PFAS are everywhere and have been linked to negative health effects:
A team of scientists may have found a safe and affordable way to destroy "forever chemicals." PFAS, or perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are found in many household items, including non-stick Teflon pans and dental floss. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, at least 12,000 such substances exist today. They all share one common feature between them: a carbon-fluorine backbone that is one of the strongest known bonds in organic chemistry. It's what gives PFAS-treated cookware its non-stick quality. However, that same characteristic can make those substances harmful to humans.
Since they're so durable from a molecular perspective, PFAS can stay in soil and water for generations. [...]
In a study published Thursday in the journal Science, a group of chemists from UCLA, Northwestern University and China found that a mixture of sodium hydroxide, a chemical used in lye, and an organic solvent called dimethyl sulfoxide was effective at breaking down a large subgroup of PFAS known as perfluoro carboxylic acids or PFCAs. When lead author Brittany Trang heated the mixture between 175 and 250 degrees Fahrenheit (about 79 to 121 degrees Celsius), it began breaking down the bonds between the PFAS molecules. After a few days, the mixture can even reduce any fluorine byproducts into harmless molecules. The sodium hydroxide is part of what makes the mixture so potent. It bonds with PFAS molecules after the dimethyl sulfoxide softens them and hastens their breakdown.
Professor William Dichtel, one of the study's co-authors, told The New York Times there's a lot of work to be done before the solution works outside the lab.There's also the enormity of the problem. [...]
I suppose it is affordable once you have accumulated the PFAS first.
Journal Reference:
Brittany Trang, Yuli Li, Xiao-Song Xue, et al., Low-temperature mineralization of perfluorocarboxylic acids, Science, 377, 2022. DOI: 10.1126/science.abm8868
(Score: -1, Troll) by Vasabhandu on Monday August 29 2022, @07:29AM
Not as easy as it was to create them in the first place.
Much like how SoylentNews championed freeze peaches, but found it difficult to live with the principle, so the killed some soylentils, for the greater good and more plastics.
(Score: 2) by inertnet on Monday August 29 2022, @10:24AM (6 children)
Heating the mixture for several days is affordable, with current bloated energy prices?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Immerman on Monday August 29 2022, @12:34PM (3 children)
That's my thought.
And before you heat them you have to collect them - used in small amounts on everything from food wrappers to upholstery. What, are you going to heat the entire effing dump for a few days?
I suppose it might be affordable if you're talking lab samples or disposal of hazardous waste, but for removing it from our trash stream? Much less the huge and growing amount in the ambient environment? Not hardly.
Remind me again why it's still legal to use this shit? There is still no realistic way to get rid of it, and the evidence of health risks just keeps piling up.
Here's an idea - instead of banning every effing substance, and every recyclable manufacturing method, how about we just add a recycling tax to every item? An independent group analyzes your product to estimate the net cost to completely recycle it from within the waste stream, including destroying all known or suspected long-term toxic substances - and manufacturers pay that much as a tax on every item you sell.
Lets establish an economic incentive to maximize the end-of-life value of *everything* we manufacture, and encourage our society back towards sustainable circular resource management rather than the existing parade of coatings, laminates, and mixtures that aren't realistically suited to anything other than a landfill
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 29 2022, @05:29PM (2 children)
Great idea.
Does your state have a container deposit law? If not, I'd suggest working on that as a good first goal and stepping stone to something more broad.
Here (NY) it's $.05 on most drinks bottles, redeemed when the bottle is returned. Not only has it taken a lot of recyclables out of the waste stream, there is very little broken glass on our roads. When I go to other states without the bottle bill, the roads look like death to my bicycle tires...
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Immerman on Monday August 29 2022, @06:02PM (1 child)
Sadly such laws are almost entirely ineffective, and were mostly popularized as part of the marketing campaign to greenwash plastics as environmentalism was gaining popularity.
I mean, first off - obviously (hope) if you're talking plastic containers, it's mostly pointless. Yeah, you could theoretically recycle it, but it's just not cost effective, so at best it ends up in a clean incinerator, or more likely it's just taken a particularly expensive route to the landfill.
Glass recycling is good - cuts down on glass shards in your feet, and environmentally devastating sand mining. But realistically, even with the deposits only a small percentage of people will actually recycle - they have more immediately important things to focus their time and attention on.
And that's where the greenwashing comes in - unless you've got an especially enlightened population, or set the deposit at something like $1, most "recyclables" are still going to end up in the trash. BUT, since you've reframed the problem as "individuals aren't recycling" rather than " manufacturers are producing wasteful, polluting packaging", the manufacturers get to completely avoid any responsibility for the problem they have created.
If you want to actually have the market solve a problem you need to include the cost of fixing the problem up front, so that it's paid for at point of first sale, where consumers will actually factor that cost into their purchasing decisions.
If your glass bottle has a $0.50 deposit to cover the average expected cost of cleaning up the broken shards, while the plastic bottle has a $3 deposit to cover the fact that it can't even be meaningfully recycled, and the aluminum can $0.10 because it's so light and profitable to recycle, *then* you'll start seeing people change behaviors.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 29 2022, @08:42PM
According to this page, https://www.epa.gov/facts-and-figures-about-materials-waste-and-recycling/plastics-material-specific-data [epa.gov] there is quite a bit of plastic bottle recycling happening. Not enough, but the amount is growing--see plot at the bottom of the page.
Meanwhile, this bottle bill advocacy page (if you believe it), claims that container deposits greatly increase the amount of plastic collected for recycling, https://www.bottlebill.org/index.php/about-bottle-bills/what-is-a-bottle-bill [bottlebill.org] It also has a little history of drinks bottles including this gem:
The cartoon next to that quote is two guys fishing in a dinghy and tossing their beer cans in the lake!
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Monday August 29 2022, @02:52PM
That's likely the cheap part of the process. The actual expense is collecting the chemicals to be disposed of after they've already made their way into the environment.
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Monday August 29 2022, @04:26PM
It is more affordable than storing the chemicals. This is not about cleaning up the environment, but rather preventing discharging more chemicals. If you are creating teflon coated cookware, you need to treat your waste streams, and this technique provides an alternative to dilution or forever storage.
(Score: 2) by HammeredGlass on Monday August 29 2022, @02:27PM (3 children)
this is the question I need answered
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 29 2022, @02:34PM (1 child)
It depends what you are flossing.
(Score: 2) by HammeredGlass on Monday August 29 2022, @09:21PM
no, bad zoomer
not a dance
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 29 2022, @05:36PM
Mine seems pretty safe, it's waxed, pretty sure the fiber is nylon (??)
The newer ribbon of pure white plastic is the one that I believe is fluorocarbons. My dentist has been giving out free samples of "Glide" brand for years, but it's not all that strong, easy to stretch and break. Feels slick, like the Teflon tape used on threaded plumbing connections.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by openlyretro on Monday August 29 2022, @04:52PM (2 children)
Whatever solution arises for the cleanup of PFAS, heavy industry and other corporations must be held accountable for polluting, and the new solutions integrated into their manufacturing processes. And then validated to make sure the cleaning process is working as intended.
Regarding blame and responsibility, for example volunteers (and volunteer organizations) are cleaning up the incredible volumes of plastic garbage floating in the ocean, but little is being done to hold manufacturers accountable for environmental waste. Essentially blaming consumer behavior, and individuals, for the problem. Like "It's not garbage that pollutes, people pollute."
Very glad a solution is in the works for this type of toxic waste. Let's just hope it doesn't enable more pollution, because now a solution exists and "pollution doesn't matter anymore because it can be cleaned up."
(Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Tuesday August 30 2022, @10:07AM (1 child)
I personally find the behavior of a larger part of the population simply appaling, throwing their trash around as they see fit, not feeling guilty when called out. This is why we cannot have nice things (i.e. plastics). I agree that materials have to have a known live cycle before being put into circulation. When accumlating they have to be banned. Otherwise it is a political decision how to steer the flow of material (who pays for disposal). I do not see how corporate bashing comes in here.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 30 2022, @05:15PM
> This is why we cannot have nice things (i.e. plastics).
This. For example, polypropylene (coded "5 PP" in the USA recycling scheme) seems to me to make excellent food containers. It's also reportedly very easy to recycle, provided the stream does not contain other kinds of plastics. This is the sticky bit, it seems that no one recycles 5 PP because people can't be bothered to sort correctly. This even includes specific attempts to collect 5 PP only--at one point I could drop off at Whole Foods, but they quit taking it because the bin was full of other/contaminant plastics.