Kind: captions
Language: en
In 1929 in Chicago, people kept
mysteriously dying inside their homes.
It took 15 deaths for the authorities to
realize that these people were getting
killed
by their fridges. Because fridges back
then were no longer just boxes of ice.
Instead, they relied on a chemical
looping through the back to stay cold.
And the best chemical for this job was
methyl chloride, a toxic and virtually
odorless gas. So if it somehow leaked
from the fridge, it could kill you
without warning. Other fridges used
flammable gases instead. So a leak
combined with a spark from the stove and
your house could suddenly go up in
flames. So one company tried to solve
this problem, but in the process they
accidentally created a seemingly magical
substance. Soon it made its way into a
huge range of products which were so
popular they ended up in nearly every
home in America. But what people didn't
know was that these products came at a
price. The chemicals used to make them
were being released into the environment
slowly poisoning everyone on the planet
including me.
You have high levels of a chemical you
never heard of. It shocks me. Like where
could this have come from? almost every
living creature from polar bears to
birds to fish. Massive worldwide
contamination by completely man-made
chemicals that are fingerprints back to
just a couple of companies. This is a
video about one of the biggest chemical
coverups in history. For legal reasons,
I want to note that this investigation
is based on publicly available
documents, recordings, and third party
opinions. All sources are linked in the
description. The story all began with an
attempt to save lives. In 1936, a
chemical company called DuPont set out
to find a safer alternative to the gases
used in fridges, one that was neither
toxic nor flammable. Their lead
scientist on the project was a
27-year-old chemist named Roy J.
Plunkett. He was experimenting with a
gas called tetrofluoethylene or TF. It's
a pair of double-bonded carbons, each
bonded to two florine
atoms. One morning, as Plunkett was
setting up a test, his assistant picked
out a cylinder full of TF and twisted
the valve, but nothing came
out. Plunkett thought the gas must have
leaked, but the cylinder still weighed
about as much as a full one. So, he
grabbed a saw and cut the cylinder in
half.
inside. He was shocked to see it was
full of a white slippery powder. So,
what happened to the gas? Well, what the
chemist reasoned was that under the high
pressure of the cylinder, one of the
double bonds between the carbons and TFE
must have broken. And now those two
carbon atoms each had a bonding site
free. So, one of them probably grabbed
onto a carbon from a different TF
molecule, breaking its double bond. And
then that molecule did the same. And the
process repeated again and again until
all of the TFE was trapped in these long
chains. The gas had polymerized into
poly tetraflloroethylene forming this
slippery powder. Plunkett just wanted to
get rid of it because it ruined his
experiment. But before throwing it out,
he decided to do some tests on it. So he
tried pouring water on it, but the water
just beat it off. So he tried
acid. Again, nothing happened.
Then he tried the strongest base he had,
but that wouldn't melt it either.
Plunkett went through all of the
solvents in the lab, but the powder
remained intact. It wouldn't melt,
corrode, or react with anything. It was
seemingly
indestructible. The reason it was so
indestructible was because of this bond,
the carbon florine bond.
See, out of all of the elements, florine
is the greediest, the most
electron-hungry atom. Its outer shell is
a single electron away from being
complete, which would make it perfectly
stable. So, florine really, really wants
that electron. And because it's so small
compared to most other elements, the
protons in its nucleus can get close to
the electrons of other atoms. And
because of their positive charge, they
pull on them really hard. So near a
carbon atom, florine grabs onto one of
the carbon's electrons to complete its
outer shell. And this keeps the two
atoms bonded together. But the florine
isn't done there. It keeps tugging on
the carbon's electrons, pulling them
closer to itself, which makes florine
slightly negatively charged and the
carbon slightly positive. So now there's
an electrostatic attraction that makes
this bond even stronger. Now, in
reality, electrons behave more like
fuzzy clouds than the orbiting points in
this animation, but the principle still
holds. In terms of energy, this is
actually the strongest single bond a
carbon can form. So, if other atoms or
molecules get close, they're essentially
ignored. And Plunkett's magic powder was
completely covered in carbon florine
bonds, so it hardly reacted with
anything. Okay, so he's got this
incredibly inert stuff. Was he really
trying to get rid of it? He actually
didn't know what to do with it cuz like
what do you do with a material that
doesn't you know react with
anything but luckily his employer DuPont
they were actually working with the US
Army on the Manhattan project. So they
were refining uranium and plutonium cuz
of course there's a World War II
reference in a vertassium video. You
just you just have to have it. To get
the fuel for nuclear bombs enriched
uranium you first have to turn the
uranium into a gas uranium hexaflloride.
It was a nasty chemical that corroded
everything. So all the gaskets, seals,
and miles of pipe in the plant at
Oakidge had to constantly be replaced,
slowing down production. But then Dupont
was like, "Listen, we have this
seemingly indestructible chemical,
right? It doesn't react with stuff. It
doesn't corrode. So maybe we can try and
use it against uranium hexafflloride."
So they get a bunch of this powder. They
cram it together under high pressure to
create these cakes. Essentially, now you
had a solid of this material that you
could machine into gaskets and cylinders
that you could push into these pipes.
They put these tube blindings into the
pipe and boom, it works like magic, like
like a charm. The uranium hexaflloride
was no match for this magic material. As
Gordon Fee, the manager of the nuclear
weapons plant put it, "There was never a
substitute considered." As far as I
know,
the material worked so well that the
army wanted to use it for everything.
The same gaskets and seals were
installed into fuel tanks and airplane
engines to protect them from oil and
water. And weapons manufacturing plants
no longer had issues with the corrosive
nitric acid needed to make explosives.
DuPont saw the potential too. So they
trademarked the material in 1944. They
didn't trademark it under their name
polyetraoethylene cuz admittedly that
name kind of sucks. So they took TE from
Tetra, FL from fluo, and then they had a
bunch of these other miracle materials,
rayon, nylon. So they took O from the
end of those and boom,
teflon. Nice. Okay, it's a good name.
Under the army's order, DuPont ramped up
Teflon production at their test plant in
Arlington, New Jersey, giving their
whole supply to the government. But
Dupant struggled to produce enough
teflon to meet the military's demand. As
their Arlington scientists put it, the
major advantages of
polyetrofuroethylene, solvent
resistance, and high thermal stability
offer obstacles from the standpoint of
ease in
fabrication. You could only really mold
teflon into solids, so gaskets, seals,
pipes, but you couldn't put it into
water to make a spray because it doesn't
dissolve in water. They actually didn't
know anything that dissolved teflon. But
there was an even bigger problem at that
point. To polymerize TF into Teflon, you
can add a reactive atom or molecule that
will hijack the first carbon double bond
and start the reaction. This is called
the initiator. And the bond formed
between it and the first TF molecule
releases a small amount of energy. Then
a bit of energy is also released when
the next TF molecule joins the chain and
the next and the next. And if the
process isn't controlled, the reaction
gets very hot very quickly. And if it
gets above 200° C, TF rapidly decomposes
into carbon and tetrflloromethane, which
releases even more energy all at
once. This caused a massive explosion at
the Arlington plant in 1944, killing two
workers. You need a way to dissipate the
heat, take the heat away from the
reaction without it staying in there and
therefore expanding and creating that
explosive force. Yeah. And one of the
ways to do that was to have the reaction
happening in water because water can
absorb a huge amount of energy before it
ever heats up. But if you inject TF into
a water cylinder, the gas doesn't
dissolve. Even at high pressure, most of
the TF just stays on top. So if you add
an initiator, the polymerization is
triggered in one place and so it can
still cause an
explosion. What you need is some way to
disperse the TF throughout the water
first. And to do that, DuPont needed
help. In 1951, they purchased a special
acid from 3M, the company behind Scotch
Tape. This acid called PFOA looked
almost exactly like teflon. It had a
chain of eight carbon atoms covered in
florines, but at the other end, there
was a double-bonded oxygen and an O
group. That's what makes it an acid. And
since there were eight carbons in the
chain, Dupant also referred to the acid
as C8.
The tail end of C8 like Teflon was
hydrophobic. But the acid head group
loved water. It was hydrophilic. So when
you add C8 into water, the molecules
rearrange themselves so that the heads
touch the water, but the teflon-like
tails don't. They create little bubbles
all throughout the water, which are
virtually dry on the inside. If you now
inject TF and stir the whole mixture up,
well, the hydrophobic gas ends up in the
middle of these C8 bubbles and those
bubbles are dispersed everywhere evenly
throughout the
water. You know what this reminds me of
is soap. Yeah. So, it's the great
combiner that allows like oil and water
to mix. And now, if you sprinkle in
initiator molecules, the initiator
molecules also go into these bubbles.
They start the polymerization reaction.
So from TF to Teflon, but now since it's
happening spread all throughout these
bubbles, the heat is evenly dissipated
throughout the water and no one
explodes. And since Teflon is now
suspended in a solution, you can spray
it onto surfaces like a coating. This
thing doesn't stick to anything. How do
you stick it to the gaskets? You know,
how do you actually use it? Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. That's that's a good question. So
the trick was actually the surface had
to be really rough. So what you do is
you sand blast it to create grooves and
imperfections at this like nanoscopic
level. Now if you spray the coating on
what happens is if you heat it up the
water evaporates the C8 it also
evaporates but teflon instead of it
evaporating it just softens up. So
although there's no chemical interaction
here now it's mechanically stuck to the
surface. That's how they got it to
stick. With the war over, the army
lifted the secrecy bans on the Teflon
patents, and DuPont was allowed to sell
it commercially. And suddenly, people
all over the world were coding everyday
items in Teflon, trying to create a
worldchanging product. One day in 1954,
a French engineer, Mark Grego, tried
putting Teflon on his fishing gear to
prevent tangles. But then his wife saw
him doing that, and her reaction was
that this is absolute nonsense. No one
is ever going to use this. you should do
something that someone's actually going
to use. So, how about you put it on a
pan? Make a pan non-stick. And once
these pans hit the market, it was a
cooking revolution. Teflon. Teflon.
Teflon. And Dupant knew exactly how to
market it. Even oatmeal won't stick to
Teflon. Hey, Nate. Let me try. And it
wasn't just non-stick pans. Teflon C8
and chemicals like it were used in
everything. Slip away contains the magic
of Dupont Teflon. Suddenly, we had
Teflon stain resistant carpets and stain
protection sprays like 3M's Scotch
Guard. Jackets lined with Teflon were
waterproof and breathable. Gortex is the
brand name. Teflon was so inert that
medical implants made out of it wouldn't
be rejected by the body. It was used to
coat the Statue of Liberty's steel
framework to save it from corrosion. And
even bullets were coated with Teflon to
minimize the damage they did coming out
of the gun barrel. The term Teflon was
so ubiquitous that when the Italian
mobster John Gotti was being prosecuted
in the late 1980s, none of the charges
against him would stick. So he was
dubbed Teflon Dawn. By the late 1990s,
the Teflon business generated roughly a
billion dollars in yearly sales for
DuPont. Teflon has a great future and
its uses will be many. The chemicals
were
everywhere, even where they shouldn't
be.
There's something wrong with this water.
They won't tell us what it is. The man
behind the camera is Earl Tenant, a
farmer in West Virginia. And this is
what they expect a man's cows to drink
on their on his own property. He
suspected that something in this creek
was poisoning his cows. This is 153 of
these animals that I've lost on this
farm. You can see the discoloration in
the hair here on her neck. and they keep
trying to tell me there's nothing wrong
with these things. I called the West
Virginia State Veterinary and the only
thing he asked me is I had, "Do you have
a good
attorney?" Earl was desperate. So, he
hired a lawyer. Uh he came to our
offices um armed with boxes of VHS
videotapes. He started watching these
videootapes and you know there was a
serious problem here. There's something
wrong with this cow. choppers running
through to the ground. The animals were
wasting away and they were skin and
bones and they had tumors and black
teeth and you could see on the videotape
white foam coming out of this pipe on
this landfill next door with these
animals standing in the white foam. The
hair on their hooves was being eaten off
by whatever was in the water.
This is a lower pipe.
to see what's coming out of it. It was a
discharge pipe and it had the marking of
EI Dupont Dors and Company. And the
landfill that pipe was draining from
belonged to DuPont's massive factory
complex outside of Parkerburg, West
Virginia, just 6 miles
away. That factory was Washington Works,
the first commercial Teflon plant. It
provided jobs for almost 2,000 people in
the town, and DuPont's presence was felt
everywhere. I have been a resident of
Parkersburg for 48 years. I do not work
for the Deont Company, but I have seen
how their people have done much for the
cultural growth of this community. There
are facilities for tennis, camping,
swimming, softball, and more than 20
areas equipped for cookouts and family
picnics. Dupont took care of the
community. So, when the town folk got
word that Earl Tenant hired a lawyer to
investigate, they shunned him and his
family. As his sister-in-law put it,
we'd walk into a restaurant and
everybody in the restaurant would get up
and leave. But Earl wasn't scared off
and neither was Rob. I thought this was
going to be pretty straightforward. See,
the US Environmental Protection Agency,
the EPA, dictates exactly which
chemicals are safe to be disposed of in
a landfill and in what amounts. We would
get those records and permits and it
would tell us which chemical was causing
this problem. But none of those records
were really showing anything that was
really causing a problem. You know,
nothing that would explain that white
foam. Whatever was in Earl's water,
wasn't on the
permits. Now, already in the 1950s,
people knew that Teflon, specifically
PTFE, was pretty safe. It's a long and
extremely inert molecule. So, if you
ingest it, your body just flushes it
out. However, if you heat Teflon to 350°
C, it starts releasing fumes that make
people sick. This often happened to
workers in Teflon plants. Stray PTFE
powder would fall onto their cigarettes
as they were working, and then later
they would accidentally smoke one of
these cigarettes. Luckily, the symptoms
were mild. Fatigue, tightness of chest,
headaches, and they would usually pass
within 48 hours. It was called polymer
fume fever. And even though it rarely
happens today, it's why you should never
overheat your Teflon pan to these
temperatures, especially if you have pet
birds at home because the fumes are much
more toxic to them. But Teflon couldn't
have poisoned Earl's cows. There were no
fumes or high temperatures, so there
must have been something else in the
water. Rob filed a legal request for all
of the Washington Works operational
records, and DuPont sent them over. more
than 60,000 documents.
A lot of folks would try to say, "Okay,
you you want a lot of documents, we'll
give you a lot of documents." And hope
that there'd be no way somebody could
actually wade through all of these files
and all of these materials. But I'm the
kind of person that I do dig in and I do
want to go through those documents. So,
I actually did read all of that. And in
those files, a certain chemical kept
popping up everywhere.
C8.
I never saw the kinds of things I was
seeing now in these documents from
DuPont.
In 1961, the same year Teflon pans hit
the US market. DuPont's in-house
scientists tested C8 on rats. Ingesting
as little as 1.5 mg of C8 per kilogram
of body weight caused the rat's livers
to grow abnormally, and a dose of 570 mg
per kg was lethal. For reference, sodium
cyanide, one of the most dangerous
poisons, is lethal to rats in doses of 5
to 15 mg per kilogram. But even though
C8 was less fatal, it was concerning for
two other
reasons. First, like Teflon, its tail is
made of carbon florine bonds, which
makes it incredibly stable. So C8
wouldn't break down in the environment
for decades. And second, C8 looks like
the fatty acids that humans and animals
need for normal functioning, just with
florines instead of hydrogens. So the
concern was that C8 could get into the
bloodstream, hitch a ride on the
proteins that transport fatty acids
around and get almost anywhere in the
body. And because of the carbon florine
bonds, humans and animals have no way to
break down C8. So it could slowly build
up mimicking those fatty acids and
potentially disrupting the systems they
regulate like the liver. Toxic,
persistent, bioaccumulative. So the
concern was it's like a ticking time
bomb. It's got more opportunity to cause
harm. As a safety measure, that same rat
study suggested that all these materials
should be handled with extreme care and
that contact with skin should be
strictly avoided.
In 1962, DuPont redid the study and
confirmed that high doses of C8 kill
rats through injury to the stomach,
intestine, brain, lungs, and pancreas.
Then in 1965, they found those same
toxic effects in dogs. The evidence was
mounting. They were even studying
monkeys. Some of the monkeys were
dropping dead. These chemicals were
causing toxic effects in multiple organ
systems in multiple species. All these
studies weren't being shared with the
scientific community. And likely no one
outside of DuPont would have noticed
something was wrong if it was not for
tooth decay, the most widespread of all
diseases. In the 1950s, tooth decay was
a nationwide problem. So the US started
adding inorganic fluorides like sodium
fluoride to the public water supply.
This helped fight cavities. 16 years
after fluidation, all children will have
65% less tooth decay. In 1975,
researchers wanted to know if that
inorganic fluoride was getting into
people's blood. So, they sampled blood
from around the US and the results were
as expected. More fluoride in the tap
water meant more fluoride in the blood.
But they found another type of florine
in the blood too, which was organic
florine, carbon florine bonds, and it
didn't follow the same trend. Well,
these researchers were wondering where's
this coming from? Because this is not a
naturally occurring substance. And they
did research and they found that 3M was
making these organic fluorides, things
like PFOA. All right? So they approached
3M in
1975 asking them, hey, we found this
stuff in the general US population's
blood. You know, could it be yours? And
3M plead
ignorant. But just 3 months later, 3M
compared the spectrum of organic florine
from the study to their own chemicals,
and it was a match. their chemicals were
getting into the blood of people all
across the United States, but they
didn't tell the
researchers. 3M and DuPont were worried.
So, they checked their own workers blood
and they found that they too were
contaminated with C8 at levels a
thousand times higher than those in the
study. And when DuPont checked their
medical records, many of these workers
were showing signs of liver disease.
Meanwhile, Dupont was dumping almost 10
tons of C8 into the Ohio River each
year. And they were piling up thousands
more tons as C8 sludge that would leech
from the landfill next to Earl's farm.
All while showing commercials like
these. And the water that eventually
flows to the river is collected at five
points and analyzed to make sure we
don't pollute the Ohio. And by the early
80s, the first cancer study is done in
rats and it confirms PFOA causes not
just might be linked with but causes
testicular tumors. All right, that sends
alarm bells off within the company
because the concern is of course we're
putting this in the air, we're putting
in the water, it's in teflon. DuPont
collected samples around Washington
works and C8 wasn't just in the river,
it was in the public water supply.
So in 1984, DuPont officials met to
assess whether C8 should be swapped for
a safer chemical, but their conclusion
was that currently none of the options
developed are from a fine powder
business standpoint economically
attractive. So C8 stuck around and
DuPant just came up with a safe dose for
drinking water. DuPont scientists are
the first people on the planet to say
what would be a safe level for humans.
They calculated something like 6 parts
per billion which they rounded up to
one. The importance of that is at that
time that was about the lowest level you
could detect in water. Essentially if we
can detect it it's too high. So to put
that into perspective here is one 2
1/2,000 L tank of water. It filled to
the brim. Now imagine you take one drop
of PFOA 0.05 05 ml and you place it not
in one of these tanks or two or three,
20 of these tanks, that's one part per
billion and that's the number DuPont
thought would be unsafe for humans to
drink. And after determining its own
safety metric, DuPont tested the
landfill waste water leeching into
Earl's Creek. It came back at 1,600
parts per billion. They didn't tell
anybody. So, at that point, I thought I
had figured out what had finally
happened to the cows.
Rob compiled all the evidence into a
900page letter and sent it to the EPA,
the Department of Justice, and even the
US Attorney
General. And just a few months later,
DuPont settled with Earl Tenant and his
family for an undisclosed sum. Although
they didn't admit to any
wrongdoing, but this stuff wasn't just
in the water the cows were drinking.
This was in the surrounding community's
public wells, right? People around Mr.
tenant. The tens of thousands of people
in that community had likely been
drinking this for decades and didn't
know. So Rob sued DuPont again, now on
behalf of the 70,000 people around
Parkerburg who were unwittingly exposed
to C8. And it wasn't just Parkerburg or
West Virginia. In the year 2000,
researchers analyzed blood samples from
thousands of Americans all across the
country. And 100% of those samples came
back positive for C8 at an average of
five parts per
billion. But if virtually everyone in
the US is contaminated, how harmful
could C8 really be? This is exactly what
Rob had to find out to have a fighting
chance against DuPont. So in 2005, he
spearheaded a medical study of everyone
around Washington works. Scientists need
to know if the chemical C8 causes any
health problems. By completing a health
questionnaire and having your blood
tested, you can help. Analyzing the
blood samples and medical records took
seven long years, and many in Parkerburg
passed away before a verdict was even
reached, including Earl and his wife
Sandra. But finally, in 2013, an
independent science panel had the
results. They confirmed a probable link
between C8 and six human diseases
including thyroid disease, testicular
cancer, and kidney cancer. And these
findings were based solely on the nearby
community with an average C8 blood level
of 28 parts per billion. So for example,
an average American male has around a 1
in43 chance of developing kidney cancer.
It's around 1 in 73 for females. But a
person with more than 30 parts per
billion of C8 in their blood serum might
have about double the odds. So roughly 1
in 22 for males and 1 in 37 for
females. But the data in many of these
studies only included survivors, not
people who might have already died from
C8 exposure. So the verdict was that the
findings must be interpreted with
caution. The true risk of C8 might be
even higher.
Luckily, once these studies were
published in 2013, DuPont was pressured
by the regulators to phase out C8. And
by 2017, they had to pay out over $600
million to victims of C8 exposure, which
is a pretty small price to pay for a
company that made almost $80 billion in
sales just that
year. And all throughout, DuPont denied
any wrongdoing. But that wasn't the end
of it for Parkerburg or anyone else
because DuPont separated its entire
Teflon business into a spin-off company,
Chemors, that agreed to use a different
chemical. So what was it? They simply
took C8 and knocked two carbons off and
started making C6. They called it Gen X.
Because it was shorter and had an oxygen
atom interrupting the carbon chain, it
was expected to be more degradable. So
Chem claimed a dose as high as 70 parts
per billion of Gen X and drinking water
would still be safe. That chemical gets
shipped to the same plant in West
Virginia. So now Gen X goes into the
air. Gen X goes into the Ohio River. Gen
X is found in public water supplies. So
Gen X is allowed to come out into the
world, be used in Teflon. Then the
cancer study is done which shows Gen X
causes the exact same three tumors in
rats that PFOA did. Liver, testicular,
and pancreatic. And the fact that its
chain is shorter also makes Gen X more
mobile. So it could contaminate larger
areas. The truth is we just don't know
enough about it. And that's exactly the
problem. It took us decades to get to
the point of finally addressing C8. They
simply tweak it a bit, change the
chemical name. All of the science and
all of the concern that's on C8. This is
C6 or C9 or C4. You don't have enough
evidence that these other ones are bad.
This is whack-a-ole. We we get to the
point we're addressing one and the new
one pops up and we're told we have to
start over. And it isn't just C8 or Gen
X.
They belong to a family of over 14,000
different man-made chemicals, all
covered in carbon florine bonds. And
companies can make them however they
want. C7s, C9s, branched polymers,
acids. The generic term for all of these
substances is PAS, per and polyural
alkal substances. And like Teflon, they
have almost magical qualities. They
repel liquids, so PAS are used to make
clothing waterproof. They're also grease
resistant, so we coat things like fast
food wrappers and microwave popcorn bags
in PAS to prevent stains. Waterproof
lipstick and mascara, hygiene products,
and even contact lenses have PAS in
them. Even the screen you're watching
this on likely has a PAS anti-mudge
coating.
The trouble is that the same carbon
florine bonds that make PAS so stable
and useful in consumer products also
make them incredibly persistent in the
environment. Which is why you might also
know PAS under a different name, Forever
Chemicals. They have been found
everywhere from bustling cities to
untouched areas of wilderness. Every
continent including Antarctica has PAS
all over it.
almost every living creature from polar
bears to to birds to fish. I mean, this
stuff is being found everywhere. So,
massive worldwide contamination, but by
completely man-made chemicals that are
fingerprints back to just a couple of
companies. Even though companies knew
how dangerous these chemicals were 50
years ago, they decided not to inform
the public and the regulators. So, we're
only finding out about this global
contamination now. And there have been
many cases where important public health
information doesn't get widely
disseminated for years. And whenever
that happens, media coverage can be
inconsistent, which is why I've
partnered up with Ground News as the
sponsor of this video. Their platform
reveals how stories like these are
covered across the media landscape. For
example, a recent study suggested that
23 million Americans were exposed to
Forever Chemicals through wastewater.
But you probably haven't seen the story
since fewer than 40 outlets even
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different some of these headlines are
with ground news. You can also see that
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plan. And now back to PAS.
Okay, now I want to find out how much of
these chemicals is actually in my blood.
So, I have a little test
here. I hate the idea of um drawing my
own
[Music]
blood. Okay, that was pretty easy
actually. I was really worried that
there was not going to be enough blood
coming out, but no, there's plenty.
So the question is, how much of these
dangerous chemicals are in my blood? Has
anyone ever come back with blood that
has zero PAS whatsoever? I've been doing
blood testing on PAS since 2007, and
I've never seen a non-detect. No way. So
I hear that 98% of the population has
PAS in their blood, but I'm I'm looking
for that 2% that doesn't because I've
yet to see them. That's incredible. I
mean, very very bad incredible, but wow.
But if everyone on Earth has trace
amounts of these chemicals in their
blood, how much harm could they really
be doing? I want to make a distinction
because it turns out not all PAS are
equally dangerous. You can kind of split
them up into two groups. First up, you
have long repeating chains of carbon
florine bonds that are tens or hundreds
of thousands of atoms long. So stuff
like teflon, these are so big and inert
that even if you do ingest them, your
body is just going to flush them out.
They can't be absorbed into your
bloodstream. So you're pretty safe.
They're called fluoropolymers because of
the long repeating chains of carbon and
florine bonds. But the catch is to make
these fluoropolymers, stuff like teflon,
you need to use processing aids, things
like PFOA or Gen X, and those are the
nasty ones. These molecules are 5 to 10
carbons long, which makes them small
enough to actually enter the
bloodstream. They have functional groups
at the ends that are usually acids. The
most common ones are
perfluoal acids which means that they
can bind to the proteins in your blood
and be transported anywhere in the body.
So they slowly accumulate and build up
over
time. Now there are more than just two
groups of PAS and even different
definitions of what PAS even are. But
most of what we know really relates to
just a handful of chemicals from this
group here to these perfluo acids.
Perhaps the most comprehensive document
on PAS toxicity was published in 2022 by
the Nationalmies of Sciences,
Engineering and Medicine and it looked
at only seven perflloral alkal acids.
These are sister chemicals to PFOA and
some of them like PFOS and
PFHXS were used heavily in the
production of stain and water resistant
products like 3M's Scotch Guard before
they too got phased out due to toxicity
concerns. The report surmised that if
the sum of these seven acids in your
blood is below two parts per billion,
there shouldn't be any harm. If your
level is between 2 and 20 parts per
billion, there's a potential for harmful
health effects. Although the exact
mechanism by which PAS cause harm isn't
fully understood, exposure has most
consistently been associated with high
cholesterol, a decreased immune system
response to vaccines and infections,
kidney cancer, and decreased growth in
infants. But PAS have also been linked
to dozens of other conditions. And above
20 parts per billion, the risk is even
greater.
So, where do I fall on this graph?
Right. So, I I have a results here.
You're not going to tell me what yours
were before I see mine? No. All right.
Uh, you're positive for PFOA. Okay. The
level for PFOA for a US person went down
from five parts per billion around the
2000s to around 1.46 what you have. So,
you're super average for a US person.
Great. Okay. The good news is though, no
Gen X for for you or for me, which is
great. All right, let's go.
But the the real surprise, I guess, is
PFOS, the the sister chemical, and it
was used in a similar way. So, stain
resistant carpets, treated clothing, and
your result is at 8.93 parts per
billion, whereas the US average is 4.3.
Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah, it is crazy
cuz it was discontinued pretty much in
2002. This is not the results I
expected. I honestly expected very
boring results of like, yeah, you're
around the middle of the pack or a
little bit on the low side. And then for
PFHXS, basically PFOS, but six instead
of eight carbons. Your levels here are
almost seven parts per billion, but the
US average is one part per billion.
You're higher than 95% of Americans. It
just is like it shocks me cuz like I was
fully walking into this meeting
expecting to be, you know, roughly
average. Yeah. To me, it's scary. You
live, you know, you live a normal life
thinking that you're taking care of
everything and then you have high levels
of a chemical you never heard of. The
combined sum of all the PAS detected in
my blood was 17.92 parts per billion,
more than double the US median. I'm just
below the level where the nationalmies
recommend additional screenings for PAS
related
diseases. I had no idea I would come
back with such elevated levels. I'd love
to get the level sort of down a bit to a
level where I feel like it's more in
line with the general population. Yeah,
but like where could this have come
from? There are three main ways we get
exposed to forever chemicals. And the
one you'll hear the most about in the
media is likely PAS containing products,
shampoo, dental floss, paints,
varnishes, potentially dangerous
chemicals. Dangerous chemicals. Toxic
chemicals. People are throwing out their
nonstick cookware. My wife threw out all
our non-stick pans over a year ago, and
since then we've been using stainless
steel. She is very good at making it not
stick. Me, not so much. But are pans
really the problem? The actual coating
on the pan is Teflon, which again is
just a long inert chain of carbon
florine bonds. So even if you ingest it,
it doesn't react with your body. If you
have a pan like that at home, you
probably don't need to throw it out. The
same goes for most other PAS containing
products. Waterproof clothing, stain
resistant furniture, and sweatproof
watch bands might all release some level
of PAS, but the risk of direct exposure
through skin is likely low. So, the
bigger problem is how easily PAS from
these products can end up in the
environment. And many of the factories
that make these products don't have a
good track record of keeping the
chemicals contained. People don't
understand that the stories that you
see, for example, what was happening in
the community in West Virginia, this is
the same chemical and the same things
that we're seeing play out now in
Australia and in Japan, in Italy, in
Germany, in the UK. I mean, there are a
lot of folks that are still not grasping
the fact that these are the same
chemicals.
Our second main source of exposure is
food. A lot of it comes packaged in PAST
treated materials like takeout boxes,
microwave popcorn bags, and burger
wrappers. If it's not a burger wrapper,
is it a tiny amount? Is it a
ridiculously tiny amount? We actually
did tests at the lab with stuff that
usually contains PAS. So, microwave
popcorn, fast food wrappers, paper cups
that are waterproof. So, I have tap
water here from a house in London. Could
we boil some water? Because usually you
interact with these products uh when
they're hot and then see if any of the
PAS leeches off and you potentially eat
them or drink them. This is citizen
science, right? So it's like there might
be some error, but with a solid control
and then with the same tap water going
to all of them, we can at least get
something. Yeah. Yeah. And even if we
get nothing, we'll know that people are
probably safe using these products,
right? Whis it around. Yeah. Really get
that pest in that water. at the well,
it's supposed to be safe for human
consumption. It's the wild thing. We
sloshed it around there, hot water,
boiling water for around 30 seconds and
then we tested the water to see if any
of the pas that are used to coat these
items would actually make it into the
water. So, here's what I got. And these
are parts per trillion now. So, for
PFOA, good news. Basically, no detection
anywhere except for the microwave
popcorn. I will say these are very low
levels, but uh hold your horses cuz
microwave popcorn gets gets worse. The
thing about microwave popcorn, it's
sitting in there wrapped up with the
popcorn for months or years before you
ever stick it in your microwave. That
gives those chemicals plenty of time to
like leech into the oils and it's going
to go all over the popcorn and you're
going to eat it. This could explain some
of our own results. The level for PFPA,
which is a shorter variation of PFOA,
came back at 10 parts per trillion after
the popcorn bag test. And you can see
similar results in some of the other PAS
species.
But then microwave popcorn actually
drops for
PFOS. Why could that be? I don't we
don't actually know. I was going to say
maybe the POS like went on that rapper
and found its friends and just hung out
there. Yeah, could be. I know we've only
done like one test here. no repeat
measurements. So, we can't conclude much
from this, but there's something to be
said for when you're using these
products, they're going to leech into
your water and leech into your food. And
research tends to
agree. A 2019 study found that eating
fast food and microwave popcorn
especially can increase your PAS load,
while eating home-cooked meals doesn't.
But even something as simple as
reheating your food on a plate instead
of in the original packaging could
prevent PAS from migrating to your food.
Now, you might expect that these part
per trillion levels we detected in the
London tap water are nothing compared to
the parts per billion you'd find in
human blood. But the surprising thing is
that to have two parts per billion of
PFOA in your blood, you don't need to
drink water with two parts per billion
of PFOA in it. Because PAS accumulate in
your body over time. So even water with
as little as four parts per trillion of
PFOA combined with other exposure can be
enough to maintain your blood levels
this high. And this is why in addition
to food, water is your biggest source of
exposure. This is especially true if you
live near a PAS factory where the local
water is often heavily contaminated. But
the same goes for areas near military
bases or airports.
See, adding chemicals like PFOA or PFOS
to water lowers its surface tension, so
the water gets more slippery. And these
chemicals also tend to foam up, so they
make for an excellent ingredient in
firefighting foams. They spread quicker,
and the foam blocks access to oxygen
extremely well. And since both military
bases and airports frequently do fire
drills with these foams, they end up
seeping into the surrounding soil and
groundwater. But it doesn't stop there.
Currently, we have reached planetary
saturation levels for PAS, which means
that when you look up at that cloud and
it rains, it rains unsafe levels of at
least four PAS species. It turns out
that our entire water cycle is
contaminated with PAS. So even when it
rains on the Tibetan plateau, that rain
contains PAS.
To check the water levels in your area,
you can use these maps that show PAS
contamination across the US, Europe, and
Australia. What about Los Angeles and
Cino? That's where I spent like seven of
the last 10
years. Crescent Valley, those are all
high. Yeah. Santa Clarito, some PFH
excess level is crazy. So maybe you're
getting your water from Santa Clarita.
Wow. There's a calculator. It could give
you what an estimate in your blood serum
is. What we can try to do now is put
that up in the calculator. See if you
get something close to what you have if
you want. Sure. PFH excs. So typical
value for an adult is one part per
billion. And then the Santa Clarita
water is around 37 parts per trillion.
If you look after like 10 years, so
after roughly 10 years of exposure, you
have
6.85 parts per billion in your blood.
and then I can tell you that you are at
684. That would explain things. Now, I
can't say for sure where my drinking
water was coming from, but if I was
consistently drinking water contaminated
at similar levels, then that would
explain my results. But if you're
worried about your own water, you should
contact your provider directly for the
most relevant
information. It's concerning just how
unregulated drinking water has been. It
was actually only a year ago in April
2024 that the US EPA finally set legal
limits for PAS in drinking water. The
safe level for PFOA went down from
DuPont's initial one part per billion to
four parts per trillion. So we're no
longer talking about one drop of PFOA in
20 of these tanks. We're talking about
one drop in 5,000. That's five Olympic
sized swimming pools. And if there's
even a drop of PFOA in there, the EPA is
concerned.
The same four parts per trillion limit
was also set for PFOS, the sister
chemical, and Gen X went down from the
70,000 parts per trillion initially
proposed by Chemores to just 10. The
same goes for
PFHXS. For reference, the EPA's limit
for lead and water is 10,000 parts per
trillion and for cyanide, 200,000.
It gives you a pretty clear indication
of how concerned the scientific
community is. And just when we got EPA
limits, we got a new administration in
the US which might be reversing some of
the PAS bans. So you can't always depend
on the regulators and you seemingly
can't depend on the companies that make
this stuff to dispose of it safely. So
what can you do? If your water is
contaminated, you might want to consider
getting a PAS certified filter.
Reverse osmosis, granulated active
carbon, and ion exchange filters are all
capable of removing PAS out of drinking
water. But the responsibility to filter
drinking water shouldn't come down to
the individual. PAS should be captured
at the source during manufacturing
before they ever reach the environment.
And some companies like Pure Affinity
are developing custom filters to make
that happen. Uh so very lab. Exactly.
Yeah. Yeah. So could you walk me through
like what all these pipes do and what do
you have in here? So this water is
representative of where you've had a big
firefighting foam incident. So you want
to filter this water, but basically the
concept is take it from the top through
the vessel. As it passes through this
material, it basically sticks on to some
of the PAS chemicals in water and then
you run into another part of treatment,
right? And a third one. To me, it seems
like if PASS are so like biocumulative
and actually persistent and stable, they
don't really react with things. So, how
do you force them to react with with
stuff in here? Basically, taking
advantage of this long organic tail as
well as the polar head. And so, you can
have some electrostatic interactions
with the polar head. And then you can
have some hydrophilic and hydrophobic
interactions with the tail. And by
combining these three binding
mechanisms, you increase massively your
likelihood of binding PAS. even if it's
still difficult, right? Do the levels
drop 100% already here or do you see a
gradual decrease in P fast? That's a
cool question. Okay, so in the beginning
it drops 100% after this one. Oh, so
problem solved or problem solved for the
time being. Okay, what we see right now
is it will last about 40,000 volumes of
this vessel. So a 10 liter vessel would
basically provide all of the PAS
treatment for a household in a year. For
a year. You want this to be in factories
first so it never gets into the water.
Yeah. Yeah. We're talking to the floor
chemicals manufacturers and they're
really trying to yeah move forward
rather than just wait for
regulations. Everyone's true risk from
PAS will be different. It depends on
dozens of factors like your water
contamination, your lifestyle, what you
eat. But how much should you really
worry about it? Like if I'm at 17 or 18
parts per billion, is that the
equivalent of drinking a beer at night
or going out in the Australian sun
without sunscreen? So, what I like to do
is create this hierarchy of risk. And in
terms of hierarchy of risk reduction,
number one on that is stopping
smoking, exercising, consuming a healthy
whole food diet, and making sure you're
getting 7 to n hours of sleep. Then you
have medium levels of intervention,
seeing your primary care doctor,
controlling your cholesterol numbers,
and then on the lower tier that you
have, PAS probably falls into that lower
tier. Being preventative about PAS
exposure is currently our only option
because there are no approved medical
treatments available.
However, if you compare PAS
contamination between the sexes, male
levels are consistently higher, at least
up until around the age of 50, when
menopause usually starts. This is partly
because menration, birth, and lactation
are all ways PAS can escape the body.
PAS can pass through the placenta and
into the fetus during pregnancy. And
then the baby can also get exposed
through breast milk. It's something that
pregnant uh people should be extremely
careful uh about. You know, young
children are incredibly susceptible. Um
they are drinking more water. They are
growing. They are near surfaces like
treated carpets. Now, not everyone has
to change their lifestyle because of
PAS. But if you're in a high-risisk
group because of pregnancy or because
you live or work in a PAS contaminated
area, you might want to consider it.
Firefighters have especially high PAS
levels because their gear and foams are
laced with them. Remarkably, a 2022
study found that when firefighters
donated blood or plasma frequently
enough, they reduced their PAS levels by
up to 30% within a year. And it's kind
of ironic that, you know, our our health
systems coming back to bloodletting.
What do you think about the idea of
donating blood as a way to reduce PAS in
the body? I've never heard of that as a
strategy. That's kind of interesting.
Well, I definitely recommend people
donate blood more frequently, not
because of PAS exposure, but because of
the fact we desperately need blood.
What's important to note is that
especially in this current
administration, we need to be very
careful about shifting budgets away from
research agencies because without that
research, the guidance that I'm giving
is going to be significantly more
flawed. The reason I'm able to talk
about what we know and what we don't
know comes from that research. So, if
we're going to be cutting the budgets to
these major agencies and letting
scientists go, we're only going to get
worse and worse information.
We are still a good few years away from
proper medical treatment and better PAS
regulations because this is extremely
tricky. There are places where we should
ban PAS completely like hygiene
products, cosmetics, and food packaging.
And some countries are already doing
that. But we also can't ban PAS
altogether, at least not yet, because we
still rely on these chemicals for things
like medical implants. And it's
currently impossible to make
semiconductors for our electronics
without them. All the tubing for the
vaccine manufacturing is PAS-based. They
take us to space as well, our space
suits. But even in these niche
applications, we have to be responsible
around how we use it. people are coming
together from a lot of different
disciplines to create destruction
mechanisms, to create novel capture uh
materials and to create novel
replacements. I am excited and inspired
by all of the great work that's going on
around me. So, I think if people want to
learn more, I would advise them to learn
about the risk, but then also learn
about the new technology that's that's
being developed that will hopefully put
us in the right direction. So to me, you
know, one of the most important things
we can do is have discussions like what
we're doing right here. If the story is
in the information's out there, people
can make informed choices about whether
they want to continue purchasing things
that have these materials in them. And
what we're seeing is consumers as they
do become aware are saying, "No, we
don't want these chemicals." And
companies are voluntarily coming forward
and taking these chemicals out of
products because the consumers are now
demanding it. We've been here before
with leaded gasoline, freon, and
asbestous. And each time we did the
research and made the right decision to
phase these chemicals out. With PAS,
we're just starting to understand the
problem, but I'm hopeful we'll make the
same decision again.
If you want to inform yourself more
about PAS, we've attached all the
sources we've used to make this video
down in the description. It's actually
our longest episode ever, and we
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