https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milorganite
"Since its inception, over four million metric tons of Milorganite have been sold"
Teflon was trademarked in 1945:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polytetrafluoroethylene
Everything alive has likely been poisoned, including children and pets. Certain diseases have been on the rise for a long time, this might be part of the explanation for why. It sounds like the solution will be to stop manufacturing PFOS and related chemicals until there is a scalable way to destroy it and then control its use and destruction, find a way to get it out of people, and probably dilute it where it is found in the environment (it is not possible to chemically process 1/5 of all the soil on agricultural lands. Is it in water tables?) Then hope what remains doesn't do too much damage. Milorganite is only sold in the US so perhaps only the US is contaminated, though I'd suspect the EU may have adopted similar practices. Possibly the US will have to outsource a lot of food production for a long time, though a lot is already outsourced.
At least in Maine, they are siting solar on contaminated farmland in order to eek some use out of contaminated land that cannot be used for agriculture within the next 30 years.
https://www.ecos.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/PFAS-in-Bios... ("PFAS in Biosolids: A Review of State Efforts & Opportunities for Action")
It’s possible this land is permanently tainted for agricultural use, but too early to assume, as PFAS remediation technology might advance quickly.
> but they can require growing something on the land to slowly take up the PFAS, and this is not compatible with using the land as a solar farm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agrivoltaics is a potential implementation if bioremediation proves both feasible and scalable. Perhaps the land is ready to go back into ag use if remediation can be performed in parallel with the thirty year lifespan I mentioned. If not, it carries on as solar production.
The application requires a small, inert molecule, which PFOA was, in spades. They simply made a slightly different small molecule that was almost as inert.
Small is a problem because it becomes mobile. Inert is a problem because it doesn't easily break down. Now, instead of having one "forever chemical" we have a host of them in the environment.
Not sure what the right answer is and whether we are actually better off as a result of all that work.
Also: weird (suspect?) that they didn't disclose the exact identity. I guess if you have the equipment it takes about an hour to run a gc/ms, are they just hoping to not scare people by saying upfront "it's another polyfluorinated thing"?
Its pretty amazing what regulators meant to protect the public allow in and on our food, even with labels like "organic."
https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news-release/2023/06/maine...
and to some herbicides:
https://pfasproject.com/2021/03/05/pfas-in-pesticides-a-prob...
Do you have a reference? This sounds terribly fascinating.
Blissful ignorance was nice while it lasted.
"How 3M Discovered, Then Concealed, the Dangers of Forever Chemicals"
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/05/27/3m-forever-che...
"Merchants of Poison: How Monsanto Sold the World on a Toxic Pesticide" https://foe.org/resources/merchants-of-poison/
Glyphosate cause other issue, it isn't a neurotoxic (most pesticids are, that's why weed and tobacco were used as natural pesticids before chemistry). It only work as a chlorophylia suppressor, an EDC for plants if i may (it's not really, but close enough). In small quantities, it does not seems to have any effect on human hormones. But while the half-life is "only" a few months, the quantities used (especially in gardening and arboriculture) mean the human exposition is stronger than in tests, but also that huge amount are washed into rivers where it kills plant life and ultimately fishes.
Also it push non-productive GMO, and in my opinion, non-productive GMO (basically more water efficient plants, stuff like golden rice) should be avoided.
Learning to coat steel pans in oil to make them non-stick-ish has been a great help.
Doesn't this involve cooking oil into harmful polymers?
There is a right way to do it though, which is to compost what's compostable, grow good soil using it, then test it thoroughly for PFAS, heavy metals, pharmaceuticals, etc., and only then consider using it if all tests pass. Each batch has to be tested.
I take metformin. This drug is mostly excreted in feces. The dry mass of feces might be 1% metformin for someone taking typical doses. The drug does break down in the environment, but only slowly.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/jun/02/water-sy...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221334372...
Granted, this particular chemical partitions into water, not the solids, so it isn't the best example here.
