"Forever Chemicals"

[Dougfirtree]

Interesting stuff, but it leaves me with alot of questions, like:

What are the relative risks of these chemicals?

What kinds of waterbodies and fish were tested?

Still, it's interesting and probably worth a little thought, at least.

Study suggests US freshwater fish highly contaminated with ‘forever chemicals’

Eating just one serving of freshwater fish each year could have the same effect as drinking water heavily polluted with “forever chemicals” for an entire month, a new study finds. The equivalent monthlong amount of water would be contaminated at levels 2,400 times greater than what’s recommended...

www.yahoo.com

 

[TwistedSage]

I saw this article and his study mentioned on a few news sites this morning and its vaugness and incompleteness pisses me off. While I agree it is concerning and needs addressing the articles are so poorly written and the study so I'll referenced that it comes across to me as click bait and fear mongering. The article makes the statement that eating freshwater fish from the US can be as harmful as drinking dirty water for a month. Really the whole US? Not one specific body of water or sample collection points are mentioned. Fish consumption advisories are nothing new and most states offer specific guidance for specific waterways.

I checked the advisories every year for the NJ waters I fished. Some waterways it is advised against any consumption. Some twice a year, once a month, once a week, some no advisories. My rule of thumb was if the advisory was safe to eat once a month or more I'd go for it. Any more than that and it wasn't worth it to me.

Of course chemicals in our waterways is a huge issue. But making the claim that eating a fish from fresh water in the US is as bad as drinking dirty water for a month is a misleading generalization. I know plenty of rivers and lakes I wouldn't even swim in as well as pristine and protected waters.

 

[Rzrbck918]

The article title on yahoo is clickbait to which I succumbed this morning early. Huge generalizations with almost no context.

The data is several years old from the National Rivers and Streams Assessment. That is a widespread, statistically significant assessment conducted by the EPA, USFW, USGS. I would assume its a reasonable basis for the study although certainly some bodies of water are much more contaminated than others.

Relative risk, I'm both ignorant and apathetic.

 

[SAJ-99]

I saw this article and his study mentioned on a few news sites this morning and its vaugness and incompleteness pisses me off. While I agree it is concerning and needs addressing the articles are so poorly written and the study so I'll referenced that it comes across to me as click bait and fear mongering. The article makes the statement that eating freshwater fish from the US can be as harmful as drinking dirty water for a month. Really the whole US? Not one specific body of water or sample collection points are mentioned. Fish consumption advisories are nothing new and most states offer specific guidance for specific waterways.

I checked the advisories every year for the NJ waters I fished. Some waterways it is advised against any consumption. Some twice a year, once a month, once a week, some no advisories. My rule of thumb was if the advisory was safe to eat once a month or more I'd go for it. Any more than that and it wasn't worth it to me.

Of course chemicals in our waterways is a huge issue. But making the claim that eating a fish from fresh water in the US is as bad as drinking dirty water for a month is a misleading generalization. I know plenty of rivers and lakes I wouldn't even swim in as well as pristine and protected waters.

There is a link to the study in the article and links to the data if you dig. Let us know what you find if you go down that rabbit hole.

Here are the testing sites (EPA site)

 

[Jwill]

Most of the larger waterways around me have warnings or restrictions, primarily mercury and PCB's in the larger/more predatory fish if I'm remembering correctly.

 

[TwistedSage]

There is a link to the study in the article and links to the data if you dig. Let us know what you find if you go down that rabbit hole.

Here are the testing sites (EPA site)
View attachment 261191

I appreciate that, I did not notice the link to the study when I read it earlier. The article does a terrible job of representing the study/report. The report is worthwhile reading. Pretty damning all over to be honest. Chemicals were detected in every body of water. I would not have guessed the great lakes to have some of the highest levels. The number from the study is the median from the whole test as to not over represent highly contaminated nor waters with low levels.
The study report does better showing the impact of tested human populations as well.

One peice that shows promise and hopefully continues is "The fish samples analyzed here were collected from 2013 to 2015 making many of the samples nearly 10 years old. Compared to data collected by the U.S EPA in 2008–2009, median PFOS levels decreased by 30 percent in the present data set collected just 5 years later. With decreasing use of PFOS in commerce, it is possible that PFOS levels in fish have continued to decrease, and our modeled serum impacts are an overestimate of the current median level of exposure. Updating sampling results including the anticipated U.S. EPA 2018–2019 dataset from the National Rivers and Stream Assessment should provide more insight on trends in PFOS levels in freshwater fish. Increased sampling of ponds and lakes where water has a longer residence time may provide additional insights into PFAS contamination of locally caught fish that are consumed."

 

[Don Fischer]

I'm coming 77yrs and have been eating wild caught fish about 75 of those years. Not dead yet! They say East Lake in Ore has badly contaminated trout with mercury. Well ate my first East Lake trout about 1948 and still kicking! I have no idea where all these things come from but all these chemicals have probably been in the water as long as the water has been there!

 

[JDH]

It looks like the samples were pulled from rivers. We have power plants that use the rivers for cooling, and the largest cities in the state drain their stormwater in the river. Not to mention the "processed" sanitary sewer water.

I'm not a scientist but the fact the samples were pulled from rivers throws up a red flag in my mind for the validity of the drinking water comparison.

 

[Dougfirtree]

I'm coming 77yrs and have been eating wild caught fish about 75 of those years. Not dead yet! They say East Lake in Ore has badly contaminated trout with mercury. Well ate my first East Lake trout about 1948 and still kicking! I have no idea where all these things come from but all these chemicals have probably been in the water as long as the water has been there!

Mercury I'm quite familiar with. It comes from air pollution. The pollution can essentially fall down with the rain/snow and collect in water bodies where it bioaccumulates up the food chain. Despite the pristine nature of many lakes and rivers here in the Adirondacks, we are on the path of a lot of polluted air from the midwest and so we end up with very high levels of mercury in larger predatory fish. If your area is like mine, those levels probably went up sharply over your years of eating trout and are probably falling off to some extent, now.

 

[Dougfirtree]

It looks like the samples were pulled from rivers. We have power plants that use the rivers for cooling, and the largest cities in the state drain their stormwater in the river. Not to mention the "processed" sanitary sewer water.

I'm not a scientist but the fact the samples were pulled from rivers throws up a red flag in my mind for the validity of the drinking water comparison.

I would be very curious to see what the numbers look like upstream of major population centers. It may be that once you get upstream of where people live, the numbers fall off dramatically and there's no worrying required about eating those fish.

However, the lakes downstream of those testing sites may be as bad as the rivers. That's most lakes.

 

[Elkmagnet]

Idaho has had fish consumption advisories for my whole life (mercury) as a father and husband I try to see that my family follows them.

Fish Advisories | Idaho Department of Health and Welfare

healthandwelfare.idaho.gov

 

[Elkmagnet]

Mercury I'm quite familiar with. It comes from air pollution.

Also locally/down stream from mining practices.

 

[JDH]

I would be very curious to see what the numbers look like upstream of major population centers. It may be that once you get upstream of where people live, the numbers fall off dramatically and there's no worrying required about eating those fish.

However, the lakes downstream of those testing sites may be as bad as the rivers. That's most lakes.

Could be. I doubt a majority of the country is like this but locally there's not very many rivers that have been dammed to make lakes downstream of population centers. I personally don't eat any fish that come from rivers or waters connected to a river.

 

[Irrelevant]

What Are PFAS Chemicals, And Should I Be Freaking Out About Them?

There are around 4,700 chemicals in the PFAS family. Here are answers to some common questions about them.

www.wbur.org

FDA Shares Results on PFAS Testing in Seafood

FDA makes available testing results for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in seafood samples collected at retail.

www.fda.gov

 

[Gr8bawana]

We used to play with the forever chemical Mercury when we were kids. For some reason my parents had a bottle of the stuff and we put it in our hands and played with it until we dropped it either outside or in the house.
These days the house would be condemned and the area designated a hazardous waste clean-up site.
It never had any effect on us at all.

 

[Bullshot]

Oh dang, another impending deadly thing I’m supposed to all of a sudden lose my mind over.

Click-bait to gain eyeballs for the next crusade this one against “forever chemicals”. Guess the micro-plastics didn’t scare people enough. Not advocating for pollutants, but seriously, we either get out and live or hide in our toxic indoor air homes, now with our gas stoves also working to kill us. Thankfully, CA won’t blow away as dust just yet and the ozone layer recently came back.

Good thing, as I was beginning to feel a bit overwhelmed…

 

[JDH]

We used to play with the forever chemical Mercury when we were kids. For some reason my parents had a bottle of the stuff and we put it in our hands and played with it until we dropped it either outside or in the house.
These days the house would be condemned and the area designated a hazardous waste clean-up site.
It never had any effect on us at all.

View attachment 261337

I worked at a power plant for a couple of years and one of my projects was overseeing the installation of mercury testing equipment. Basically trapping mercury to see how much was going out the flue. Talking to the testing guys the amount of mercury was so low that the hardest part of the whole thing was measuring how much had passed through.

 

[Monroe110]

Frying a pan of Mississippi river walleyes as I type. We are a river family. If eating fish is what gets the best of me then so be it I guess