#pfoa

[reality-detective]

Anything with the F in it 🤔

[rjzimmerman]

E.P.A. Will Make Polluters Pay to Clean Up Two ‘Forever Chemicals’

The step follows an extraordinary move that requires utilities to reduce the levels of carcinogenic PFAS compounds in drinking water to near

Excerpt from this New York Times story:

The Biden administration is designating two “forever chemicals,” man-made compounds that are linked to serious health risks, as hazardous substances under the Superfund law, shifting responsibility for their cleanup to polluters from taxpayers.

The new rule announced on Friday empowers the government to force the many companies that manufacture or use perfluorooctanoic acid, also known as PFOA, and perfluorooctanesulfonic acid, known as PFOS, to monitor any releases into the environment and be responsible for cleaning them up. Those companies could face billions of dollars in liabilities.

The pair of compounds are part of a larger family of chemical substances known collectively as PFAS.

The compounds, found in everything from dental floss to firefighting foams to children’s toys, are called forever chemicals because they degrade very slowly and can accumulate in the body and the environment. Exposure to PFAS has been associated with metabolic disorders, decreased fertility in women, developmental delays in children and increased risk of some prostate, kidney and testicular cancers, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

The chemicals are so ubiquitous that they can be detected in the blood of almost every person in the United States. One recent government study discovered PFAS chemicals in nearly half of the nation’s tap water. In 2022, the E.P.A. found the chemicals could cause harm at levels “much lower than previously understood” and that almost no level of exposure was safe.

The announcement follows an extraordinary move last week from the E.P.A. mandating that water utilities reduce the PFAS in drinking water to near-zero levels. The agency has also proposed to designate seven additional PFAS chemicals as hazardous waste.

[birdhism]

Mochi donning his hazmat suit to protect him from the evil FUMES. Bird safety becomes an issue when these items are heated. The toxic fumes can lead to X▾X.

Not only is it harmful to birds, but to humans and the environment, as well. 

Last Week Tonight did a whole episode on it. You can also do your own research. 

PFOA/PTFE/Teflon™ is hidden in all sorts of everyday items. It can be found in pots & pans, cookie & muffin trays, George Forman Grills, waffle irons, electric skillets, certain crockpots, rice-cookers, heavy-duty aluminum foil, irons, ironing boards, glue guns, space heaters, some heat lamps... It's pretty crazy. 

If it's heated, check the manufacturer’s website to see if it contains PTFE and/or PFOA. 

The self-cleaning cycle on your oven can have similar harmful effects but for different reasons. New ovens have chemical residue that needs to be burned off before introducing your birds back into your home. 

[tearsinthemist]

EPA says 'forever chemicals' more dangerous than previously believed

16June2022

The Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday said that so-called forever chemicals pose a greater health threat than previously believed. These man-made compounds, known as polyfluoroalkyl and perfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, are found in drinking water, cosmetics, and food packaging, exposing millions of Americans. The EPA's new advisory says lifetime exposure to the most common of these substances, PFOA and PFOS, even at the low levels of 0.004 and 0.02 parts per trillion, respectively, can harm immune and cardiovascular systems. They have also been linked to low birth weights. The guidance is intended to push local officials to install water filters and warn consumers of the threat of contamination. [The Washington Post]

[flock-talk]

Hi! FlockTalk,

I hope you are doing well, I am a huge fan of your YouTube Channel and how you advocate for parrot care.

I have a question about what bird safe pans you use in your household.

A few months ago I had bought "GreenPans" since they are bird safe. However, 8 months later they have lost their non stick properties. The people I live with only like to cook with non-stick pans, so pans like stainless steel aren't really an option.

Here is a link to the GreenPans: https://www.greenpan.us/collections/sets/products/chatham-ceramic-non-stick-10-piece-cookware-set

Thank you for your help in advance!

I use lagostina ceramic cookware. Had the same set for a good 15 years at this point and aside from a few scratches (from being lazy and using metal utensils in the pan) they’re still good as new. They’re still as non-stick as the day I got them and bird-safe obviously.

I got mine from Canadian tire, they often have them on clearance for simple things like packaging changes or design changes so they clear out the old models.

https://www.canadiantire.ca/en/pdp/lagostina-bianco-ceramic-forged-cookware-set-10-pc-1427091p.html

That’s pretty much the set I have, just frying pans, not pots.

Lagostina Bianco Ceramic Forged Cookware Set, 10-pc | Canadian Tire

Lagostina Bianco Ceramic Forged Cookware Set features an extremely durable heavy-gauge forged base and body | Canadian Tire

If anyone else wants to chime in with what they use please do!

[author-a-holmes]

Ari, hello and happy STS! How has Fey Touched been going? Also if you're feeling it, can you tell me anything about the kavians from the series?

Hello darling! and happy STS to you too! (Although I had an early night last night, so this is now technically Monday, we're just going to ignore that fact...)

Fey Touched is going well! I don't want to jinx it :D I started the month with about 19k, and my target for camp nano was 75k.

As of writing this, I've got 71k for July, so I've got another 4k today to hit my goal. Fingers crossed.

My other challenge was to complete the first draft of Changeling for Camp Nano, and while I won't quite make that, as the story has expanded slightly from them 95k total I had outlined, I should only be about 12-15k words short, so I'm giving myself the first week of August too.

As for the Kavians, I'd be delighted to tell you about my little monstrosities!

[I've done a Read More, because LONG post, but I've had trouble with Tumblr not including a Read More on asks, so if this blocks up the Dashboard, I apologise in advance! <3]

When I began outlining Fey Touched it didn't, originally, have fey at all. I wanted three different types of vampires. Traditional vampires, psychic vampires, and some twisted, nosferatu, type vampire.

But the longer I world built, the less I liked that. The "psychic" vampires were turned into the Fey, although they still retain psychic abilities, such as telekinesis, telepathy, and similar powers.

The traditional-style vampires stayed, with some tweaks. Sunlight doesn't hurt them, so much as they've very light sensitive, but they keep the more traditional speed, and strength, and enhances senses associated with vampires.

That still left me with a blank space where my monstrosities needed to sit. The evil ones. I still didn't know what I really wanted to do with these creatures, until I watched a 2019 film called "Dark Waters", with Mark Ruffalo and Anne Hathaway.

This is a little bit of a tangent, so bear with me. The film is based on true events, which are some of my favourite films to watch. It dramatizes the story of a lawyer called Robert Bilott, when he took on a case against the chemical manufacturing corporation DuPont after it was discovered that they had contaminated a town with unregulated chemicals.

The story is a little terrifying in that is is based on true events, and despite Bilott's win against the company, the chemical that's contaminated the town is still used today in the manufacture of Teflon, the non-stick coating for cooking utensils, such as frying pans etc.

The interesting/horrifying thing about this particular chemical, is that it's known as a "Forever" chemical. It doesn't break down in the environment, and while DuPont argued that the amount shed from Teflon was negligible, scientific tests proved that it was linked to dozens of diseases, and some very nasty cancers.

The film is VERY worth a watch, but the part that caught my attention was "Forever Chemicals", and my little writer brain began spinning.

If humans are ingesting, and being infected my these forever chemicals, that are floating around out bodies, and our blood, from the moment we take them in to the moment of our deaths, deaths somtimes caused by these very same chemicals...

What would those chemicals do to vampires who drank our blood?

We have very strict food regulations on animals for human consumption, and what they are allowed to eat. What would happen to vampires, if human blood became toxic to them?

And very slowly, very quietly, and slightly insidiously, my Kavians were created.

Kavians emerged within the world of Fey Touched somewhere around the early 1700's. The industrial revolution, according to my brief google research, happened around the early 1700's, so I figured that's when humans began inhaling huge amounts of toxic fumes, and then progressed onto ingesting lab made chemicals later.

At the time, Fey and Vampires both lived within the mortal realm.

At first, it was isolated incidents of Vampires going mad, and attacking anyone around them, but then Fey began to go missing, and turned up dead, drained of their blood.

In appearance, Kavians are similar to vampires, but they look sick. Like they've been lost at sea for months, sick. Their skin is waxy-looking, and shrunken, leaving them looking bony. Their eyes are bloodshot, but their movements are fluid and smooth. The tips of their fingers become deformed, boney and clawlike, but because they are gorging on human and fey blood, their abilities are overfuelled.

They're faster, stronger, and their senses are sharper than the average vampire. If you've seen the Fast and Furious films, it's like punching Nitrous Oxide into a racing car's engine, but they're also insane.

There's no logic behind their eyes, and no way to get them to focus. They run on pure, predator, instinct, and lose the capacity for forming speech. They're mindless beasts, of the worst kind, and chaos ensued as more and more vampires began to change.

The council of vampires, what was left of it, didn't have any answers.

All the while, Fey numbers were being decimated. Once a vampire became a Kavian, they would hunt and kill anything, almost mindlessly, earning themselves the nickname "Rabids", but the moment they scented the blood of a Fey, they made a beeline for them, and tore them to pieces. Almost drenching themselves in the silvery blood, like cats rolling in catnip.

Not every vampire who drank human blood was affected immediately. For some, it took weeks or months before their minds snapped, for some it was the first drink of human blood. It was only a small population of vampires who eventually figured out that they were still sane because they'd chosen to drink exclusively animal blood, and took this revelation to what tattered shreds remained of the vampire council.

The vampires, by this point, were desperate. The Fey had fled the mortal realm, for a bubble realm they had created out of sheer desperation, and the vampires were facing the growing number of kavians alone, so they issues a decree that the drinking of human blood was forbidden.

Almost as soon as the law went into effect, they stopped losing huge swathes of their numbers to turning, but they also discovered that human blood had, unnoticed by them, become addictive.

As the weeks turned into months, the vampire population lost a few more vampires who couldn't resist the addictive qualities of human blood, but their biggest fight was now the huge numbers of Kavians wandering the world and killing humans indiscriminently.

The vampires took refuge inside official buildings and structures that had been warded by the Fey, before they left for their own realm of Arbaon, and once the remaining vampires felt they had recouped and slightly recovered, they began training Kavians Hunters, whose sole purpose was to hunt and kill the kavians now infecting the world.

In part, to defend themselves and protect themselves from discovery by humans, but also in the hopes that, one day, the Fey would return to the mortal realm.

Negotiations with the Fey for reintegration into the Mortal Realm have only been ongoing for around twenty-five years at the time of Fey Touched, and it is Fey Court Law that all Fey who chose to leave Arbaon and travel to the mortal realm accept the risk that they may not return.

Hence my novel's tagline;

Fey go missing in the mortal realm. Everyone knows that.

[twitterexile]

Rainwater is no longer safe to drink anywhere on Earth, scientists say

Scientists are calling for tighter restrictions on PFAS which persist in the environment for years.

[red-will]

I’m watching a documentary about how teflon/pfoa/C8 stuff is in literally everything on this earth, including 99% of people, and it can give you cancer, cause birth defects, basically will cause a horrible early death in any living creature, destroys the environment, etc, etc. The companies DuPont and 3M knew about this since the 1980s, and did nothing about it.

Anyway…FUCK DuPont and 3M. Also trash your nonstick pans IMMEDIATELY. Only use stainless steal or cast iron.