 30 botol AMDK salah satu produsen dari Jakarta, Bali, dan Medan dan dibawa ke New York pada November 2017 untuk diuji di laboratorium State University of New York at Fredonia,” demikian paparan tim peneliti via publikasi rilis mereka.

Hasilnya sangat mengkhawatirkan, karena setiap botol, rata-rata mengandung 382 mikroplastik partikel per liter. Bahkan, kandungan mikroplastik terbanyak ada dalam 1 sampel botol yang mencapai 4.713 partikel mikroplastik per liter.

“Ukuran mikroplastik yang ditemukan beragam, mulai dari 6,5 mikrometer atau setara sel darah merah, hingga lebih dari 100 mikrometer atau setara dengan diameter rambut manusia,” papar riset tersebut.

Paparan dari banyak temuan hasil riset, kandungan mikroplastik dalam air minum dapat menimbulkan dampak kesehatan yang serius bagi manusia. Ahli toksikologi dari Universitas Indonesia, Budiawan, menyatakan bahwa partikel mikroplastik berukuran sama atau lebih kecil dari sel manusia berpotensi menjadi bahaya, karena dapat diserap dan masuk ke dalam aliran darah.

Selain itu, akumulasi mikroplastik dalam tubuh dapat mengganggu kerja organ vital seperti ginjal dan hati. “Akumulasi terjadi kalau tubuh tidak mengeluarkan partikel asing secara alami lewat ekskresi,” kata Budiawan.

Ahli nutrisi, Tan Shot Yen, juga mengatakan bahwa semakin kecil partikel mikroplastiknya, semakin mudah dan semakin banyak diserap sel. Tan merujuk salah satu penelitian dari Pusat Informasi Bioteknologi Nasional Amerika Serikat tentang dampak partikel itu terhadap plankton di perairan bebas yang telah tercemar.

“Dampak terberatnya adalah gangguan pertumbuhan dan reproduksi. Tentu saja, jika mencetuskan radikal bebas, resiko kanker tidak bisa ditepis,” kata Tan.

Di luar botol plastik, riset terbaru yang dilakukan oleh para peneliti dari Fakultas Kelautan dan Perikanan (FKP), Universitas Hasanuddin (Unhas), Makassar, bekerja sama dengan lembaga FMCG Insights menunjukkan, AMDK gelas plastik ternyata juga paling banyak terkontaminasi mikroplastik.

Penelitian ini dilakukan terhadap beberapa merek AMDK dalam berbagai bentuk kemasan, yaitu botol, galon, dan gelas. Dari tiap-tiap merek dan kemasan diambil sampel empat buah.

Hasil penelitian ini kemudian mendapati bahwa hanya ada lima dari total 48 sampel yang tidak terkontaminasi oleh mikroplastik. “Dengan kata lain, ada 89,6 persen sampel AMDK yang terkontaminasi mikroplastik,” kata Khusnul Yaqin, salah satu peneliti utama yang bersama timnya melakukan penelitian dan pengambilan sampel di Makassar, Sulawesi Selatan.

Berdasarkan hasil penelitian timnya, ia mengatakan bahwa mikroplastik yang ditemukan di dalam AMDK bisa juga berasal dari sumber air bakunya atau mikroplastik yang ada di udara pada saat proses pengemasan AMDK.

“Yang menjadi perhatian saat ini adalah keberadaan mikroplastik dalam jumlah besar di badan perairan, yang bisa berakibat fatal bagi biota laut,” kata ahli ekotoksikologi itu. Dengan kata lain, mikroplastik bisa berpengaruh pada rantai pangan yang nantinya masuk dan terakumulasi di dalam tubuh manusia, artinya, bicara mikroplastik tak bisa dilepaskan dari siapa yang paling bertanggungjawab sebagai penyumbang sampah dan mikroplastik terbesar di Indonesia.

Berdasarkan laporan brand audit yang dikeluarkan oleh NGO di bidang lingkungan. AMDK gelas plastik yang paling banyak menyumbangkan sampah di perairan Indonesia. Itu artinya memperbesar kerusakan lingkungan dan memperbesar risiko penyebaran mikroplastik dari konsumsi makanan laut ke tubuh manusia. (*)

Sumber :

https://nasional.tempo.co/read/1723618/mikroplastik-dibalik-kemasan-botol-dan-gelas-plastik

Bukti Bahwa Perubahan Iklim Nyata, Bencana di Mana-mana

Senin, 21 Agu 2023 14:45 WIB

Perubahan iklim adalah sesuatu yang nyata. Hal ini setidaknya terlihat dari bencana alam yang lebih sering terjadi di berbagai negara. Di bulan Agustus saja, kita mendengar bencana banjir di China, Italia, dan India, gelombang pasang di Inggris, dan Prancis, badai di Jepang, Maroko dan Iran, hingga kebakaran dahsyat di Hawaii.

Bukan berarti Indonesia aman-aman saja. Menurut laporan Badan Nasional Penanggulangan Bencana (BNPB), ada 2.216 peristiwa bencana alam di Indonesia selama periode 1 Januari-2 Agustus 2023. Banjir (758 kejadian) dan cuaca ekstrem (731 kejadian) menjadi bencana alam terbanyak yang terjadi di Indonesia dalam periode tersebut.

Siswanto M.Sc, Peneliti Cuaca dan Iklim Ekstrem Badan Meteorologi dan Klimatologi (BMKG), dalam live Eureka! 'Bumi Akhir Zaman' beberapa waktu lalu juga memaparkan sejumlah data dan fakta dampak perubahan iklim di Indonesia.

Juara Satu Dunia, Orang Indonesia Paling Tidak Percaya Global Warming

"Kita tertimpa dampaknya, banjir, longsor, kekeringan, puting beliung yang tidak biasa terjadi di suatu lokasi menjadi biasa, siklon tropis yang tidak pernah terjadi di wilayah Indonesia atau jarang terjadi, sekarang sering muncul," ujarnya menjelaskan berbagai bencana alam yang merupakan dampak perubahan iklim.

Setidaknya, ada empat bukti Indonesia terdampak perubahan iklim berdasarkan data yang dipaparkan Siswanto. Berikut di bawah ini adalah buktinya.

1. Penyusutan es

Puncak tertinggi di Indonesia, Puncak Jaya di Pegunungan Jayawijaya di Papua, mengalami penyusutan es secara signifikan. Lapisan Es Abadi Jayawijaya bahkan diperkirakan akan hilang.

Salah satu penelitian tim BMKG yang bekerja sama dengan salah satu universitas di Amerika, melakukan ekspedisi untuk memonitoring ketebalan lapisan es yang masih dimiliki Puncak Jaya.

"Kita menyebutnya Lapisan Es Abadi Jayawijaya. Tetapi ternyata dari penelitian tim kami menunjukkan bahwa lapisan es yang kita miliki itu kemungkinan tidak akan abadi lagi, diprediksi di tahun 2020-2030 kemungkinan lapisan es itu akan makin berkurang bahkan habis," kata Siswanto.

2. Gas rumah kaca (GRK) meningkat

Peningkatan karbondioksida, metana, dan nitroksida berkontribusi besar atas terjadinya pemanasan global. Semakin menumpuk GRK di stratosfer kita maka akan semakin meningkat suhu permukaan Bumi.

Menurut Siswanto, sejauh ini tingkat GRK Indonesia memang masih berada di bawah rata-rata tingkat GRK global. Namun Indonesia pernah melampaui angka rata-rata GRK global pada tahun 2013, dan 2015-2016.

"Saat itu CO2 kita menanjak dibandingkan global karena terjadi kebakaran hutan dan lahan. Ketika terjadi kebakaran hutan dan lahan maka emisi GRK kita, konsentrasi CO2 makin meningkat dan menyebabkan atau berkaitan langsung dengan kejadian pemanasan global di dunia ini," ujarnya.

3. Suhu terus naik

Berdasarkan data, rata-rata suhu Indonesia masih berada di bawah rata-rata suhu secara global. Namun jika dilihat per lokasi, di wilayah seperti Jakarta, Surabaya, Semarang, Medan, dan kota-kota yang padat penduduk atau yang sangat kuat aktivitas urbanisasi maupun urban developmentnya, suhunya sudah melampaui global.

"Jakarta ini suhunya sudah lebih cepat dan lebih kuat 1,4 kali peningkatannya dibandingkan suhu global," Siswanto memberikan contoh.

Sebelum tahun 1950, sebenarnya suhu Indonesia terutama suhu Jakarta, masih berada di bawah rata-rata global maupun rata-rata Indonesia. Namun sejak 1962 hingga sekarang, suhu udara di Jakarta makin meningkat secara signifikan dan dia melampaui rata-rata Indonesia maupun global.

4. Penurunan tanah

Sudah banyak peneliti baik dari Indonesia maupun luar negeri yang mengungkapkan fakta adanya ground sinking atau penurunan tanah. Fakta-fakta ini juga yang memicu ungkapan, 'Jakarta akan tenggelam di 2030'.

Dalam sebuah studi, ada wilayah-wilayah yang penurunan tanahnya diprediksi sampai -4 meter. Ini memang belum terjadi, melainkan prediksi hingga tahun 2030.

Otak Manusia Menyusut Akibat Perubahan Iklim

Selain itu, terdapat problem penurunan tanah yang disebabkan oleh faktor mekanis di luar dari persoalan perubahan iklim dan pemanasan global. Hal ini berkaitan dengan kehidupan manusia dan tata kelola perkotaan kita.

"Penurunan tanah ini disebabkan dua hal besar. Pertama, karena pengangkatan atau pengambilan air tanah yang berlebihan. Kedua, akibat tekanan permukaan akibat dibangunnya gedung-gedung tinggi yang ada di wilayah-wilayah dekat pantai sehingga menyebabkan tanah makin mudah turun," kata Siswanto.

Sumber :

https://inet.detik.com/science/d-6887706/bukti-bahwa-perubahan-iklim-nyata-bencana-di-mana-mana.

Mikroplastik turut mencemari udara Jakarta

Riset terbaru: selain perairan, mikroplastik turut mencemari udara Jakarta

Diterbitkan: Maret 9, 2022 12.45pm WIB

Lecturer on Marine Science Department, Universitas Sriwijaya

Pengungkapan

Penelitian ini merupakan kolaborasi dengan support fasilitas dan pendanaan dari lembaga riset nasional, yaitu LIPI. Pada jurnal yang telah diterbitkan, peneliti LIPI yang terkait (M.Reza Cordova) merupakan salah satu penulis jurnal tersebut

Jakarta merupakan kota yang dikepung polusi udara. Sebagian besar polusi tersebut berasal dari sektor transportasi, disusul oleh industri dan pembangkit listrik.

Material-material pengotor seperti nitrogen oksida (NOx), sulfur oksida (SOx), ataupun partikel debu berukuran 2,5 mikron (PM 2,5) menjadi biang keladi pencemaran di atmosfer Jakarta.

Namun, sumber pencemaran udara di Ibu Kota bukan hanya itu. Riset kami menemukan plastik berukuran sangat kecil (mikroplastik) yang terombang-ambing di udara sekitar Ancol, kawasan pesisir Jakarta. Ini merupakan penelitian pertama di Indonesia tentang mikroplastik di atmosfer (mikroplastik atmosferik) pada ketinggian 28 meter di atas permukaan tanah.

Temuan ini semestinya menjadi informasi untuk meningkatkan kesadaran dan menjaga kelestarian lingkungan. Pasalnya, bukan hanya di perairan, udara yang kita hirup pun tak lepas dari risiko pencemaran mikroplastik.

Cara mendeteksi mikroplastik di udara

Plastik merupakan bahan sintetis yang selalu dapat terpecah ke dalam bentuk yang lebih kecil, bahkan hingga mencapai ukuran mikrometer atau yang biasa dikenal dengan mikroplastik. Ukurannya bisa lebih kecil dari rambut manusia.

Ukuran yang kecil mengakibatkan “monster mikro” ini dapat terbawa ke seluruh bagian suatu badan air dan bahkan terakumulasi pada mahluk hidup.

Sedangkan, mikroplastik atmosferik merupakan mikroplastik yang berterbangan di udara sekitar kita, bersama dengan debu atau partikel kecil lainnya. Ukurannya yang kecil mengakibatkan mikroplastik dengan mudah terhirup dan berisiko mengakibatkan infeksi saluran pernapasan dan gangguan paru-paru.

Kami meneliti keberadaan mikroplastik atmosferik dengan pengambilan sampel selama setahun. Sampel diambil menggunakan alat penampung air hujan yang steril dan berbahan kaca. Alat ini dilengkapi dengan corong dan juga diisi dengan 10 ml air yang telah disuling (aquades).

Alat penampung kemudian diletakkan pada atap gedung Pusat Penelitian Oseanografi Lembaga Ilmu Pengetahuan Indonesia (LIPI) di Ancol, Jakarta Utara, yang bebas dari gangguan pohon maupun gedung lainnya.

Setiap bulan, alat penampung dipasang selama 96 jam. Sampel mikroplastik yang diperoleh kemudian dihitung dan diamati menggunakan mikroskop. Kami melakukan identifikasi bahan-bahan yang terkandung pada mikroplastik menggunakan spektroskopi inframerah (FT-IR).

Hasilnya, terdapat rata-rata 15 partikel mikroplastik yang jatuh setiap hari pada areal seluas 1 meter persegi (m²). Mayoritas di antaranya (80%) berukuran sekitar 0.3-0.5 milimeter (mm), sisanya berada pada rentang 0.5-1 mm.

Kami juga mencatat jumlah mikroplastik meningkat drastis pada musim hujan (November-April). Kami menduga mikroplastik ini terbawa oleh tetesan air hujan. Semakin tinggi curah hujan, semakin banyak mikroplastik yang terjatuh.

Sebagian besar mikroplastik yang kami peroleh setiap bulannya berbentuk fiber (serat penyusun pakaian). Sebagian kecil lainnya berbentuk potongan-potongan kecil dan foam (gabus).

Adapun mayoritas (82%) mikroplastik atmosferik yang kami temukan di Ancol merupakan plastik jenis poliester (PET). Ini merupakan material produk garmen.

Sedangkan, sisanya berbahan polistirena (PS) - jamak dipakai sebagai material kemasan styrofoam. Ada juga polibutadiena (PB) atau karet sintetis, dan polietilena (PE) yang dipakai sebagai bahan kantung plastik sekali pakai.

Menilik dari dominasi bentuk, ukuran, dan jenisnya, mikroplastik yang diperoleh ini merupakan emisi dari kegiatan rumah tangga. Bentuk fiber dan polimer PET umumnya diperoleh dari aktifitas di daerah perkotaan, seperti garmen dan penatu (laundry).

Berbahayakah mikroplastik di udara Jakarta?

Jumlah temuan mikroplastik atmosferik di Ancol sebenarnya masih lebih sedikit dibandingkan kawasan metropolitan lainnya di dunia. Misalnya, di Dongguan, Cina, mikroplastik yang ditemukan mencapai 36 partikel setiap hari pada luas areal 1 m². Sedangkan di Paris, Perancis, mencapai 110 partikel.

Mikroplastik juga ditemukan di udara sekitar Hamburg, Jerman, sebanyak 275 partikel, dan London, Inggris, mencapai 771 partikel.

Studi yang dilakukan di jalan utama di kota Surabaya di ketinggian 1,2 meter pada 2019 silam juga menemukan konsentrasi mikroplastik sebesar 247 partikel.

Meski demikian, patut diingat bahwa Ancol sebagai lokasi pengambilan sampel dalam penelitian kami merupakan kawasan yang tidak dihuni banyak penduduk. Aktivitas lalu lintas juga tidak terlalu padat, dan dekat dengan Teluk Jakarta.

Selain itu, sampel yang kami dapatkan di Ancol adalah mikroplastik yang jatuh pada ketinggian 28 m. Semakin tinggi lokasi pengambilan sampel, mikroplastik yang diperoleh juga akan semakin sedikit.

Temuan ini akan berbeda apabila pengamatan kami lakukan di ketinggian yang lebih rendah dengan aktivitas penduduk yang lebih padat. Misalnya, jika pengambilan contoh mikroplastik kami lakukan di pusat kota Jakarta dengan ketinggian yang dekat dengan hidung kita (sekitar 1,5-2 meter), tidak menutup kemungkinan mikroplastik yang didapat akan lebih banyak.

Walaupun risiko ini sudah diketahui, sejauh ini belum ada pemantauan mikroplastik di udara Jakarta, ataupun baku mutu mikroplastik di udara yang dibolehkan. Karena itu, kami menyarankan kandungan mikroplastik atmosferik menjadi salah satu unsur kualitas udara yang harus diukur secara berkala oleh pemerintah. Hal ini dilakukan sebagai upaya untuk meningkatkan kualitas hidup masyarakat, khususnya di Jakarta.

Sumber :

https://theconversation.com/riset-terbaru-selain-perairan-mikroplastik-turut-mencemari-udara-jakarta-177924

Protecting Yourself from Toxic PFAS

Toxic chemicals. Rising cases of sickness. A shocking cover up. It has the makings of a Hollywood movie. Indeed, the release of the blockbuster film Dark Waters had all of these gripping plot points, based on the true story of how a toxic chemical called PFOA contaminated a West Virginia town’s water supply.

Thanks in part to the movie and increased media attention about toxic chemicals, more communities across the U.S. are discovering their drinking water may be contaminated by PFOA or one of the other related chemicals in a category called PFAS (perfluoroalkyl substances).

Whether you know it or not, it’s likely you already have PFAS in your body. The CDC estimates that as many as 97% of Americans have detectable levels of PFAS in their blood (1).

Most PFAS are Toxic Forever Chemicals

Scientists have found that PFAS never degrade or break down (2). For this reason, PFAS are dubbed “forever chemicals.” This means once PFAS get into the environment, they persist virtually forever. And research shows that it takes years before any PFAS starts to leave your body (3).

The problem is that this issue has been undetected for decades. For the past 60 years, industrial companies used PFAS for a wide range of applications. This includes carpet protectants, food packaging, pesticides, non-stick cookware, waterproof textiles, stain repellants, and pesticides.

Companies had the public convinced that these chemicals were completely safe. But it turns out that multiple organizations have suppressed the truth about PFAS to protect their profits (4).

Thanks to several independently funded studies, researchers have now uncovered the cold hard truth: PFAS have poisoned the environment on a global scale and are a serious threat to virtually every person on this planet.

The Pervasive Reach of PFAS

Once PFAS get into the environment, they readily make their way into the food chain, going from the factory floor to drinking water and even the dinner table with ease.

PFAS leach into the environment from a wide range of sources. This includes landfills, factories, and military bases. From these sites, PFAS contaminate the air, soil, and water.

Due to the fact that PFAS are water soluble, they readily leach into groundwater and travel far. One report in the prestigious scientific journal Nature revealed that “PFAS were found in the drinking water of more than 16 million Americans in 33 states” (5). And experts believe that due to a lack of data in many states, these numbers are grossly underestimated (6).

But you don’t even have to have PFAS in your water supply to be exposed. People often turn to bottled water either for convenience or because they have concerns about the quality of their tap water. Yet recent tests show that many bottled water brands tested positive for PFAS (7).

Unfortunately, water isn’t the only way you can get exposed to PFAS. These forever chemicals can also make their way into your body through eating food cooked in non-stick cookware or from the dust within your own home.

Even worse, PFAS have invaded the food chain. Research shows that food wrappers used in take-out or fast-food packaging have PFAS, meaning you get a dose of toxic chemicals with every bite (8).

The Alarming Health Effects of PFAS

PFAS chemicals are readily absorbed by your gut. And when they get in the bloodstream, they stick around for a very long time. Some of these toxins are shown to stay in the body for up to 15 years before they are excreted (9).

Reports published by the National Center for Environmental Health have also found PFAS in samples of human blood, urine, breast milk and even in umbilical cord blood (10). This means these chemicals are, without a doubt, making their way from the environment into humans.

Once these chemicals make their way into your system, they can cause a great deal of harm (11). Scientists have found that exposure to PFAS is linked to:

• Cancer (liver, pancreatic and others) (12)
• Hormone disruption
• High cholesterol
• Obesity (some toxins are obesogens)
• Damage to the immune system (13)

How Can You Minimize the Risks from PFAS?

It’s clear that PFAS are bad news. To make matters worse, it’s virtually impossible to completely avoid exposure. But there are steps you take to minimize the risks from PFAS and support your body’s detoxification efforts.

Avoid exposure to PFAS by ditching non-stick cookware, avoiding packaged food when possible, using an air filter in your home, and opting for organic cleaning products since standard cleaning chemicals can contain PFAS as well.

Since one of the most likely exposure points is drinking water, avoid bottled water when possible, and drink water that has been filtered. The most effective filtration system to remove PFAS is reverse osmosis, but that can be expensive. The next most effective system is an activated carbon filter (14).

Activated carbon filters work through adsorption. Basically, the PFAS stick to the surface of the activated carbon and are therefore filtered out.

Detoxifying with Natural Zeolite

Much in the same way that activated carbon filters out PFAS in water, natural mineral zeolite can act as a filter for toxins in the body. The natural zeolite Clinoptilolite is a powerful yet gentle detoxifier for long-term daily use.

A natural mineral formed from volcanic deposits, zeolites have long been used for their ability to attract and trap toxins. When cleansed and nanosized for optimal absorption, this zeolite can detoxify the body to a cellular level.

Zeolite detoxifies the body in two key ways. As a negatively-charged mineral, it works through cationic exchange. Like a magnet, it attracts positively-charged toxins and holds them within its crystalline structure. It also works via adsorption, where toxins stick to the outside of the zeolite, before passing through the body.

While studies are limited, evidence suggests that zeolite adsorbs PFAS, working to remove toxic chemicals from aqueous solutions (15, 16). Long renowned for its ability to remove heavy metals, zeolite may also be a safe and simple way to potentially reduce your exposure to PFAS.

Given that PFAS lingers in the body for years, and has known damaging health effects, it’s vital to reduce your exposure to these toxic chemicals. Seek out information from your local water supply and reduce exposure through using a water filter and avoiding PFAS-laced food packaging. Adding nanosized natural zeolite is another way to help reduce your body’s toxic burden and optimize your well-being.

Sumber :

https://essentialorganics.thegoodinside.com/pfas-forever-chemicals

PFAS: The water contaminant that scientists say isn't going away

AUGUST 21, 2022 / 9:26 AM / CBS NEWS

On a cold winter day on the Stoneridge Dairy Farm, in Arundel, Maine, Fred Stone was worried more about his cows being cold than himself, especially his prized Brown Swiss, named Blue. "She likes to give me a hard time, as much as she can," Stone told correspondent Lee Cowan.

Fred and his wife, Laura, are only the latest generation to work this dairy; it's been in the family for over a century.

But since November of 2016, every drop of milk – that white gold that's been a reliable livelihood for generations – is now being poured right down the drain.

"It's a helluva waste," said Stone. "Even I can't drink it."

He had no idea the wastewater that the state licensed him to use to fertilize his fields was also swimming with potentially toxic chemicals, called PFAS. Now, his land, his cows (and, yes, their milk) are all contaminated.

Cowan asked, "Had you ever heard of PFAS or any of these chemicals?"

"Never," he replied.

A lot of people haven't. PFAS is an acronym for a family of man-made compounds called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances. The CDC has listed a host of health effects believed to be associated with exposure to those chemicals, including cancer, liver damage, increased cholesterol, and a lot more. The chemicals are so highly mobile, they're not only being found in soil and ground water, but in the atmosphere, too. In fact, they've even been detected in raindrops falling in some of the most remote areas of the world.

PFAS chemicals have been around for decades. DuPont was the first to use PFAS in Teflon, giving us those non-stick pots and pans. 3M used a different PFAS in its once-popular fabric protector, Scotchgard.

Today, those chemicals' cousins can still be found in almost anything designed to fend off oil, water or grease. That includes things like pizza boxes, paper plates, rain jackets, ski wax, even guitar strings.

PFAS are basically impossible to escape, and scientists say they're likely here to stay.

Toxic "forever chemicals" found in groundwater near more U.S. military bases

"Forever chemicals" in drinking water pose risk even at low levels, EPA says

New study claims 43 states expose millions to dangerous chemical in drinking water

"They are nearly indestructible … You can't get rid of 'em," said Patrick Macroy, the former deputy director of the advocacy group Defend Our Heath in Maine. He explains just why that staying power is so very troubling: "A lot of chemicals, when they go into your body or they end up in the environment, they break down. They slowly decompose. PFAS don't do that. Once you put PFAS somewhere, it's gonna stay there practically forever."

That means the levels of these so-called "forever chemicals" can build up and linger in our bloodstreams forever.

Cathy and Bruce Harrington were notified by Maine's Department of Environmental Protection that their drinking water was tainted with PFAS: "They're supposed to be under 40 parts per trillion," said Cathy. "Ours is 26,000 per trillion."

For the Harringtons, who live next to a farm and use a well, the likely source was two industrial plants not far away.

"They come and tested our water," said Cathy. "And they said, 'We'll send you a report in a couple of weeks or whatever.' And they called us in a few days, and they said, 'Do not drink your water, don't use it for cooking, nothing.'"

All for what, asked Bruce? "Bottom line is, we don't need frickin' eggs to slide out of pans, versus people dying."

Melanie Benesh, a legislative attorney at the Environmental Working Group in Washington, said, "PFAS contamination is really a national crisis, and the real scale of contamination is staggering. The more we test, the more we find it."

Benesh said thousands of sites nationwide are polluted with PFAS. And she lays the blame for that growing crisis squarely at the feet of the companies who invented the chemicals in the first place. "It is the manufacturers, like DuPont and 3M, who have gotten us here today," she said. "So, they've known for 70 years that they were poisoning the water, and they didn't tell the EPA, they didn't tell their neighbors, they didn't tell their workers. They didn't tell anyone because they were making too much money."

In the last two decades, thousands of lawsuits have been brought against the manufacturers for allegedly knowing PFAS chemicals were dangerous. While most deny they did anything wrong, settlement offers have been pouring in, to the tune of billions of dollars.

But Benesh said the manufacturers aren't the only ones to blame: "There has also been regulatory failure. The FDA knew in the 1960s, the Department of Defense knew in the 1970s, the EPA has known since at least the '90s, and they didn't treat the issue with amount of urgency that it needed."

Regulating PFAS is like playing a game of whack-a- mole. DuPont and 3M phased out two of the PFAS suspected of being the most harmful, but they still manufacture others. In fact, there are thousands of variants.

Benesh said, "Many of them have real similarities that make it very likely that one is just as toxic as the other."

Take the plant DuPont built in North Carolina back in the '70s, and then spun off to a different company, called Chemours, back in 2015.

Almost a decade ago, Detlef Knappe, an environmental engineering professor at North Carolina State University, started testing the water near that plant that sits right along the Cape Fear River. In 2017, his research made headlines: A study said a new PFAS called GenX was clearly present in the water.

Emily Donovan, a mother of two who lives about 80 miles downstream from the Chemours plant, said, "It's unholy. We live in America. I should be able to enjoy a shower and not worry that it's going to give me or my kids cancer."

The Cape Fear River is a source of drinking water for more than 350,000 people in and around Wilmington, N.C. Donovan, like most people , just always assumed it was safe. "The EPA doesn't require utilities to regularly test for them," she said, "so there's really no way for the average American to know if it's even in their drinking water right now. Or in their food. Or in their air."

Based on what it called new evidence, this past June the EPA did update its drinking water advisories about PFAS, warning that even the tiniest amount over a lifetime may be enough to cause negative health effects in humans. But it stopped short of creating a new federal drinking water standard.

"There has been no new drinking water standard in the United States since the 1990s," said Donovan. So, she co-founded Clean Cape Fear, a community action group that, among other things, has been fighting for both federal and state agencies to crack down harder on all of the PFAS pollutants.

"You have two choices: You can have a breakdown about it, or you can channel that energy and that heartbreak into something productive and create a positive," Donovan said.

Chemours was forced by state environmental regulators to install a host of anti-pollution technologies. It's cost them millions.

In a statement to CBS News, the company said it's destroying "over 99.99% of PFAS" in the air, and it's reduce(d) "PFAS compounds reaching the Cape Fear River … by 97%."

As for the PFAS that have built up in the ground over the years, Chemours said it will build a barrier wall that will capture and treat that ground water – a process it says will remove nearly all of them.

Detlef Knappe said, "The exposure has dropped dramatically for people who live downstream; it's much tougher for the people who live immediately around the plant whose wells are contaminated."

What Professor Knappe is now interested in investigating is to see how much, if any, PFAS is present in the food grown nearby.  "We have analyzed some of the produce from backyard gardens in that area that suggest the levels can be quite high," he said.

Residents like Jane Jacobs – a member of the native Tuscarora Nation – have always seen the land as sacred. "I'm scared that it's too late," she told Cowan. "I'm scared that we're gonna die because of what we've ingested."

She fears the blight on her tribe's land might just end a way of life.

"My people have always hunted in these swamps, but they're fed by the rivers," she said. "So, now the animals are polluted the same way the water's polluted, because they drank out of the rivers and out of the swamps."

No one who lives off the land would willingly poison it. Fred Stone is certainly one of those people, as are farmers in nearly every state who use treated wastewater to nourish their fields. He, just like his father and his grandfather before him, saw their soil as part of their soul. Cold and draught were supposed to be the biggest threats, not a chemical made by man.

Said Stone, "At some point in time I'm going to have to tell my father and my grandfather what I did with the farm that they entrusted me with."

Cowan said, "But this wasn't your fault, though."

"It wasn't my fault, but it was under my watch. And now, it's gonna be gone. So, that's it. That's the end of the road."

Sumber :

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/pfas-the-water-contaminant-that-scientists-say-isnt-going-away/

EPA issues strongest statement to date about danger of PFAS in drinking water

by Chloe Johnson

EPA Administrator Michael Regan last month made one of his agency's strongest statements to date about the danger of "forever chemicals." New restrictions on those pollutants in drinking water would "prevent thousands of deaths and prevent tens of thousands of serious PFAS-related illnesses," Regan said.

Scientists studying the health effects of the chemicals say that while they can't prove any one case of illness is tied to them, the statement isn't an exaggeration. A growing body of scientific research has confirmed early suspicions that PFAS are linked to some cancers, and added new connections between the chemicals and developmental problems.

Jamie DeWitt, an immunotoxicologist at East Carolina University, leads a lab dedicated to discovering how PFAS damage the immune system. She said the link may seem indirect, but it's valid: If increased exposure to PFAS raises the risk of chronic diseases that can lead to death, then reducing the exposure reduces that risk of death.

That's exactly how the agency calculated its avoided deaths. Regan's comments are based on EPA's economic analysis of the costs and benefits of its proposed water standards, according to a statement from Khanya Brann, EPA deputy press secretary. The rules regulate six types of PFAS, though there are thousands of chemicals in the category.

The document estimates that 7,357 deaths would be avoided from reduced bladder cancer, kidney cancer and cardiovascular disease. The calculations also include benefits from reducing disinfection byproducts in water, or the chemicals that are left over once water has been treated. EPA asserts these chemicals will also be removed with the filtering required to handle PFAS.

Sean Lynch, a spokesman for Maplewood-based 3M Co., wrote in an email that EPA's water rules "lack a sound scientific basis" and that the agency hasn't shown they're needed to protect human health or the environment. Messages to the media office for Chemours, a spin-off of DuPont that still produces fluorinated chemicals, were not returned.

PFAS chemicals were pioneered by 3M in the 1950s. The company and another manufacturer, DuPont, made the oil- and water-resistant chemicals for a dizzying array of applications. Nonstick cookware coatings, waterproof clothing, dental floss and fire-extinguishing foams are just a few where they are used today.

But the carbon-fluorine bonds that enable these uses also make the chemicals persistent. They don't break down in the environment, and some PFAS linger in the body for years.

Documents released after the state of Minnesota sued the company show that 3M knew about toxicity for decades from internal studies it conducted, and DuPont decided to move women out of its production lines in the 1980s because of internal studies showing birth deformities in rats.

But public research on broader health effects has only advanced in roughly the past two decades. A small number of the chemicals have been well-studied, with the most known about the two oldest, and now discontinued, compounds—PFOS and PFOA.

There's now emerging scientific agreement that some PFAS chemicals are linked with several health problems, according to an influential 2022 report from the National Academies of Science Engineering and Medicine. It reported strong enough evidence to link PFAS exposure to developmental problems in children who are exposed before and after birth, increased cholesterol in adults and kids, kidney cancer in adults and reduced antibody response in all ages. More limited evidence suggests increased risk of testicular and breast cancers, hypertension in pregnancy and liver and thyroid issues.

EPA's proposed limit on PFAS in water systems set the standard for PFOA and PFOS almost at the limit of where machines can detect the chemicals. That's in part to protect developing fetuses that are exposed to PFAS in their mothers' bodies through the placenta, and infants, who are exposed through breastmilk.

The evidence for these effects is strong enough that the National Academies report recommends that doctors do additional screening for thyroid issues, cholesterol imbalances, kidney and testicular cancer and the bowel disease ulcerative colitis in patients with significant PFAS exposure. For the most exposed, cholesterol checks should start in children as young as 2; signs of testicular cancer and ulcerative colitis need to be assessed starting at age 15.

"They're saying, 'Hey, doctors, if you're treating patients who live in PFAS-contaminated areas, you need to do more for these patients,'" DeWitt said.

Much of the energy in the scientific world to look at the effects of these chemicals was spurred by the work of the C8 Science Panel. This broad study of health links to PFAS exposure was part of a settlement with DuPont, after the company was sued for contaminating drinking water in the Ohio River Valley. (C8 is another name for the chemical PFOA, because of the molecule's 8-link chain of carbon-fluorine bonds.)

An influential study completed by Philippe Grandjean, an environmental medicine professor at Southern Denmark University, looked at the immune systems of children exposed to these chemicals.

Grandjean, who also co-leads a center devoted to studying PFAS at the University of Rhode Island, initially recruited some 656 pregnant mothers in the Faroe Islands to study the effects of other environmental contaminants and continued to follow up with the children for years. He decided to examine PFAS too, after a study on the chemicals in lab mice was published.

They measured the amount of PFAS in the children's blood at different ages, including after typical childhood vaccinations. Grandjean said the results he ultimately published in 2012 in the Journal of the American Medical Association shocked him—the more PFAS in a child's blood, the fewer antibodies they would produce after a vaccine, as if their immune systems were suppressed. The same association held when researchers looked at the amount of PFAS in the cord blood of newborns.

Part of the problem for developing children, Grandjean said, is that a mother who breastfeeds for six months can transfer as much as half the PFAS in her body to the baby, where the chemicals concentrate ten times as much.

His work and several consecutive studies on the same cohort of Faroese children left Grandjean to conclude that "we are affecting the most vulnerable life stage of the next generation" with PFAS pollution that could cause still-unknown long term effects.

Other research, including some by Grandjean, has linked the chemicals to issues like low birth weight. Hypertension in pregnancy has also been linked with PFAS, including in the original C8 study.

Phil Brown, co-director of the PFAS Project Lab at Northeastern University, said his lab is now working on a study in the United States that will build on some of Grandjean's work studying children. DeWitt said she's investigating how the specific molecule PFOA affects the way cells use energy, and effectively ages them.

DeWitt said the associations right now might not be as clear as for other environmental pollutants, like fine particles in the air, which extensive research has shown can cause heart attacks and other deadly events from even short-term exposure.

But she said that fine particulate matter, also known as soot, has been a recognized problem for over a century; scientists are still catching up with chemicals like PFAS.

"The way things work in our world, we have to generate lots and lots and lots of data about the negative effects for people to think maybe we should change what we do and move to something else," DeWitt said.

Sumber :

https://phys.org/news/2023-04-epa-issues-strongest-statement-date.html

Borrowing From Big Tobacco's Playbook, Johnson & Johnson Knew About Asbestos in Baby Powder for Decades: Reuters

One attorney said 1970s memos that have surfaced due to recent lawsuits are "on par with key docs uncovered in the tobacco litigation."

Dec 14, 2018

A Reuters investigation published Friday charges that Johnson & Johnson, a multi-billion dollar company known for its healthcare products, knew for decades that its iconic talcum baby powder "was sometimes tainted with carcinogenic asbestos," but concealed the information from regulators and the public.

Asbestos, "the name given to six minerals that occur naturally in the environment as bundles of fibers," has been used in North America's automotive, construction, and shipbuilding industries since the late 1800s, according to the National Cancer Institute. The World Health Organization (WHO) warns that "all types of asbestos cause lung cancer, mesothelioma, cancer of the larynx and ovary, and asbestosis (fibrosis of the lungs)."

Because asbestos sometimes occurs in the earth along with talc, contamination is possible. Reuters--along with attorneys for more than 11,000 plaintiffs currently suing Johnson & Johnson, claiming the company's products caused their cancer--examined memos, internal reports, and other confidential documents as well as deposition and trial testimony.

That mountain of evidence, according to Reuters, revealed

that from at least 1971 to the early 2000s, the company's raw talc and finished powders sometimes tested positive for small amounts of asbestos, and that company executives, mine managers, scientists, doctors, and lawyers fretted over the problem and how to address it while failing to disclose it to regulators or the public.

The documents also depict successful efforts to influence U.S. regulators' plans to limit asbestos in cosmetic talc products and scientific research on the health effects of talc.

While, over the past two decades, some legal challenges claiming that Johnson & Johnson products were tainted with asbestos and caused cancer have been unsuccessful, three recent developments seem to signal a shift. A pair of cases in New Jersey and California saw significant awards for mesothelioma patients, and a "watershed" verdict in St. Louis expanded the company's potential liability.

Outlining the St. Louis case, Reuters explained:

The 22 plaintiffs were the first to succeed with a claim that asbestos-tainted Baby Powder and Shower to Shower talc, a longtime brand the company sold in 2012, caused ovarian cancer, which is much more common than mesothelioma. The jury awarded them $4.69 billion in damages. Most of the talc cases have been brought by women with ovarian cancer who say they regularly used J&J talc products as a perineal antiperspirant and deodorant.

"When people really understand what's going on," said Mark Lanier, an attorney for one of the plaintiffs, "I think it increases J&J's exposure a thousand-fold."

Johnson & Johnson, as Reuters noted, "has dominated the talc powder market for more than 100 years, its sales outpacing those of all competitors combined... And while talc products contributed just $420 million to J&J's $76.5 billion in revenue last year, Baby Powder is considered an essential facet of the healthcare-products maker's carefully tended image as a caring company--a 'sacred cow,' as one 2003 internal email put it."

Another attorney who's not tied to the cases against Johnson & Johnson concluded on Twitter that the 1970s memos mentioned in Reuters' report are "on par with key docs uncovered in the tobacco litigation."

Journalist Eoin Higgins, also responding on Twitter, simply said: "What a story. What the fuck."

Johnson & Johnson, meanwhile, has vowed to appeal all verdicts against it and maintains that its products are safe. The company's vice president of global media relations, Ernie Knewitz, wrote in an email to Reuters:

Plaintiffs attorneys out for personal financial gain are distorting historical documents and intentionally creating confusion in the courtroom and in the media... This is all a calculated attempt to distract from the fact that thousands of independent tests prove our talc does not contain asbestos or cause cancer. Any suggestion that Johnson & Johnson knew or hid information about the safety of talc is false.

Following the report, the publicly traded company's shares plummeted by more than 11 percent.

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

JESSICA CORBETTJessica Corbett is a senior editor and staff writer for Common Dreams.Full Bio >

Sumber :

https://2020plan.net/baby-powder/

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/12/14/borrowing-big-tobaccos-playbook-johnson-johnson-knew-about-asbestos-baby-powder

US food pesticides contaminated with toxic ‘forever chemicals’ testing finds

PFAS are present at ‘potentially dangerous’ levels in widely used chemicals sprayed on food crops destined for Americans’ plates

Sun 7 May 2023 11.00 BST

Some of the United States’ most widely used food pesticides are contaminated with “potentially dangerous” levels of toxic PFAS “forever chemicals”, new testing of the products finds.

The Environmental Protection Agency has previously been silent on PFAS in food pesticides, even as it found the chemicals in non-food crop products. The potential for millions of acres of contaminated food cropland demands swifter and stronger regulatory action, the paper’s authors say.

PFAS from firefighting foam at the the Van Etten Creek dam in Oscoda Township, Michigan.

“I can’t imagine anything that could make these products any more dangerous than they already are, but apparently my imagination isn’t big enough,” said Nathan Donley, environmental health science director at the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), which co-authored the study. “The EPA has to take control of this situation and remove pesticide products that are contaminated with these extremely dangerous, persistent chemicals.”

The groups last Monday submitted the test results to the EPA and the California Department of Pesticide Regulation, asking them to remove these products from use until contamination can be addressed.

PFAS are a class of about 15,000 chemicals often used to make thousands of consumer products across dozens of industries resist water, stains and heat. The chemicals are ubiquitous, and linked at low levels of exposure to cancer, thyroid disease, kidney dysfunction, birth defects, autoimmune disease and other serious health problems. They are called “forever chemicals” because they do not naturally degrade.

The testing found PFAS in three out of seven agricultural pesticides, including Intrepid 2F, which state of California data shows is the second most widely applied product behind Roundup. In 2021, the most recent year data is available, more than 1.7m pounds of it were applied to over 1.3m cumulative acres of California land. Use was highest in the Central Valley on crops such as almonds, grapes, peaches and pistachios.

The study also found the chemicals in Oberon 2SC Malathion 5EC, the latter of which contains the neurotoxin malathion.

Multiple studies have established that crops absorb PFAS and they can be ingested by humans. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) began monitoring PFAS in food in 2019 and has detected them in fruits and vegetables, but has not set any limits.

The fertilizers are also probably polluting water with PFAS. The level of PFOA, one kind of PFAS compound, found in Malathion 5EC was over 100,000 times higher than the level the EPA considers safe in drinking water, though no limit has been set for PFAS in pesticides.

“There is no better way to poison Americans than contaminate our food supply and soils with PFAS, and the blame for this lies squarely on the shoulders of EPA,” said Kyla Bennett, a co-author and science policy director with Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (Peer).

It is unclear why the chemicals are added to pesticides, though some in the industry have theorized they are used as a dispersing agent. The Intrepid 2F manufacturer Corteva-Agriscience in a statement to the Guardian said the product did not contain intentionally added PFAS.

The results are the latest in an ongoing dispute among federal regulators and independent researchers over the scale of PFAS contamination in US pesticides, and the response.

Bennett, a former EPA scientist, first discovered PFAS in pesticides in 2020, and alerted the agency and the Massachusetts department of environmental protection.

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After conducting its own pesticide testing, the EPA concluded in early 2021 the chemicals were leaching from plastic containers in which they were stored, and said the contamination was limited to pesticides used in mosquitocides. The EPA issued an open letter to the industry reminding it that PFAS can leach, and asking companies to alert it if they were adding PFAS.

But the contamination continues. In late 2022, testing of insecticides used primarily for cotton, but which could potentially be used on food, found PFAS. That testing, along with CBD and Peer’s research, also detected PFAS compounds not known to be used or formed when the chemicals are added to plastic.

The discrepancy suggests the PFAS are not coming from plastic bins, but are added to pesticides by manufacturers, either as active or inactive ingredients, or are inadvertently inserted into products somewhere in the supply chain.

In December, the EPA banned some types of PFAS compounds – but not all – that can be used as inert ingredients in pesticide products, and said at the time that active ingredients are being reviewed. “EPA will share results of that investigation as soon as possible,” an agency spokesperson said. No results have been released, but an EPA spokesperson said the agency has “already analyzed some of the specific pesticides mentioned by CBD and Peer and plans to release those results in the coming weeks”.

PFAS have also previously been found in some widely used flea and tick pesticide products.

In a statement, the EPA said it “has taken significant scientific, regulatory and enforcement actions to address this issue, will continue to take such actions”.

However, it did not say it would halt sales of the pesticides while it investigatesBennett told the Guardian the EPA is “missing in action”.

“The fact that we are likely spraying pesticides with PFAS on food at a time when EPA acknowledges there is no safe level of some of these chemicals is nonsensical,” she added.

Sumber :

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/may/07/food-pesticides-toxic-forever-chemicals-pfas

Chemical factory has been dumping 'forever chemicals' into drinking water since 1980s

EXCLUSIVE: Two North Carolina counties with the most toxic tap water in U.S. and an explosion of cancer, miscarriages and disease: Chemical factory has been dumping 'forever chemicals' into drinking water since 1980s. So, how bad is your area?

By CASSIDY MORRISON SENIOR HEALTH REPORTER FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

13 July 2023

Residents of two North Carolina counties fear a wave of serious disease, cancers and miscarriages is the result of decades of drinking tap water contaminated with toxic 'forever chemicals'.

The tap water in Brunswick County and Wilmington, located in the southeast of North Carolina, is among the most toxic in the country when it comes to concentrations of PFAS - tiny compounds that are not broken down by nature or the human body, with levels up to 155 times above what health officials deem acceptable.

Experts are pointing the finger at a chemical plant in Fayetteville, which they say has been dumping poisonous chemicals into the Cape Fear River Basin - which serves as the primary drinking water supply for over 1.5 million North Carolinians - since the 1980s. 

The issue only came to light in 2017, when residents and local doctors started to join the dots and come to terms with the many cases of severe and sometimes fatal illnesses that they were seeing. Brunswick County native and public health activist Emily Donovan told DailyMail.com: ‘People were sick all the time here, desperately sick.’

A 2020 analysis of hundreds of blood samples taken from people in the Cape Fear River Basin appeared to confirm their fears. It showed that those in the area had levels of forever chemicals, or PFAS, in their blood at levels up to 66 times higher than the government says is safe.

The cities depicted on the map are just a handful of many that have been identified as having higher concentrations of PFAS in the public water supply and private wells

The cities depicted on the map are just a handful of many that have been identified as having higher concentrations of PFAS in the public water supply and private wells

Brunswick County, North Carolina, is at the top of an unfortunate list of US cities with the highest concentrations of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in their drinking water supply.

According to the Environmental Working Group, which sets more stringent healthy limit for PFAS concentration than the federal government, Brunswick County's water contains 155 times the amount of PFOA deemed safe (1.09 parts per trillion). The state average, for reference, is 0.945ppt.

The toxic chemicals lurking in the Cape Fear River basin have been tied to various reports of cancers, kidney and liver damage, and birth defects in Wilmington and Brunswick County. 

PFAS, otherwise known as 'forever chemicals' earned that name for their ability to linger in the environment and the body for hundreds of years. 

Their effects on humans is still not fully understood, but a growing body of research suggests that they wreak havoc to our DNA, raising the risk of cancer, and interfere with vital organs.

But because the effects of long-term exposure can take time to manifest, officials are hesitant to say with certainty that elevated rates of illness are due to PFAS. 

Dr Jamie DeWitt, a toxicologist and PFAS expert at East Carolina University, told DailyMail.com that it would be too much of a stretch to attribute the above-average rates of cancer and low birth weight in the area to PFAS without a comprehensive study.

But residents of the area, many of whom have contended with breast cancer, brain tumors, kidney disease, and miscarriages are blaming the Fayettville-based Chemours chemical plant, a DuPont spinoff.

The company has reached many court settlements with entities alleging that the company poisoned the water and the air around them, though the company has not explicitly admitted wrongdoing.  

There have been anecdotal reports from doctors as well as patients, including a close friend of Mrs Donovan's who passed away from cancer last fall, of mysterious cancer diagnoses.  

Emily Donovan, the driving force behind the advocacy group Clean Cape Fear, told DailyMail.com: ‘What's unnerving and alarming is it’s in everyone in my family.

‘I have twins and I was seven months pregnant when we moved to this area. And so of course, I was drinking a lot of water leading up to the end of the pregnancy and then all through breastfeeding, and their whole entire life until 2017.’ 

By that point, news had broken of the tap water contamination and the Donovans stopped drinking tap water as much as possible. 

Though her children’s school was not quick to substitute the tap with bottled water, a frustrating omission to Mrs Donovan who had to send her kids to class ‘knowing that they didn't have access to clean drinking water.’

The Environmental Working Group, an activist organization centered on eradicating environmental pollutants, mapped out the communities and military sites around the US confirmed to have PFAS contamination. The organization reports that as of June of last year, 2,858 locations in 50 states and two territories are known to be poisoned with forever chemicals

The Environmental Working Group, an activist organization centered on eradicating environmental pollutants, mapped out the communities and military sites around the US confirmed to have PFAS contamination. The organization reports that as of June of last year, 2,858 locations in 50 states and two territories are known to be poisoned with forever chemicals  

Mrs Donovan has been confronted head-on with the devasting effects that environmental pollution can have, first with her husband who developed a brain tumor three years after moving to the county in 2009 and survived, and then with her dear friend Tom who was diagnosed with rare male breast cancer that spread to his spine. 

Mrs Donovan said: ‘The one thing that Tom has always wondered is, did the tap water cause his illness?

And even though we'll never know if the tap water caused his illness, he always was very adamant that it wasn't helping, you know, clearly, he should not be drinking this water.’

Her friend’s passing shook Mrs Donovan’s faith, she said, adding: ‘You just wonder, what is humanity doing? Because this was completely avoidable, and when I say this was completely avoidable, it's not his cancer but the exposures we were given.’ 

Since 1980, DuPont had been producing a specific type of PFAS resin called Nafion that was supplied to General Electric in the 60s for use in NASA’s Gemini Space Program. The company also began manufacturing PFOA in 2000, another type of PFAS that lingers in the body for years.

The company phased out the use of PFOA and replaced it with another type of PFAS called GenX in 2009, four years after DuPont settled for about $107 million in a class-action suit arguing that it contaminated drinking supplies in Ohio and West Virginia by manufacturing Teflon.

‘The settlement with DuPont in West Virginia really kind of is how the whole entire world was made aware of PFAS, specifically PFOA,’ Mrs Donovan said.

‘When those settlements happened, quite honestly, we weren't fully aware. Those were eye-opening and they caught the nation's attention. They caught my attention.

‘And I was quietly thinking to myself, Wow, I feel so really sorry for those people in West Virginia, it's good to see that they're getting some level of justice, not knowing at the time that I myself was being poisoned and poisoning my own children who were raised on this tap water because their pediatrician recommended drinking water.’

This sum was the first in several that DuPont and later its offshoot Chemours paid either in fines to the Environmental Protection Agency amounting to more than $10 million or in settlements for alleged wrongdoing amounting in 2017 to about $671 million.

In total, Chemours is believed to have produced at least 54 different types of PFAS. And scientists have been able to detect a handful of them in people’s blood.

DailyMail.com reached out to DuPont and Chemours for comment but has not received a response.  

A groundbreaking report published in 2020 sampled blood from 344 residents of Wilmington, NC, coincidentally the fifth-most PFAS-polluted water system, from 2017 to 2018. While the federal government considers two nanograms per milliliter (ng/mL) the maximum concentration before potentially posing harm, Wilmington residents saw some of their levels far exceed that rate.

Concentrations of PFAS in the blood writ large reached as high as 133 ng/mL, marking a 66-fold increase from the national recommended cap.

The median concentration of PFOS in blood was 8.6 ng/mL, though in some it was as high as 26.8. PFOS, or perfluorooctane sulfonic acid, is extremely persistent, meaning it can take years to degrade in the environment and water treatment plants have a hard time breaking it down.

The median concentration of PFOA, or perfluorooctanoic acid, in people’s blood measured 4.3 ng/mL in a range of 1.7 to 11 ng/mL. Meanwhile, levels of a chemical called PFHxS ranged from 1.2 to 8.5 ng/mL, though the median was 3.2.

Mrs Donovan shared her blood concentrations as well as those of her husband and twin son and daughter with DailyMail.com. She gave her measurements in parts per billion (ppb), which can be used interchangeably with ng/mL to measure the concentration of PFAS compounds in a given substance, such as water or blood.

Her total PFAS levels were 17.1 ppb and her PFOA level came to 3.3 ppb. Her husband’s total PFAS levels were higher, though they don’t know why. His came to 26.8 parts per billion. The Donovans' son, 14, came to 7.1 ppb and his twin sister came to 9.6 ppb.

Mrs Donovan said: ‘Thankfully, we're healthy now. But I think what I live with is just the fear and anxiety of will that change?

‘We're seeing our friends go through and it just seems there's no rhyme or reason.’

Sumber :

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-12292999/PFAS-chemicals-linked-wave-cancer-illness-North-Carolina.html

Butter Wrappers & Indications of PFAS “Forever Chemicals”

Butter Wrappers & Indications of PFAS “Forever Chemicals” — Buying Guide

Mamavation » Blog » Food | Mamavation » Butter Wrappers & Indications of PFAS “Forever Chemicals” — Buying Guide

Traditional wrapped butter sticks containing PFAS "forever chemicals" on white background

July 11, 2023

by Leah Segedie

With all this talk of PFAS “forever chemicals” found inside butter wrappers, you may be asking yourself, “Where is the safest butter?” You’ve already heard that Kerrygold was sued in Superior Court after claiming to have “Pure Irish butter” while also packaging their products in contact wraps containing toxic PFAS “forever chemicals.” So which butter brands have indications of PFAS in their butter wrappers and which ones do not? Mamavation sent 32 butter wrappers from 22 butter brands off to an EPA-certified laboratory to answer your questions. You’ve trusted Mamavation to bring you other consumer studies like safest cookware sans PFAS or nanoparticles, the best organic mattresses, the best air purifiers, and the best water filters to filter PFAS, now join us for a consumer study on indications of PFAS “forever chemicals” within butter wrappers.

Disclosure: This consumer study is released in partnership with Environmental Health News. Scientific reviews were performed by (1) Terrence Collins, Teresa Heinz Professor of Green Chemistry & Director of the Institute for Green Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University, (2) Linda S. Birnbaum, Scientist Emeritus and Former Director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and National Toxicology Program & Adjunct Professor at Duke University, North Carolina University, & Yale University, (3) Pete Myers, Chief Scientist at Environmental Health Sciences, Adjunct Professor of Chemistry at Carnegie Mellon University, and Co-Author of Our Stolen Future, & (4) Scott Belcher, Associate Professor with the Center for Environmental & Health Effects of PFAS at North Carolina State University. This post was medically reviewed by Sondra Strand, RN, BSN, PHN. Donations were provided by Environmental Health News and Mamavation community members. This post contains affiliate links.

Butter without PFAS on it's wrapper on a wood cutting board

Mamavation’s Lab Finds Indications of PFAS “Forever Chemicals” Inside Butter Wrappers

Mamavation’s laboratory found indications of PFAS “forever chemicals” inside popular butter wrappers after sending 32 butter wrappers off to our EPA-certified lab. PFAS “forever chemicals” are per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances used for many decades as stain-resistant, oil-resistant, grease-resistant, & water-resistant chemicals in commerce. PFAS is found in many areas of our lives with some examples being makeup, drinking water, & dental floss. These chemicals are linked to serious health effects. Because they are so toxic, Mamavation has commissioned our own consumer studies on indications of PFAS in order to make consumer recommendations for butter brands that have PFAS-free grease-resistant wrappers. 

For this consumer study, Mamavation sent 32 different butter wrappers from 22 brands off to an EPA-certified laboratory looking for indications of toxic PFAS “forever chemicals.”  

Here’s what our EPA-certified laboratory found inside the food wrappers:

Sixteen of the 32 wrappers our EPA-certified laboratory tested (50%) had indications of toxic PFAS “forever chemicals.” 

Only 8 brands out of 22 had indications of PFAS in their butter wrappers; 22 (63%) did not. 

Ranges of total fluorine reported by the lab varied from 11 to 112 parts per million (ppm).

For each brand that tested positively for PFAS presence, we tested that brand at least twice see how consistent the issues were.

Linda S. Birnbaum, Scientist Emeritus and Former Director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and National Toxicology Program & Adjunct Professor at Duke University, North Carolina University, & Yale University, said,  “It’s disappointing to see indications of PFAS in butter wrappers. In order to protect the public, PFAS should not be present in food packaging like butter wrappers. This is an important issue to tackle in the future in order to protect pregnant women and children from the potential pitfalls of PFAS. I highly recommend the industry fix this problem as soon as possible.”

Butter wrapper coming off butter

Human Health Impacts of PFAS “Forever Chemicals”

PFAS “forever chemicals” are problematic to human health and the environment. They are considered ubiquitous, persistent, and toxic. Many of these chemicals can last for years or decades in our bodies. Therefore, it’s imperative to reduce the amount of PFAS you are exposed to from food like butter, water, and consumer products. 

PFAS like PFOA and PFOS have been linked to many health risks and bad health outcomes. When considering food packaging you are exposed to daily or even often, it’s important to be mindful of the health impacts of PFAS exposure:

• Reduction in immunity
• Reduced vaccination response
• Increased risk of allergies & asthma in young children
• Affected growth, learning, and behavior of infants and older children
• Increase to high cholesterol levels
• Metabolic diseases like obesity & diabetes
• Cardiovascular disease
• Lowered a woman’s chance of getting pregnant
• Lowered male fertility
• Increased risk of kidney & testicular cancers
• Causes endocrine disruption
• Disrupted normal thyroid function

It’s also very clear based on biomonitoring evidence from the Center for Disease Control (CDC) that PFAS are in essentially all Americans. Therefore, these impacts are spread nationwide. However, it’s important to avoid PFAS as much as possible because of the potential health and environmental impacts. 

Block of fresh butter on a cutting board

Can PFAS get into your Butter From the Packaging?

The test we use burns the butter wrappers and the gas they emit is analyzed to allow for a determination of total PFAS. If PFAS “forever chemicals” are in butter wrappers, can these chemicals get into your butter? The short answer is that prudence requires that we assume they can and it is chemically reasonable to assume they do.

There’s also quite a diversity in butter food packaging. Most of the options we found were either based on aluminum or wood cellulose with or without a coating. What is inside that coating? We don’t know. We took a look at several different butter wrapper manufacturers online to get a glimpse of the options available to butter brands.

Brands like Alstrom claim to have fluoro-free butter wrappers made from a proprietary process that “achieves a 100% cellulose product with no coating, which is certified by OK Compost Home and Industrial (EN13432).”

Another brand Bomarko offers “paper/foil laminated products as well as private labeled butter and margarine packaging in both grease-proof and waxed structures as well as paper/foil laminated structures for portioned single serve reddies, chips, continentals, quarter-pound sticks, and pound blocks.” This manufacturer makes no mention of using fluoro-free paper.

We also found Safepack that makes aluminum foil along with special polymers to protect butter from chemical spoilage and rancidity caused by oxygen, light, heat, & moisture. This brand also doesn’t mention any fluoro-free products.

And finally, Quantum Packaging reported quite an array of different aluminum options like

aluminum-wax-paper,

• aluminum-paraffin-paper,
• aluminum-polyethylene-paper,  or
• aluminum-polyethylene-paper-polyethylene.

Terrence Collins, Teresa Heinz Professor of Green Chemistry & Director of the Institute for Green Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University explains the relevance to butter wrappers in more detail. 

“The US Food and Drug Administration has known for decades that PFAS compounds in food wraps can migrate into our food. The general notion that chemicals, like most of the PFAS family, that can move around in the environment, that bioconcentrate in living things, and that Nature cannot easily destroy will find a way to cause health or environmental trouble because the chemistry of the ecosphere is so complex. This was clearly articulated over two decades ago. Yet here we are in 2023 with Mamavation being able to easily find that the everyday food product, butter, is still being put in close contact with PFAS contaminated wraps by many of the suppliers Mamavation tested. Those 8 out of 22 butter brands still using PFAS found by Mamavation in their wraps should come to terms with the serious PFAS health threats, plainly listed above by Mamavation, and get rid of PFAS compounds altogether in every aspect of their business.  I also recommend that butter companies should strive to be able to label their products as “PFAS-Free” when they have done the appropriate homework.” As a more general comment, the only effective way to deal with the expanding environment, human contamination, and deadly toxic issues is to simply stop making most if not all PFAS compounds.” 

Herd of young calves drinking water at sunset

Will PFAS “Forever Chemicals” Disrupt The Dairy Industry? — The Hangover of Biosolids.

Finding PFAS in butter wrappers is going to be an easy fix for a brand compared to PFAS inside the dairy product itself. PFAS “forever chemicals” are a hot topic of concern among farmers in general. This is because legacy farming practices are now bankrupting farms decades later.

A farming practice of spreading PFAS-contaminated sewage sludge (“biosolids”) on the land as fertilizer is coming back to bite farmers. Biosolids from sewage treatment contain various types of PFAS “forever chemicals”. The chemicals and microbes in our waste products encounter massive mixed bacterial colonies called “activated sludge” when they reach the treatment plants. The bacteria consume the microbes and chemicals to grow into what is meant to be “safe” organic matter that can deliver high-quality fertilizer.

But the logic breaks down when the activated sludge cannot decompose toxic chemicals—many chemicals that are ecotoxic or a threat to our health, such as PFAS compounds, contaminate the sludge and when its spread on farmland ends up contaminating our food supply. Persistent chemicals are such because Nature cannot break them down fast enough or at all. The sludge bacteria use the same (or similar) enzymes to decompose sewerage compounds that are found across much of aerobic life, including inside humans. 

The chemicals often get past our own decomposing enzymes to find their way into our number one and two waste products. At the sewage plants, not only is the rapidly growing activated sludge and future “potential” fertilizer contaminated, but so is the water that is released after treatment from the plants into rivers, lakes, and oceans.

Persistent and forever chemicals that the chemical enterprise has developed progressively over the last century have overwhelmed our technologies for cleaning wastewater. These “forever chemicals” can come from many industries like printing presses or chrome plating facilities, lint from waterproof clothing, waterproof makeup, dental floss, soft contact lenses, Teflon pans, etc.

One farmer by the name of Fred Stone in 2016 found that PFAS chemicals were contaminating his farmland from sewage plant fertilizer the hard way after voluntarily testing his dairy milk and finding PFAS in levels as high as 1,470 parts per trillion (ppt), far above what is considered safe for drinking water.

“The toxic chemicals that I never used and had never even known about until two years ago contaminated my cows—which I really take exception to—and ruined my farming operation and hurt my family,” he told reporters at a press conference in 2019.

What is sewage sludge? It is a byproduct of the water treatment process. Basically, this is what is left over when water is separated from human and industrial waste from the sewers. Two states have stepped up the testing of sludge. Regulators in each state have communicated that contamination was found in all tested samples. Other states have rejected residents and environmental groups’ pleas for testing of sludge and soil for these chemicals.

Vice has also covered this topic recently and we recommend watching this video to understand the scale of the problem.

Pete Myers, Chief Scientist at Environmental Health Sciences, Adjunct Professor of Chemistry at Carnegie Mellon University, and Co-Author of Our Stolen Future, added “The long-term and ubiquitous practice of using sewage sludge to fertilize fields must be stopped until technologies become available that remove toxic contaminants like PFAS from the waste waters flowing into the sewage treatment plants. It’s a time bomb threatening our farmers that will grow vastly more damaging than any possible value that the “free” fertilizer … read “toxic sludge”… adds to the farm economy.”

Slice of white bread with butter

New State PFAS Laws Protecting Some Americans

There is good and bad news on the horizon in terms of how laws are protecting citizens from PFAS. The good news is certain states are taking action, This will benefit not only those states but also other parts of the country as understanding of the dangers spreads. The bad news is it’s slow-moving and some of the new laws don’t really have the teeth required to adequately punish or fine brands breaking the new laws.

According to Safer States, a non-profit organization that advocates and tracks issues in different states pertaining to toxic chemicals. Several states have enacted phase-outs of PFAS in food packaging and several other categories. These new regulations from several states are creating a patchwork of laws around the country that are pressuring companies to do more testing and due diligence to keep your family safer. Every state that enacts restrictions has the potential of making the entire country safer if brands decide to roll out changes nationwide instead of state by state.

Here are some important movements.

Food Packaging: 

Twelve states including CA, CO, CT, HI, ME, MD, MN, NY, OR, RI, VT, and WA have enacted phase-outs of PFAS in food packaging.

California’s new regulations aim to create PFAS-free packaging, but these regulatory requirements allow fluorine up to 100 ppm. Unfortunately, California is not enforcing this law. Mamavation has alerted District Attorneys in two counties (Los Angeles & Ventura) of these issues thus far with laboratory proof and receipts of where they were purchased. No action has been taken thus far. So this new law has had quite a bumpy start.

Water Limits: 

Many states have begun the process of regulating PFAS in drinking water and have adopted enforceable standards or Maximum Contaminant Levels (MCLs) for PFAS in their state.

States with enforceable drinking water standards include ME, MA, MI, NH, NJ, NY, PA, RI, VT, and WI. Both DE and VA are in the process of establishing enforceable drinking water standards.

FL is on track to adopt its own standards if the EPA has not finalized its standards for PFAS in drinking water by 2025.

Other states have adopted guidance levels, notification levels, and/or health advisories for PFAS in drinking water. These states include AK, CA, CO, CT, IL, MD, MN, NC, NM, OH, OR, and WA.

In the meantime, we recommend you purchase one of the water filters that were independently shown to filter PFAS.

Textiles:

States are taking action to eliminate PFAS in carpets, rugs, apparel, textile furnishings, upholstered furniture, fabric treatments and/or other textiles, including California, Colorado, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, New York, Vermont, & Washington.

Mamavation has tested activewear & yoga pants and sports bras to help consumers make educated decisions about their consumer choices before these laws take effect.

Cosmetics: 

States are taking action to eliminate PFAS chemicals in cosmetics, including California, Colorado, Maryland, Minnesota, & Washington

Mamavation has tested over 100+ green beauty makeup products to help consumers make educated decisions about indications of PFAS and makeup before these laws take effect.

butter on foil wrapper on cutting board with knife

Other Categories of Products Mamavation Has Tested for Indications of PFAS “Forever Chemicals”

Before we launch into the raw data from our EPA-certified lab, we wanted to remind you about all the other studies we have done on indications of PFAS “forever chemicals” inside the food and consumer products you bring inside your home.

• Soft Contact Lenses
• Green Beauty Makeup
• Dental Floss
• Toilet Paper
• Period Underwear
• Tampons
• Sanitary Pads, Pantiliners, & Incontinence Pads
• Electrolytes 
• Pasta & Tomato Sauces
• Nut Butters (Peanut butter, etc.)
• Cooking Oils (olive oil, almond oil, canola oil, etc)
• Ketchup
• Activewear (Yoga Pants)
• Sports Bras
• Parchment Paper
• Cupcake Liners
• Plastic-Free Straws
• Children’s Probiotics
• Bamboo Flooring
• Baby Strollers
• Butter over paper package with PFAS "forever chemicals" on wooden table

Mamavation’s Raw Data on Butter Wrappers Sold to American Consumers & Tested for Indications of PFAS “Forever Chemicals”

Butter wrappers were purchased in greater Los Angeles, California, and also donated from community members in states like Texas, Massachusetts, Arizona, Virginia, Nevada, & New York between January and June 2023. Donated butter wrappers from community members were placed in ziplock bags (which we know from prior testing are non-detect for fluorine) and shipped to Mamavation in greater Los Angeles. Mamavation then took pictures of the butter wrappers and shipped them directly to the lab.

Testing: Mamavation’s EPA-certified laboratory uses marker testing to identify the potential presence of PFAS “forever chemicals” in butter wrappers. Organic fluorine is a marker for PFAS because all PFAS chemicals are carbon-based compounds that contain fluorine. The specific lab method used to test for total fluorine was the Determination of Total Fluorine by Oxygen Flask Combustion and Ion-Selective Electrode. If total fluorine was observed at a detection level of 10 ppm, the lab did the Determination of free Fluoride Ion in the product by Ion-Selective Electrode and then subtracted that from the Total Fluorine to determine the amount of organic fluorine. This marker testing is likely to show the presence of PFAS. Organic fluorine can also capture other fluoropolymers, pharmaceuticals, and common hydrofluorocarbon refrigerants, such as 1,1,1,2-tetrafluoroethane (commonly known as R-134a) and 2,3,3,3-tetrafluoropropene (commonly known as HFO-1234yf), which are also PFAS.  None of which you want around your food!

Scott Belcher, Ph.D. & Associate Professor with the Center for Environmental & Health Effects of PFAS at North Carolina State University says “fluoropolymers, such as polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) or Teflon®, are extremely common forms of PFAS that can be contributing to the organic fluorine found in butter. Methods used for detecting individual PFAS, such as PFOA or GenX, cannot directly identify PTFE. However, the analysis of total organic fluorine does account for all PFAS contaminants in butter wrappers, including PTFE. Therefore, this method of testing serves as a good ‘spot-check’ of consumer products.”

Piece of butter on white plate with knife. White background and shallow focus.

Not Our Favorite Butter Wrappers

These butter wrappers were sent to an EPA-certified laboratory and came back with detections of organic fluorine, which is a marker for PFAS “forever chemicals” inside the packaging.

HEB Organic Salted Sweet Cream Butter — 18 parts per million (ppm) organic fluorine, 2nd product 16 ppm

Kate’s Salted Pure & Simple Sea Salt Butter — 31 ppm organic fluorine, 2nd product different lot non-detect.

Kerrygold Pure Irish Butter Unsalted Wrapper — 61 ppm organic fluorine (tested after lawsuit)

Kerrygold Pure Irish Butter Salted Wrapper — 122 ppm organic fluorine (tested after lawsuit)

Kerrygold Unsalted Pure Irish Butter Paper Wrapper — 11 ppm organic fluorine (paper wrapper new packaging)

Kirkland Grass-fed Salted Butter Wrapper — 58 ppm, 2nd product 15 ppm organic fluorine

Maple Hill Organic 100% Grassfed Unsalted Butter — 69 ppm, 2nd product 15 ppm organic fluorine

Miyokos European Style Cultured Vegan Butter w/ Hint of Sea Salt — 12 ppm organic fluorine, 2nd product different lot non-detect

Organic Valley Sweet Cream Salted Butter Wrapper —  35 ppm, 2nd product 16 ppm organic fluorine, 3rd product 14 ppm

Wegmans Organic Unsalted Sweet Cream Butter wrapper — 15 ppm organic fluorine, 2nd product different lot 16 ppm.

Butter honey and white toast

Better Butter Wrappers

This category represents butter wrappers that were sent to an EPA-certified laboratory. All came back with non-detect results. However, these brands are not USDA organic, so the chances of exposure to toxic pesticides or other types of hazardous chemicals are still present.

Cabot Natural Creamery Salted Butter Wrapper 

Grassland Salted Sweet Cream Butter

Nellie’s Free Range Slow Churned Butter Sea Salted from Grassfed Cows

Raw Farm Raw Butter from Grass-Grazed Cows Lightly Salted 

Sprouts Salted Grade AA Butter 

Truly Grassfed Natural Creamy Butter Salted Wrapper 

Vital Farms Sea Salted Butter 

Butter without PFAS "forever chemicals" in the butter wrapper

Best Butter Wrappers

This category represents butter wrappers that were sent to an EPA-certified laboratory and came back with non-detect results. They are also USDA organic brands.

Sumber :

https://www.mamavation.com/food/butter-wrappers-pfas-forever-chemicals-buying-guide.html#Best_Butter_Wrappers