Communities at highest risk for PFAS exposure
Here’s the deal: most Americans are exposed to toxic chemicals called PFAS, often called “forever chemicals” because they stick around in the environment and in our bodies
These chemicals sneak into our lives through contaminated water, polluted air, and even food.
The scariest part? PFAS exposure has been linked to serious health problems like cancer, hormone disruption, weakened immune systems, low birth weights, and even higher cholesterol.
And it gets worse—under-resourced communities are hit the hardest, as PFAS pollution tends to pile up near industrial facilities, Superfund cleanup sites, and areas with poor food access.
A Southern California study found that people living near these hotspots had significantly higher PFAS levels in their blood.
For instance, just one nearby polluting factory added nearly 1 ng/mL of PFOS—a toxic PFAS chemical—to people’s plasma, and low food access bumped levels even higher.
It’s alarming, but here’s the good news: armed with this knowledge, we can push for cleaner water, stronger regulations, and healthier communities. This is fixable if we act now! Read the study here.
PFAS-free cookware I’ve been using and loving
Speaking of PFAS, most nonstick pans today contain them, such as PTFE (i.e. Teflon). Our Place cookware is not only beautiful, but made without these chemicals which are under increasing global scrutiny for their impact on the environment and out health.
Our Place is leading the charge by offering the most durable, toxin-free ceramic coatings to ensure a healthy and safe cooking experience. Not only are these better for your health, but the products are designed to be real show-stoppers in the kitchen.
Upgrade to Our Place today and say goodbye to forever chemicals in your kitchen — or at least in your cookware. To take advantage of a special discount, click here and enter code MAX at checkout to receive 10 percent off site-wide.
Colostrum is all the rage—this is my favorite brand
I’m always looking for ways to strengthen my immunity and improve my fitness. I’ve been on the ARMRA train since having its MD founder on my podcast, and I can understand why so many people are loving it!
ARMRA is a concentrate of bovine colostrum that harnesses over 200 bioactive compounds which may help to strengthen your immune barriers. It’s the best tasting colostrum I’ve tried, and some studies suggest that colostrum may help improve endurance, decrease recovery time after intense exercise, and support lean muscle mass (for a peer-reviewed rundown on colostrum and exercise performance, check out this paper)!
The best part? ARMRA is sustainably sourced and it’s an actual food, not just a supplement. I love mixing it with cold liquids or even dry scooping it into my mouth for a quick boost. If you’d like to give it a shot, you can get 30 percent off your first subscription order by going to tryarmra.com/GENIUS or entering GENIUS at checkout.
The truth about industrial seed oils from a nutrition scientist
Chris Masterjohn is a nutrition scientist who recently published a detailed X thread examining the controversial role of seed oils—such as soybean and safflower oil—in health, particularly their connection to heart disease and cancer.
Seed oils were widely promoted in the 1980s as healthier alternatives to animal fats and tropical oils, based on government-backed campaigns and early research. However, Masterjohn critiques these studies for flaws like “healthy user bias,” lack of randomization, and unaccounted factors like the protective role of vitamin E against lipid peroxidation.
Recent data highlights the magnitude of this issue: Americans now consume an average of 3 cups of soybean oil per week, based on per capita data, illustrating how deeply seed oils have infiltrated modern diets.
Masterjohn points out that long-term randomized controlled trials suggest seed oils may initially reduce heart disease risk but over time increase cancer risk and total mortality, particularly in older populations.
He calls for more rigorous research into the long-term effects of seed oils and their role in oxidative stress, offering a critical perspective on how these oils may impact public health. I highly recommend reading his thread here.
See more here ChrisMasterjohn
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http://www.paulstramer.net/2024/12/just-when-you-thought-things-couldnt.html?m=1
Just When You Thought…. Things Couldn’t Get Any Worse
By Anna Von Reitz
As bloated, mercenary, corrupt and often evil as our government is, take in the view from the shores of England:
https://citizenwatchreport.com/uk-pays-wind-farms-1-3-billion-to-shut-down-when-its-windy/
First they give the public’s money away to build wind farms, then, they pay their cronies not to produce electricity. Just like they pay farmers not to produce food.
Then follow up with this, our own people having to bear the brunt of collecting soil samples in the Hurricane Helene Disaster Area and pay for independent laboratory analysis to determine just HOW polluted their land and water are, and by what pollutants?
The results? Unimaginable environmental contamination and decades of remediation to come before entire river drainages and adjoining lands are safe to live on and grow food again.
We finally know what the cloying, sweet, nauseating “strange smell” is: gaseous hydrogen sulfide.
70% of the soil in many locations is officially dead, so polluted that the soil cannot support life.
Barium, Strontium, Chromium, Lead, Mercury, Radium 226 and Radium 228, plus over 150 man-made chemical pollutants.
The numbers are over the moon for heavy metals, radioactive isotopes, and noxious gases and these samples were taken weeks after the main storm damage. So the sources of the pollution, which are yet to be determined, are still active and still pouring into the aquifers.
The official “news story” is that only around 200 people died, when thousands of Americans perished and entire towns disappeared.
If the Mainstream Media in this country was worth spit, don’t you think all this would be reported on? Billions of dollars of property damage? Long term, widespread environmental contamination disaster impacting multiple States? Hundreds of thousands of people and ecosystems at risk? Thousands dead? Unidentifiable and still unidentified black helicopters with LIDAR capability flying slowing up and down the water courses after dark?
These birds were observed by thousands of people, touching down and recovering something off the ground. What? Transmitters that guided the path of the storm? Military? National Guard? Black Rock?
Why is anyone wasting their time and money listening to CBS, CNN, NBC — any of them?
People must enjoy listening to the voice-over actors trying to rush through the long, long list of side-effects for every patent medicine these criminals are pushing.
Mike Thompson, Speaker of the U.S. House, instead of immediately reallocating funds for North Carolina and Tennessee, did nothing. He sat on both thumbs— and now, people in the higher elevations of these States are facing freezing temperatures without help.
What the floods didn’t ruin, the pollution is ruining. And the victims are left hanging.
So who is responsible for the pollution we are seeing and recording? Where’s the EPA when you need them?
January is coming, but that’s a long month of cold nights away. What can you do right now? Contact Samaritan’s Purse or Salvation Army, two of the reliable service organizations that are still on the ground. If you are an ASN or ASC in another State, contact members of The North Carolina Assembly. Network, network, network!
Americans can write to their employees in the U.S. Congress and to Governor Cooper and ask the hard questions. Might as well write to Donald Trump as well. We don’t vote for them, but we employ them.
So give them hell.
They have illegally latched onto our assets under false pretenses. Time for them to start obeying the Law of the Land and Contract Law and the stipulations of their service contracts.
Time they start hearing the voices of all the purported “donors” of the public trusts.
There’s a young girl tonight in West Virginia, living with her Grandmother, who is my age and doesn’t know her very well. Both the girl’s parents are dead, swept away in the flood. Her home is gone, too. By a miracle, the family dog survived and is her only comfort now. She doesn’t talk much. Or smile.
The rest of her life will be scarred by this. Her life and her opportunities will be very different now. Her sense of security, her trust in love, will never be the same. Her Grandmother tries, but the numbers don’t lie. For the moment, she’s safe. If she’s lucky, her Grandma will live another ten years, and she will be able to grow up and find her feet.
Then, she will be like another girl from West Virginia that I know, who has no close family of her own. She’s all grown up now. Lives alone with her dog. And she is missing her adopted family in Alaska.
What we can do is always the same. We can love. We can reach out. We can think. We can act. We can give the Salvation Army a donation for Tennessee or any of the other States. We can send extra winter coats to our State Assembly in North Carolina. We can pray. We can remember and we can care.
And we can hold the politicians’ feet first to the fire— as their employers.
Granna
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Carbon Bigfoot
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We chemical engineers have been working on processes to neutralize forever chemicals. Here is one example:
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ftsa&q=how+to+get+rid+of+forever+chemicals&atb=v286-1&iax=videos&ia=videos&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DbrcMEttXgUE
Here’s another: https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ftsa&q=how+to+get+rid+of+forever+chemicals&atb=v286-1&iax=videos&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DvdaXW4hOe-k&ia=videos
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Carbon Bigfoot
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News release from AI ChE CEP Magazine:
A new combination of reactions can fully defluorinate per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) — commonly known as forever chemicals — from fire suppressant foams.
PFAS are a suite of chemicals containing carbon-fluorine bonds, which are extremely resistant to breakage. The properties of these bonds make PFAS a common candidate for high-heat applications, ranging from coating cooking pans to making fire suppressant sprays for fuel conflagrations. But these chemicals also fail to degrade in the environment, and can build up in soil, water, and food.
A 2015 study published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health found PFAS in the blood of 97% of Americans. Animal studies have linked PFAS to liver damage, cancer risk, birth defects, and damage to the immune system.
Breaking down PFAS is a challenge both because of the strength of carbon-fluorine bonds and because the chemicals are often found contaminating water or in a mix of other chemicals, such as in fire suppressant foam, says Yang Yang, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Clarkson Univ. “You need to selectively pick the molecule out and then destroy it,” Yang says.
What’s more, firefighting foams — known as aqueous film-forming foams (AFFFs) — are difficult to work with, due to their propensity to balloon into masses of bubbles at the slightest agitation. Yang and his colleagues wanted to tackle this challenge and find a way to successfully break down these foams, which are…
The rest is pay-walled or if you are an AI ChE member you can access.
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