Men in their 50s may be aging faster due to toxic 'forever chemicals'

[bonsai_spool]

This is about a journal article titled "Emerging PFAS contaminants PFNA and PFSA amplify epigenetic aging: sex- and age-stratified risks in an aging population" https://doi.org/10.3389/fragi.2025.1722675 .

The OP says mentions a report from a US Academy but the paper is published in a different journal—this wasn't clear to me at first so I thought I would share the original work.

[9999_points]

I assume a lot of people 50+ were exposed to a lot more lead and cigarette smoke than younger people.

[steveBK123]

Yes, for those under 30 you have no idea how normalized smoking was right thru the 90s. Restaurants reeked of it, bars more so. A ridiculous percent of men smoked.

I have memories of being quite young sitting in a relatives lap at a baseball game while they smoked. Or my coach in little league smoking a pipe in the dugout filled with 11 year olds.

[zeristor]

On the Underground there were two carriages for smokers, they were usually a bit more empty, and they were browned with tar on the walls and ceiling.

The ban on smoking on the Underground was after the second tube station fire when they realised it might be dangerous, there was also a football stadium that caught fire around the same time too.

The root cause seem to be a build up of rubbish, along with a cigarette but starting it.

So many tragedies in the mid-eighties UK.

[croon]

More than people 65+?

> “In younger men and those over 65, the associations were weaker and generally not statistically significant,”

[OutOfHere]

Consuming fiber daily, e.g. psyllium husk, is another way to lower some types of PFAS from the body, although not all types of PFAS are going to mix into bile to facilitate this excretion. The way this works is that some PFAS dissolves in bile which binds to psyllium which is excreted.

Remember, 5g psyllium should be taken with 20 fl oz water, mixed and consumed immediately before it gels. Do not take it two hours before or after any medicine, and do not take it if having swallowing difficulty.

[lm28469]

> psyllium husk

If you can source clean psyllium, the bulk of it comes from India and let's say they have different standards when it comes to lead/pesticides and regulations in general

[Anthony-G]

I already take psyllium husk to mitigate problems with hard stools but I dislike the taste and consistency. It’s much more palatable if I add it to natural (I tend to prefer “live”) yoghurt with some soft fruit, e.g., bananas, strawberries.

[zendist]

Source?

[amelius]

There's this theory that you can dilute the chemicals by doing frequent blood donations.

[medi8r]

Is the leech back?

[Bender]

Does the recipient get the forever chemicals or is there filtration processing that removes them?

[FrustratedMonky]

Is there any studies quantifying it? It seems to make sense. Wonder if anybody has measured.

[adzm]

Can't I just bleed out into the ground occasionally as well?

[ramon156]

Its kind of funny that a lot of issues I had seemed to not be present when I was donating. Then I took finasteride and now I'm not allowed to donate anymore...

[seethishat]

I've been told that is beneficial for men with cardiovascular disease too, but I am not sure if that is true.

[efficax]

ahh, bloodletting is back huh? we’re really redoing the middle ages but with iphones

[gryzzly]

So hard to believe all the skiers and snowboarders were putting PFAS as wax just until couple years ago. Also in Germany, you can buy "permanent baking paper" that is pure PTFE without a problem, which is insane to me.

[ifwinterco]

Teflon pans are still legal in every country in the world and used in every restaurant and food preparation industry.

It's basically impossible to avoid this stuff unless you cook all of your meals from scratch and never eat out anywhere

[cannonpr]

The problem is most data shows PTFE as having significant pyrolysis after 400-500c in reality it starts to break down enough to poison you around 260c. In general though under those temperatures it’s not particularly problematic, ofcourse ideally we should just never make the stuff to begin with as it’s manufacture and its eventual breakdown are both horrible for everyone.

[simonsarris]

I mean, did you know most dental floss has PFAS? You have to go out of your way to get PFAS free

Do you know what "countertop sealer" is made of? It's PFAS! Lots and lots of people rub PFAS on their food surfaces on purpose!

The stuff is everywhere even if you think you are avoiding it.

[HardwareLust]

If this were true, would we not see a corresponding drop in life expectancy?

[Cthulhu_]

My armchair scientific answer to that is: eventually, maybe. The problem we / science / medical / life expectancy has right now is that so much has and is changing as we speak. PFAS and microplastics only really became a thing after WW2, so while on the one side we banned asbestos, leaded fuel, smoking (and more recently drinking) got out of fashion, on the other there's microplastics everywhere, PFAS, vaping, various radiations, and by the looks of it the effects of a lot of these things will only slowly become apparent and statistically significant / measurable and discernable from other possible causes over a long period (30-50 years I'd guess, maybe longer), by which time there will be other factors at play too.

[Retric]

Dead people are easy to see, the issue is trying to differentiate one cause from everything else.

Smoking for example wasn’t believed to be particularly deadly for a surprisingly long time.

[casey2]

Men aged 51, 53, 58[1] may be aging faster due to toxic 'forever chemiclas'

[1] born in June (** p < 0.01)

[hurubaw]

People born before the 1980 are also of significantly lower IQ up to a 7-8 points due to leaded gas use. The boomers and gen X really did a number on themselves with environmental hazards.

[perch56]

In countries that phased out lead later, even early Millennials faced similar or worse childhood exposure. It’s a global generational story, just with different timelines by country. As a personal example, Romania only phased out leaded gasoline at the end of 2004.

[ricardo81]

A necessary (?) part of progress IMO. Environmental hazards have been a thing for a lot longer too. Settlements used to be covered in smog due to coal fires for example.

Part of the environmental/emissions argument from developing countries is about past emissions by developed countries. I think it's a fair argument to say given these sacrifices made by past generations in industrialised countries + the benefit of developed cleaner technologies through that industrialisation is an argument against that.

[cmrdporcupine]

Us GenXers didn't do this to ourselves. Boomers (and their parents) did it to us.

I was born '74. Alberta, Canada. I remember people raising a huge stink about "guvmint' interference" when leaded gasoline was banned and when seatbelt use became mandatory. And don't even get started about cigarettes and mandatory separate smoking areas at restaurants etc.

"Liberty" and "freedom" were concepts substantially abused and misapplied throughout the 20th century.

[fnordpiglet]

Gen X also gave you the web, google, facebook, YouTube, twitter, and additive algorithmic brain rot. So who got the better deal?

[nickdothutton]

1901 Oldsmobile curved dashboard was the first mass produced car. Lead was introduced to gasoline around 1920. You want the "Lost Generation", born 1883-1900.

[yomismoaqui]

Question is what is worse for IQ development in children/teens: exposure to leaded gas or TikTok?