Researchers found low concentrations of so-called forever chemicals in various “eco-friendly” straws, raising doubts about whether they’re an appropriate alternative.
Researchers found low concentrations of so-called forever chemicals in various “eco-friendly” straws, raising doubts about whether they’re an appropriate alternative.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Scientists in Belgium recently tested dozens of straws from supermarkets, retail stores and fast-food restaurants in the country, and found that the majority contained PFAS — a family of synthetic chemicals used in the manufacture of consumer products because they can resist stains, grease and water.
Thimo Groffen, an author of the new study and environmental scientist at the University of Antwerp, said it’s not clear whether the manufacturers of the straws he analyzed are intentionally adding PFAS as a waterproof coating.
Graham Peaslee, who studies PFAS at the University of Notre Dame and was not involved in the new research, said it’s possible manufacturers aren’t testing for the chemicals in their own products.
Keith Vorst, director of the Polymer and Food Protection Consortium at Iowa State University, said some of the straws in the study exceeded the proposed EPA concentrations for water.
Various states, including California, Colorado, New York and Oregon, have banned plastic straws from food establishments in the last five years, and chains like Starbucks have phased them out.
The main reason is that the straws generally can’t be recycled, so they wind up in landfills, get burned in incinerators or become litter that contaminates oceans, rivers, lakes and streams.
The original article contains 958 words, the summary contains 203 words. Saved 79%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
sigh We can’t do anything right, can we?
This bot is terrible and I wish it would be banned. It’s basically just randomly selects snippets and it leaves out very important details.
The actual article says that the concentrations are very low and they don’t even know if the manufacturer is intentionally putting them there or if they’re finding their way in from other sources during manufacture. Also says the bamboo straws may have been grown in soil containing PFAS.
They even found PFAS on most of the glass straws.
It’s concerning sure but the levels are so low that straws are the least of our concern when it comes to PFAS exposure.
It no longer uses ChatGPT for some reason, the algorithm it’s using now seems to be picking what it thinks is most important (turns out in an article of 1k words, it’s chosen the opening, introductions of important-sounding people, and a summary)
It could benefit from a delete-on-many-downvotes like system, where that also notifies a human reviewer to look at the article, ultimately with the aim of improving the summarisation algorithm.
I am biased in the sense that I like the bot, especially its ability to retrieve paywalled articles and negate the need to see cookie popups by visiting the site etc. With this article though it’s blatantly missed the mark.
Thanks for the extra info!
It’s important to keep in mind that 75% of plastic straws also contain PFAS.
The truth is, the PFAS stuff is independent of the main material of the straw* (yeah there’s an asterisk, sec on that). It just so happens that PFAS are really good when we need to have a material not stick to food stuff too well and become unhygienic during its intended use time.
*: Straws from glass and metal are an exception because those materials naturally do not bind well to grease, liquids and stains. They don’t need an extra PFAS coating. But plastic, paper, bamboo, they virtually all do.
That is to say, I would split the problem: We got the main material part done now, we’re no longer using plastic for it. Now to get the coating done and use something that degrades very quickly.
What about just plain beeswax?
Absolutely not someone in that or any adjacent industry, so I would not know whether that’s a usable solution. Could work, I mean it is used for gummi bears. But there might also be a thing about how it only lasts in closed packs I would imagine, and unlike gummi bears - which are gone ~11,5 seconds after opening a pack - straws are often kept around for months after a few have been used. No clue. There’s probably a better solution than PFAS coating though, granted.
Gotcha gotcha. Thanks for the extra info!