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by jeremy151 248 days ago
I live in an area with PFAS contaminated ground water (which I now aggressively filter.) To me giving blood just kind of makes sense, if there is a class of things that can enter your blood and never leave, and does not replicate on its own, why not perform a regular "oil change" and hopefully help some people at the same time. Some study has been done:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8994130/

The study specifically does not look at the effect on recipients, though the donation centers do not disallow such donations. My presumption is that the donation is a net positive all around. If study comes to show the contrary, I'll certainly revise my approach.
1 comments
TaupeRanger 248 days ago
“I’ll do something which might be beneficial or harmful to me (I don’t know) and if given evidence of harm (likely never) I’ll stop doing it.” Ok…have fun I guess.
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ckosidows 248 days ago
The person you responded to didn't say anything about harm to themselves. They said there's nothing stopping them from donating even though they're aware of the PFAS contamination in their area.

And from what I understand, PFA contamination has no bearing on whether or not you can donate.

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TaupeRanger 248 days ago
The post implied that doing a “blood oil change” was potentially a good thing. My point is, we don’t know either way, because a study hasn’t looked at that question for health outcomes. It could be doing more harm than good, the parent commenter doesn’t know.
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abracadaniel 248 days ago
They linked a study in their comment.
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TaupeRanger 247 days ago
The study doesn't show that donation is a good thing. Showing a miniscule reduction in blood markers is not the relevant variable - what you'd actually care about is: do I liver a longer or better life because of this intervention? There simply isn't any evidence that a tiny reduction in PFAS from blood donation results in any improvement in any clinical outcomes. Because we don't know either way, it's also possible that there would be harms from this - as blood donation is not entirely risk free, exposing people to syncope while driving after giving blood, skin complications like infections, or other rare issues we don't even know about.
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