[sbehlasp]

Surprise to see that we are pointing and blaming one chemical only here. PFAS, a class of more than 4,000 different chemicals, is everywhere [https://on.natgeo.com/2Q2UtMS] food, water we drink and even in our blood. We don't even know when and how we are consuming it directly or indirectly. Do we have any kind of full proof study about all 4000 chemicals, that how these chemicals would be affecting our health! I think nature has already been polluted/damaged to an extent which is kind-a irreversible. Hoping for the better world.

[yabones]

PFAS is going to be the asbestos of our generation, except it won't be so easy to get rid of this time around. It's more like the asbestos of every future generation until we find a way to reliably break it down.

[Layke1123]

That or it will be a natural form of selection for old age, increasing human longevity at the expense of temporary population reduction. Let's hope artificial gene therapy is within our lifetimes or hope we drew the golden ticket.

[542354234235]

If you have already had children and raised them to adulthood (Alzheimer’s first appears primarily in your mid 60s or later), what exactly is the selective pressure mechanism?

[Layke1123]

Genetic sequencing. We will eliminate the embryos we don't want.

[542354234235]

>it will be a natural form of selection for old age, increasing human longevity

I don't think genetic sequencing falls into the category of "natural selection".

[Layke1123]

Ok people not wanting to have kids because of a family history of Parkinson's disease.

[sjg007]

PFAS is on furniture, clothes, cooking ware, food containers, firefighting foam and so forth. The firefighting foam gets it into the water table as do badly managed dumps.

It's been detected in milk, eggs, water..

[ed25519FUUU]

I sometimes think back about our attitudes towards lead, mercury, and even radium[1], and I truly wonder how we survived as a specifies!

I am grateful that collectively things seem to be improving. We're learning more about diseases, their causes, and their treatments.

1. https://www.thevintagenews.com/2017/01/24/an-energy-drink-th...

[outworlder]

Frankly, this could be the Great Filter.

[jschwartzi]

This kind of thing is what eventually kills off Brewer's Yeast. The individual yeast cells keep making sugar into alcohol until the alcohol concentration is so great that they kill each other off.

[jwdunne]

You know what, that is a fascinating analogy and microcosmic explanation of the Great Filter. I’ve never thought of that before.

[mycall]

No, that is Facebook right now :)

[Nasrudith]

We don't even know how all of our bodily chemicals affect our health. It is because nature is inherently a messy and complex process. Unknowns are the default state and a fact of life.

Now consuming them may not be ideal but the fear of the unknown is overemphasized. We already know from pharmacology that higher effectiveness needs fewer data instances to prove from the strength of the effect. The more powerful something's effect not noticing it becomes increasingly improbable as patterns should become increasingly obvious in large numbers. Try not to notice plutonium toxicity.

The fact we aren't seeing more immediate effects from higher level of exposure suggests it is not catastrophic - may not be good but it is an implicit upper bound on harm based upon what we see cannot be possible. To give an absurd example we know PFAS does not cause people's heads to explode at current levels of exposure because there have been zero reports of people's heads exploding without a known cause.

[whatshisface]

>there have been zero reports of people's heads exploding without a known cause.

There is a long list of common and unexplained medical problems like fibromyalgia awaiting an explanation like "that water you've been drinking is toxic." There is no shortage of illnesses that could potentially be caused by a problem like that.

[542354234235]

>The fact we aren't seeing more immediate effects from higher level of exposure suggests it is not catastrophic

>Rates of Parkinson’s disease are exploding

I wouldn't exactly call exploding rates of a brain destroying incurable disease a good thing.