Forever chemicals are everywhere
Nonstick cookware, grease-resistant food packaging, waterproof clothing—these products help make our daily lives less messy, but the convenience comes at a cost. We now know that chemicals lurking inside consumer goods like these can be toxic at extremely low parts per trillion levels and pose significant risks to your health. The culprits are highly fluorinated chemicals called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS for short, a broad category of manmade compounds that are nearly indestructible, earning them the name “forever chemicals.”
PFAS are practically impossible to avoid. Textiles are saturated with the chemicals to make them stain- and moisture-resistant. Sealant tape, ski wax, and floor wax use them as waterproofing agents; in machinery, they’re used to reduce gear friction. PFAS are found in our homes, our offices, our supermarkets—practically everywhere.
Tips to Reduce PFAS in Your Life
Prevalent though PFAS may be, experts say we should minimize our use of and exposure to them. Here are steps you can take now to safeguard yourself and your loved ones.
Test your water to find out if it’s contaminated. Consult experts for choosing the right filters or water treatment units to reduce PFAS in your water. Note that these units usually require regular maintenance.
Don’t use nonstick cookware, Gore-Tex clothing, personal care products with “PTFE” or “fluoro” ingredients, or textiles with stain-resistant treatments, like Scotchgard. In general, avoid buying items that are "waterproof," “water-resistant,” or “stain-resistant” unless absolutely necessary.
Minimize PFAS exposure among children (who are especially susceptible to these chemicals' dangers) by avoiding carpets and upholstery that were treated to be stain or water resistant.
Replace nonstick cookware with stainless steel, cast-iron, glass, or ceramic alternatives.
Avoid ordering or heating up food that is wrapped in grease-resistant packaging. However, starting in 2020, compostable packaging that is BPI certified no longer contains PFAS.
Make popcorn on the stovetop instead of in PFAS-treated microwave bags.
The Science Explained
PFAS is dangerous for three crucial reasons. First, the structure of PFAS means they resist breakdown in the environment and in our bodies. Second, PFAS move relatively quickly through the environment, making their contamination hard to contain. Third, for some PFAS, even extremely low levels of exposure can negatively impact our health.
PFAS that enter the body through the water we drink, foods we eat, and products we use every day can linger there for years before they are eventually flushed out. For years, bad-actor PFAS were used in food containers like pizza boxes, microwave popcorn bags, takeout containers, and other food packaging to repel grease, and they could leach into the food.
These chemicals are not just all around us but actually inside us, too. PFAS were detected in the breast milk, umbilical cord blood, or bloodstreams of 98 percent of participants in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. The wide range of health woes associated with some PFAS in animal and human studies includes cancer (kidney and testicular), hormone malfunction, liver and thyroid problems, immune system dysfunction, reproductive harm, and abnormal fetal development.
