Toxic chemicals in the environment

These articles on PFAS / forever chemicals are coming to you Q&A style, based on the Qs I had and the As I found. The two key articles I’m sharing below are from NatGeo explaining PFAS and FIGO’s fact sheet on PFAS’s effects on women and pregnancy.

1. Q: what the damn hell is a PFAS
   
   A: PFAS is short for poly and perfluoroalkyl substances. It’s a class of more than 4,000 different chemicals and it’s in everything from household items, fast food wrappers, our blood, breast milk, and more.
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2. Q: why should I care about PFAS? sounds obscure and boring
   
   A: It is actually not obscure, despite its confusing name. It’s been used in commercial products since the 1940s since it’s created by joining carbon and fluorine, one of the strongest bonds that can be made in organic chemistry. We should care because it’s linked to cancer, birth defects, thyroid disease, liver damage, etc. Yikes!
   
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3. Q: who is affected by PFAS?
   
   A: Short answer? Everyone. Longer answer: people who live in PFAS producing plants, including many firefighters. As you can imagine, lower-income people especially in the United States suffer higher levels of exposure, and this is a huge deal especially for breastfeeding mothers.
   
   (We’ll expand on this in a bit, but the reason I’m drawing attention to the United States is the country’s total lack of PFAS regulation, at least until the 2020s.)
   
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4. Q: what happens if I eat a PFAS
   
   A: So, you most likely will, alas. PFAS is called a forever chemical because it can take decades to exit the body.
   
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5. Q: Oh god! This sounds horrible. What should we do?
   
   A: Here’s some good news! PFAS is stepping up in relevancy on a global scale, and legislators in the USA are finally taking action, setting an important standard for safe product manufacturing. Washington just passed a law tackling PFAS by 2025, the fastest timeline in the nation! More good news is that Europe seems to be taking this seriously. Also, of course, take action further down this page in our ACT module 😜

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One thing to reiterate: there is a role for everyone in the climate movement. Yes, we need to decarbonize quickly by divesting from fossil fuels. Yes, we need more artists to make hopeful visions of the future. Yes, we need to have conversations on keeping our babies healthy as we build this world together.

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So whether it’s PFAS or something else, I hope you’re inspired to pick something and take action.

Quick 5-sec recap in case you took a break after the last section: PFAS is a class of “forever chemicals” that’s linked to cancer and various other health issues. And it affects everyone as we’ll learn more about in this LISTEN module. Fun fact: it’s apparently also known as the Devil’s Piss?

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Today, we’re going to watch John Oliver together! This man is a huge reason why 😈💦 has emerged out of obscurity into pop culture, although most of us still have no clue about it.

I hope you watch it, since it’s hilarious and contains some very bad advertisements, in all the best ways.

Thanks to John Oliver reinforcing these facts, we know:

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• 🥴 Companies who use PFAS in products knew about the risks for 50+ years.
  
  PFAS is a category that encompasses a bunchhh of chemicals, and one is known as PFOA or C8. 3M started selling C8 in 1951 (71 years ago!) to DuPont, who used it to make Teflon. (Yes, the Teflon that touches our food in non-stick pans.)These companies knew all sorts of terrible things about PFAS, including that it could enlarge the size of livers of various animals! In the 80s, DuPont even tested their manufacturing employees and their kids — of seven births, two had eye defects. And they did nothing (and said nothing), even when safer alternatives were announced in 1993.
  
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• 🧪 DuPont explicitly ignored warnings to not put PFAS in waterways.
  
  3M sends them a document that specifically says “Do not flush to surface water” and DuPont ignored that and polluted so hard that they... LOSE TRACK of how much they put. Oopsie!
  
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• 👻 During one PFAS health study, something truly horrific was discovered.
  
  PFAS builds up in your body over time (you know, forever chemical and all). So in the 1970s, 3M wanted to conduct studies testing workers who were involved in/near PFAS-related manufacturing, and they were looking for a control group.BUT THERE WAS NO CLEAN BLOOD TO BE FOUND. They could not find a control group. They couldn’t find a control group anywhere in the world, other than blood that was archived at the start of the Korean war. No one is safe from PFAS. 👻👻C8, which is just one of these PFAS buddies, is in the blood of 99.7% of Americans. Yiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiikes.

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Ok. If you have follow-up questions on your non-stick pans or you’re fully freaking out, check out the full video. (Thx John)

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Last important thing: the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the United States largely allows chemical companies to regulate themselves, which obviously, they won’t. So take a few minutes to be righteously angry and keep reading. You’ll find some solutions for turning your feelings into meaningful change.

Let’s highlight four simple actions you can take to advocate against toxic chemicals, which affects every part of our society. We shouldn’t have to worry about this! So policy advocacy is 🔑. I’ll also give you some resources as a consumer so you can be as safe as you can (it’s sort of an impossible maze, but we gotta look out for ourselves where we can, especially for people with children).

For the actions below, I’ve included a time commitment estimate for each, and a majority is under a minute. Please pick at least 1 action to take, and I’ll ask you about it next week in our REFLECT module.

1. 10 sec | Bookmark this PFAS-free list. I am SO grateful for whoever spent time assembling this, and I’m simultaneously shocked at how many categories of things in our lives contain PFAS. I was shocked that cosmetics can contain PFAS. And it’s kinda bleak that there’s only one stroller listed on here. The good news is, most of the shoes that I own are PFAS-free brands!
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2. 30 sec | Donate $25 to Toxic Free Future. This organization has done some incredible work like getting Starbucks to phase out PFAS in all products.
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3. 60 sec | Reduce toxic chemicals in baby food 100% of the breast milk samples (you know, baby food) tested in a peer-reviewed study contained toxic PFAS, and these detections are doubling at an alarming rate. Toxic Free Future has this pre-filled email template you can send to the Department of Ecology in the United States (the country PFAS legislation needs to come from).
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4. 1 week | Buy a reverse osmosis filter.* The list linked above has some options in USD. I’m not sure how this works in countries around the world, but according to Treehugger, reverse osmosis and two-stage filters are effective at removing toxic PFAS from your drinking water. (Yep, it’s in our drinking water.) I’m pleasantly surprised that there are options under $200, and this isn’t as expensive as I’d anticipated. I really hope that those of you with the financial means to get one of these does so. It shouldn’t be on us, but I want you and your families to enjoy safe drinking water. A thought: if you’re able to afford a high-quality water filter, consider donating the same amount to Toxic Free Future.

There has been some info coming out about reverse osmosis stripping water of nutrients. Proceed with caution / weigh your options when it comes to safe drinking water.

Action #3 is an easy starter if you’ve wanted to take policy action but have been overwhelmed by the process.

Next up: a movie night rec ft. PFAS 😈💦

Before we go any further, it's time for you to pledge your commitment. It takes less than 30 seconds to pledge and we can bother you about it in a friendly way, so we can hold each other accountable. Pledge here!

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🎯 Action step 4 of 4: REFLECT — what can you commit to? What fresh perspectives can we look at?

Now, your action step: watch the movie Dark Waters ASAP.

Yes, that's your action! Solves the "what are we going to watch" problem. You're welcome.

Mark Ruffalo and Anne Hathaway star in this based-on-a-true-story movie about how a chemical company, DuPont, is poisoning waterways and people. Sound familiar?

Let me know what you think of the movie in our community discussion thread.

And as a reminder, bookmark this list of PFAS-free products so you and your family stay as healthy as possible.

‍🏁 Checkpoint: This is the end of action step 4 of 4: REFLECT.

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Check out our membership community for more resources like free weekly events with social justice experts, sustainable product discounts, pre-written email templates, a social impact job board, and in-person hangouts with new friends. Thanks for taking action with Soapbox Project!