Something's Poisoning America's Farms. Scientists Fear 'Forever' Chemicals

[rapjr9]

So this has been going on for more than half a century now. Wisconsin started using Milorganite in 1926:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milorganite

"Since its inception, over four million metric tons of Milorganite have been sold"

Teflon was trademarked in 1945:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polytetrafluoroethylene

Everything alive has likely been poisoned, including children and pets. Certain diseases have been on the rise for a long time, this might be part of the explanation for why. It sounds like the solution will be to stop manufacturing PFOS and related chemicals until there is a scalable way to destroy it and then control its use and destruction, find a way to get it out of people, and probably dilute it where it is found in the environment (it is not possible to chemically process 1/5 of all the soil on agricultural lands. Is it in water tables?) Then hope what remains doesn't do too much damage. Milorganite is only sold in the US so perhaps only the US is contaminated, though I'd suspect the EU may have adopted similar practices. Possibly the US will have to outsource a lot of food production for a long time, though a lot is already outsourced.

[toomuchtodo]

> estimates from the Environmental Working Group suggest these harmful chemicals could be polluting nearly 20 million acres of cropland, more than 20% of all U.S. farmland.

At least in Maine, they are siting solar on contaminated farmland in order to eek some use out of contaminated land that cannot be used for agriculture within the next 30 years.

https://www.ecos.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/PFAS-in-Bios... ("PFAS in Biosolids: A Review of State Efforts & Opportunities for Action")

[jkic47]

I spent 7 years getting rid of the PFOA-derived chemical across all our product lines. they are super useful, but they cross the placental barrier and have a half-life of 6.5 years or so. They were replaced by not-PFOA chemicals that had similar chemical properties so not sure that it did a whole lot of good in the long run.

[isoprophlex]

What chemicals are these replacements, if you can divulge that?

[OutOfHere]

You wasted seven years getting rid of PFOA when you should have been getting rid of all PFAS, not just one. You are right - it did no good at all.

[_heimdall]

Joel Salatin's Beyond Labels podcast had a good episode talking about this a few months ago. I can't find a good URL, their site is focused on paid subscriptions, but it was episode #145 from June 13th.

Its pretty amazing what regulators meant to protect the public allow in and on our food, even with labels like "organic."

[NFVLCP]

For the record, we're already dumping hundreds of millions of kilos of poison on our food in the form of glyphosate and other pesticides, albeit not PFAS. Whereas the shock here is that we're already so full of poisons that our own sewage is untenable for use as fertilizer.

[rapjr9]

PFAS is added to many pesticides:

https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news-release/2023/06/maine...

and to some herbicides:

https://pfasproject.com/2021/03/05/pfas-in-pesticides-a-prob...

[whatindaheck]

> … we're already so full of poisons that our own sewage is untenable…

Do you have a reference? This sounds terribly fascinating.

[razodactyl]

I remember being the "general public" unaware of PFAS. Anything "non-stick" contains it, you realise that it's everywhere in modern society.

Blissful ignorance was nice while it lasted.

[janice1999]

It was intentional ignorance. 3M and DuPont knew these chemicals were in human blood samples for decades.

"How 3M Discovered, Then Concealed, the Dangers of Forever Chemicals"

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/05/27/3m-forever-che...

[gessha]

Significant other was studying removal methods for those chemicals and as soon as I learned enough about them, I threw all of my non-stick pans away.

Learning to coat steel pans in oil to make them non-stick-ish has been a great help.

[zug_zug]

Great, since the FDA won't do anything I can't for the day that whole foods to start selling non-PFA grade food.

[OutOfHere]

Biosolids should be completely banned for agricultural use. They will never be safe to use. It is literally just dried sewage. Use it once and the land is contaminated for ten thousand years.

There is a right way to do it though, which is to compost what's compostable, grow good soil using it, then test it thoroughly for PFAS, heavy metals, pharmaceuticals, etc., and only then consider using it if all tests pass. Each batch has to be tested.

[mitchbob]

https://archive.ph/kQEvl

[pfdietz]

What I'd worry about is not PFAs, but excreted drugs. Some drugs (or their byproducts) are persistent, and have been deliberately selected to have biological effects.

I take metformin. This drug is mostly excreted in feces. The dry mass of feces might be 1% metformin for someone taking typical doses. The drug does break down in the environment, but only slowly.

[janice1999]

This is already a known issue and waste water plans have treatments to address some of the impacts. I found an article from 2012 where they specifically talk about cost of addressing the contraceptive pill's impact on British water systems.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/jun/02/water-sy...

[Citizen8396]

PFAS have exceptional properties that make them difficult to degrade, especially when it has been ingested. As a result, exposure to them will lead to bioaccumulation. Wastewater is treated to remove things like metformin, and anything that eludes that can be metabolized normally.

[486sx33]

Artificial estrogen comes to mind as well