[ben-schaaf]

It's a common misconception, but microplastics and forever-chemicals (PFAS) are not the same thing. They're two similar, but distinct pollutants.

> Are saunas and blood donations not also effective for this?

Yes, plasma & blood donations are good at reducing PFAS blood concentration. Some(?) firefighting foam contains PFAS, so they tend to have high blood concentrations. Donations have shown to significantly reduce that: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8994130/

[klevertree1]

All the older firefighting foam did. Some of the new stuff does. There's also some amount of "poisoning" from the old equipment to the new foam.

Unfortunately, PFAS sticks around forever, so everywhere that the old firefighting foam was deployed (e.g. air force bases) still has high levels of PFAS contamination.

[ben-schaaf]

There was a scare in 2024 where high levels of PFAS were found in the water supply in the Blue Mountains region of NSW. It took months, but they traced it to a single fire in 1992 where foam was deployed. Scary stuff.

[contingencies]

So avoid using dry teflon lubricant spray? Will do!

[ByThyGrace]

Blood donation helps the donor, but what happens to the recipient? Would it not be possible to accumulate PFAS in your blood stream by receiving PFAS-concentrate blood? Is it that simple?

[NotGMan]

Yes, but since blood donations are not tested for this you don't know what you get so people are already getting PFAS contaminated blood.

You could just do phlebotomy (blood letting) where your blood is discarded in case you have insanely high PFAS.

[bawolff]

> They're two similar, but distinct pollutants.

They aren't particularly similar.

Honestly, the way the two are conflated is quite annoying. You should be terrified of PFAS. You should be mildly worried about microplastics, mostly because there isn't enough research on the effects yet.