We are not going to put the technological genie back in the bottle, short of eliminating 98+% of all humans and reverting back to hunter-gatherer tribes.

The only solution is to go through this dirty technology cycle and build and implement clean sustainable technologies that allow us to live with something resembling current populations without destroying the climate system, breaking the food web, or poisoning ourselves (& everything else).

So, yes, the only thing worse than halting all progress now would be to do it a decade age before solar, wind, etc. became viable, but we need a lot more progress, i.e., better performance for lower costs - both ecological & economical - for most of our technologies, and eliminating those destructive technologies. That would be progress.

What's your definition?

From your first source: >Data are still preliminary but suggest that ingested MPs bio-accumulate in mammalian tissue, including the testis, with outcomes on semen quality in rodents, as a consequence of inflammatory state and oxidative stress damage.

>The mechanisms decreasing fertility rate during the lifespan are still poorly understood.

>Taken together, although studies in mammals are still limited, preliminary observations point out a possible risk of MPs for male fertility.

The evidence is still "preliminary" and data "suggests" some outcomes but nothing is close to definitive. There are lots of confounding factors that can cause lower fertility that are explicitly noted in the that source. For example they even suggest that the microplastics themselves might not be causing harm, but rather that they act as "sponges" or vehicles for concentrating other pollutants that are actually decreasing fertility.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Ames

[2] PDF warning https://digitalcommons.law.ggu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?artic...

[3] PDF warning https://www.prop65clearinghouse.com/documents/19184

i'm "sure" (/s) that the chinese competitors on amazon are sooo much better.

I'm so tired of having to anaylze every fucking product i bring into my home and expose myself, my wife and my kid to.

I'm tired of being "that guy" to my wife too.

It's endlessly frustrating

That’s the basic idea of demand control ventilation but how are the two air streams interfacing? If our concern is air quality, how is cross contamination between the two mitigated?

HEPA filters are typically designed with 0.3μm pores this is mostly a legacy of medical applications (i.e. to guarantee they catch bacteria).

Submicron performance (< 0.3μm) is kind of down to luck. You need the submicron particle to travel on a larger liquid particule for it to adhere to the filter lattice.

The PFAS is a group of substances, the article is specifically talking about 6:2 FTOH (one of many PFAS substances) that is found in carpets etc.

6:2 FTOH specifically is a sub-micron compound, from the GP article the closest particle to it is PFOA which is <0.14 μm. So unless your 6:2 FTOH compound is travelling on a moisture particle it is unlikely it would be filtered.

To answer GGP question, a high MERV rating filter will probably catch some of these compounds but not the totality. Open your windows frequently (if outside air pollution allows wherever you live) and make sure you understand what products you have in your house.

None of the brand I wear (HOM) seem to be and I don’t remember that being mentioned on any pack of underwear I purchased the last 40 years.

Is it an US thing?

(and yes, I’m posting about my underwear on hacker news. weird.)

Regardless, you can eat the entire coating off of your pan, and there will be no detectable fluorinated compounds in your blood. PTFE is completely inert and indigestible. It is widely used in medical implants inside people's bodies, with no detectable leaching of any chemicals.

This isn't good data. The stories of PTFE coatings breaking down at less than 260 deg C are anecdotal. The most well known one comes from someone who swears their chickens were killed by coated light bulbs in a coop.

The lowest temperature that has lead to bird deaths in a controlled laboratory setting is 280 deg C, which is about 580 deg F. [1] This is way freaking hot, and likely only to be reached by accident.

Even in the case of accidental overheating of non-stick cookware, there have been only a few verifiable cases of injury, and certainly no fatalities. Most cases of polymer fume fever have been gleened from among workers in factories, which is remarkable considering that billions of pieces of nonstick cookware have been in use every day around the world for the past seventy years.

Also note that cooking fumes from food are themselves toxic, and kill birds and lead to long term respiratory issues in humans much more easily than PTFE coatings.

1 - https://sci-hub.st/10.1289/ehp.7511197 - An Industrial Approach to Evaluation of Pyrolysis and Combustion Hazards

Being able to use less cooking oils is a material benefit, especially considering the obesity rates we see in the developed world.

The problem is that because there are so many free PFAS chemicals around us from other sources, studying the possible effects of cookware is a bit like studying whether it contains evil spirits. You won't be able to come up with a falsifiable hypothesis, because our PFC exposure via other routes is so high.

Another reason long term studies aren't viable is that there is no plausible mechanism of action of toxicity from nonstick cookware under the sort of use that it almost always gets. Unless it's badly overheated, PTFE is completely stable in inert.

Think about this logically: if you handle a water resistant jacket and then eat a sandwich, you'll ingest measureable quanities of PFAS. Every time kids or babies play on a stain-resistant carpetting and furniture, then ingest far greater quantities from their hands and toys.

In contrast, any PFAS that remains in nonstick cookware would be on the edge of detectability. PFAS surfactants are used in the manufacture of the coatings, but it boils off when the coating is baked on, and as far as I know, no detectable PFAS has ever been verified in finished cookware. Even when agressively overheated, nonstick cookware doesn't emit PFAS. It sublimates micro-size PTFA particles, which can lead to what we call "fume fever" but reports of this actually happening are rare, even in factory workers who are exposed at much higher levels than a home cook is.

So put these two things together: you are likely ingesting millions of times more PFAS from your clothes, carpets, and furniture than you ever could from nonstick cookware.

Worrying about nonstick cookware is sort of like a lifeguard who works in the sun all day, but obsessively blacks out the windows in his home because he's worried about UV radiation getting in his house. It makes no sense.

Dropping testosterone levels and sperm counts, increasing levels of obesity. I think we're seeing the health effects, although as mentioned it is hard to pick apart exactly what is having what impact. Our lives are flooded with plastic, I suppose non-stick cookware is kind of like a drop in the bucket.

> This is not the case with teflon cookware. There is no detectable PFAS in nonstick cookware, nor are there verifiable reports of health effects from its use, in spite of the millions or billions of such uses happening every day over decades.

I would need a lot of evidence to be convinced there's not a risk. I think we'll look back on plastics a similar way to how we look back on our naivety about things like cigarettes, lead, asbestos, etc.

> I guarantee you're not able to avoid PFAS-treated upholstery, carpeting, and other home furnishings. And depending on where you live, chances are good that you ingest significant amounts of PFAS in your drinking water. If you've ever eaten fast food, the wrapper it came in was probably coated in PFAS. Due to these and other sources, I guarantee you have measurable levels of PFAS in your blood and tissues.

I don't dispute this. I just try to avoid plastics when it's practical. As mentioned I would like to have regulations passed to reduce sources. I would not like to give up and say "well alright I'm being so poisoned already, might as well risk having a bit more by using non-stick pans".

I also don't want to support the manufacturing of these chemicals generally. Putting aside the end consumer, the manufacturing seems very likely to have been harmful to people, and chemicals from the manufacturing could also end up spreading in the environment.

Non-stick pans may not be the absolute worst thing to come out of the plastics industry, but getting rid of them still seems like a step in the right direction.

I don't know if they test for this, but GMOs do run the risk of become invasive or destructive species which could potentially tilt things towards the "devastating famine" side of the equation.

I don't think the ecological concern is what most people worry about when they think GMOs, and I'm not of the mind that GMOs = Bad, but I think we owe it to ourselves to study the ecological impact of GMOs we plan to grow widely.

The EU has more efficient agriculture by area compared to the US. Part of it by necessity of course. There are problems with pesticides that could be solved with GMO in some circumstances.

But the same principle applies: It isn't stricly necessariy to employ GMO, especially not for yield (we don't have any yield problems anyway). The problems of agriculture today are economic in nature and there still could be negative consequences if GMO strains are spread in nature.

So I don't see anything as backwards really. There just isn't a problem that requires GMO currently. I think saying GMO will be vital instrument against climate change is ridiculous to be honest. Maybe if plants could be modified to use less water?

He told me that it was pointless because I would be exposed to more background radiation throughout the course of my normal life. He did not understand that ionizing radiation damage is cumulative and that there is no safe limit for exposure. Annoyed with my request, he gave me the vest anyway.

Is there a safe limit for exposure to PFAs? I would readily concede that the risk to an individual is probably negligible, but like in the case of x-rays, population-level risks probably do exist for even the smallest exposure.

That said, I would also support eliminating all sources of PFAs, just like we tried to do with CFCs and asbestos.

[1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11356-017-0095-y/...

[2] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11356-017-0095-y/...

Best part is, this same pan will probably live well beyond 100 years. Possibly 150 or more. How many household items last that long? This is what we've lost with our culture's planned obsolescence, products that last for generations. It my have been expensive back then, but that was the last person in my family to buy this type of cookware. Safe, long lasting products isn't an innovation, it's a very welcomed regression.

They don't need to, because the oil is going to start smoking before the coating stacks degrading.

>And as another poster has noted, those coatings always start flaking off.

That doesn't really matter because the coating itself is inert.

i have a glass top stove.

cast iron has several problems. Learning how to "season" it (which i never figured out how to do when i had a different oven), the fact it's usually expensive and there's no "one size fits all scenarios" type of pan to use and re-use, thus resulting in you have to buy several.

Then there's stainless steel pans but good luck with that - everything sticks to that.

I just want to cook some eggs without having to use some chemical solvent to actually clean the egg remnants off the pan.

People don't just choose PTFE because they are lazy. I tried a carbon steel, cast iron, and "oiled enamel" and rice stuck to all of them.

Yes, I do. I have a cheap IR thermometer with my kitchen utensils, and I use it all the time. I use it every time I roast seeds and spices, because I'm picky that way. I've also used it when I've accidentally left a pan on the burner too long. I'm careful but I screw up now and then. I accidentally heated a stainless pan to nearly 500 deg F once, but 've never gotten a nonstick pan over about 400 deg F.

> Teflon and nonstick coatings kill birds (house pets) when overheated. A nonstick pan in the oven to catch the drippings from your chicken baking at 400 or 425 can kill your parrot quickly. A nonstick wok left unattended for a few minutes during a high-heat stir fry easily reaches 400, enough to kill your cockatiel.

Stories of such low temperatures killing birds are anecdotal. The lowest temperature that has lead to bird deaths in a controlled laboratory setting is 280 deg C, which is about 580 deg F. [1]

Keep in mind that birds are easily killed by common cooking smoke and fumes, as well as natural gas. The problem with these anecdotes is that it's likely there were other fumes involved, and there's no way to know what actually kills a bird oustide a controlled lab setting.

> And as another poster has noted, those coatings always start flaking off.

As I noted in another comment, it's not hard to keep a nonstick pan indefinitely. I have a lot of ten and fifteen year old nonstick pans that are as good as the day I bought them. My daily drivers are about five years old now, good as new. I'm careful not to overheat them and I never use metal utensils in them. Following those two rules, even my kids were able to use them without damaging them.

> Why buy something that produces fumes enough to kill your house pets and also has planned obsolescence built in when you can get a cast iron pan that's indestructible and will increase your iron intake a bit?

If you overheat that cast iron pan, or if you burn food in it, it will kill birds just as easily as a nonstick pan. Also note, there is vastly more evidence of harm from excess iron consumption than there is of harm from overheated PTFE coatings.

That said, I like steel and iron pans. I regularly use enameled steel pans for toasting spices, and I cook crepes and pancakes on steel pans. I don't use cast iron for much because it's heavy as shit and its heat distribution sucks.

I've actually had good luck with seasoned bare aluminum pans. This is more common in some restaurant kitchens, but not so much in home kitchens. Aluminum seasons just as well as iron, and the heat distribution is way way better. But for some reason "cast aluminum" doesn't have quite the same old-timey panache as does cast iron.

Scrambled eggs too, especially the soft-scrambled kind ala Gordon Ramsay's famous short video. They simply wipe out of nonstick pan, and I've never seen this work with any other kind of cookware.