This is troubling, but what it people had been forced to actually scrub their pans, or occasionally get wet in the rain? Those outcomes would truly be unbearable, and we can't let the march of progress by stymied by a few minor problems.
Wikipedia has a history of how lead was known to cause problems, dating back to antiquity. Some excerpts:
> Dioscorides, a Greek physician who lived in the 1st century AD, wrote that lead makes the mind "give way".[121][274]
> Lead poisoning from rum was also noted in Boston.[291] Benjamin Franklin suspected lead to be a risk in 1786
> The first legislation in the UK to limit pottery workers' exposure to lead was included in the Factories Act Extension Act in 1864, with further introduced in 1899. William James Furnival (1853–1928), research ceramist of City & Guilds London Institute, appeared before Parliament in 1901 and presented a decade's evidence to convince the nation's leaders to remove lead completely from the British ceramic industry.
I don't know much about forever chemicals. Is there the same level of evidence as we had for lead?
timr · 32s ago
> I don't know much about forever chemicals. Is there the same level of evidence as we had for lead?
No. We have observational data in humans (which is problematic, since PFAS contamination tends to correlate with population), and animal models, mostly in non-mammalian species.
tokai · 14m ago
Leaded gas was never fine. GM avoided using the word lead about their tetraethyllead product because everyone knew lead was problematic. Lies and lobbying assured that they knowingly could go ahead and poison the whole world.
lenerdenator · 3m ago
It was pretty obvious from the get-go that leaded gas was an absolutely horrible idea, but this was before the mass-media age, so people didn't know that people who worked at the tetraethyl lead plant were going mad so often that it became known as the "looney gas building".[0]
Doses make the poisons, and apparently the dose for some of these chemicals is much, much higher than tetraethyl lead.
Also, apparently the molecular diagram for TEL sorta looks like a hackenkreuz. How appropriate.
Beers were only tested in areas with bad water quality.
Bender · 38m ago
Brewers are supposed to have really good filtration FWIW. [1] If particles are showing up in beer then something has gone horribly wrong as in, someone is being incredibly cheap. [2]
Which of the filtration methods on that list do you believe should be capable of filtering PFAS, the "forever chemicals" in question?
Bender · 5m ago
I linked them.
robthebrew · 12m ago
in a microbrewery? You are kidding.
Bender · 9m ago
in a microbrewery? You are kidding.
I am not. The level of filtration required to remove chemicals is simple. It's a cost, but that cost can be moved to the customers and the beer can be promoted as "The Only Safe MicroBrew In {insert_state}". Artesian waters are a massive money maker. Apply the same sales logic to the beer. If anything I would taunt all the other micro-brewers and laugh all the way to the bank.
notherhack · 25m ago
And by "95%" they mean 22 out of 23 beers tested.
catlikesshrimp · 27m ago
"Average ∑PFAS concentrations of Criteria 3 and 4 beers (popular national and international beers) were similar to the average ∑PFAS concentrations of many Criteria 1 and 2 beer"
"The test subjects were produced by U.S. brewers in areas with documented water system contamination, plus popular domestic and international beers from larger companies with unknown water sources."
If you are seriously worried about PFAS in your beer, go to the ACS Journal article - https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.4c11265 - which is pretty readable. That will give you some good ideas of which breweries might best be avoided for now.
> The researchers found a strong correlation between PFAS concentrations in municipal drinking water and levels in locally brewed beer -- a phenomenon that Hoponick Redmon and colleagues say has not yet been studied in U.S. retail beer. They found PFAS in 95% of the beers they tested.
(Being in the tap water, I'd figure it's also in locally-bottled water and soft drinks and such.)
FWIW - all the study's authors are with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RTI_International They officially claimed no conflicts of interest. But if they're drinking local beers anywhere near RTI's HQ - yeah, ample reason to want things fixed.
robthebrew · 14m ago
beer brewers cannot be held responsible for municipal water issues.
mandeepj · 12m ago
Now in a few days, another study will come out saying no chemicals found. It’s a cycle.
whatamidoingyo · 4m ago
Or something like "Drinking One Beer a Day Can Extend Your Life by 30 Years"
https://pubs.acs.org/cms/10.1021/acs.est.4c11265/asset/image...
Leaded gas was fine for a looong time, and as an individual you can't really tell it's bad, once you zoom out and look at statistics it's not that good: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/lead-gasoline-tie...
> Dioscorides, a Greek physician who lived in the 1st century AD, wrote that lead makes the mind "give way".[121][274]
> Lead poisoning from rum was also noted in Boston.[291] Benjamin Franklin suspected lead to be a risk in 1786
> The first legislation in the UK to limit pottery workers' exposure to lead was included in the Factories Act Extension Act in 1864, with further introduced in 1899. William James Furnival (1853–1928), research ceramist of City & Guilds London Institute, appeared before Parliament in 1901 and presented a decade's evidence to convince the nation's leaders to remove lead completely from the British ceramic industry.
I don't know much about forever chemicals. Is there the same level of evidence as we had for lead?
No. We have observational data in humans (which is problematic, since PFAS contamination tends to correlate with population), and animal models, mostly in non-mammalian species.
Doses make the poisons, and apparently the dose for some of these chemicals is much, much higher than tetraethyl lead.
Also, apparently the molecular diagram for TEL sorta looks like a hackenkreuz. How appropriate.
[0]https://www.wired.com/2013/01/looney-gas-and-lead-poisoning-...
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[1] - https://www.beer-brewing.com/beer_brewing/beer_brewing_water...
[2] - https://www.ewg.org/research/getting-forever-chemicals-out-d...
I am not. The level of filtration required to remove chemicals is simple. It's a cost, but that cost can be moved to the customers and the beer can be promoted as "The Only Safe MicroBrew In {insert_state}". Artesian waters are a massive money maker. Apply the same sales logic to the beer. If anything I would taunt all the other micro-brewers and laugh all the way to the bank.
A link to the source of the information can be found in TFA https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.4c11265
Here's the study map: https://pubs.acs.org/cms/10.1021/acs.est.4c11265/asset/image...
And here's the 2024 presidential election map: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f7/El...
> The researchers found a strong correlation between PFAS concentrations in municipal drinking water and levels in locally brewed beer -- a phenomenon that Hoponick Redmon and colleagues say has not yet been studied in U.S. retail beer. They found PFAS in 95% of the beers they tested.
(Being in the tap water, I'd figure it's also in locally-bottled water and soft drinks and such.)
FWIW - all the study's authors are with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RTI_International They officially claimed no conflicts of interest. But if they're drinking local beers anywhere near RTI's HQ - yeah, ample reason to want things fixed.