1. Why you/penguins should care about this: PFAS suppress immune function and reduce reproductive success in birds [1]. They transfer from mothers to eggs and disrupt thyroid hormones and immune organ development in avian embryos [2]. In humans, IARC classified PFOA as a Group 1 carcinogen in 2023, which means there is the highest classification (i.e. International Agency for Research on Cancer is convinced PFAS causes cancer). A 2x increase in serum PFAS is associated with a 49% drop in vaccine antibody levels in children [3]. These are the same compounds showing up in >90% of penguin samples in remote Patagonia. They don't break down. They bioaccumulate up the food chain. And the "safer replacements" like GenX are clearly reaching the ends of the earth too. This is bad for penguins and for people.
2. This is a problem I'm taking seriously. My startup, NeutraOat (neutraoat.com) is developing a modified oat fiber that selectively binds PFAS and plasticizers in the GI tract without stripping nutrients like charcoal does. It will also remove PFAS from the blood. Early-stage, binding data is promising. Clinical trial happening in ~6-9 months. Website has our early data and a pre-order signup form.
Interesting, best of luck with this, microplastics really are the modern lead.
You said it removes them from the blood: does the body dump microplastics in the gut for your product to remove them from the blood or how does it work (if you can answer due to proprietary reasons)?
Are saunas and blood donations not also effective for this?
PFAS (and, to a lesser extent, plasticizers) circulate from the blood to the gut ~5 times per day through enterohepatic circulation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterohepatic_circulation). This is why cholestyramine was shown to be effective at reducing serum PFAS by up to 60% in a Swedish trial.
Blood donations are also somewhat effective, saunas less so. Also, to be clear, PFAS are very different from microplastics. PFAS are the Teflon chemical.
Teflon is PTFE, which is fully fluorinated but is also very much a plastic: it’s a highly unreactive solid at reasonable temperatures (which sadly do not include temperatures commonly encountered on stoves).
By “the Teflon chemical” are you perhaps referring to the various nasty liquid, water-soluble surfactants commonly used in factories that make or process PTFE? Those include PFOA, PFOS, and the newer and not obviously any safer “GenX” compounds.
Yes, they are referring to PFOA/PFOS; they're talking about PFAS which is the broad class of chemical compounds that includes PFOA/PFAS. And PFAS are not plastics.
>Blood donations are also somewhat effective, saunas less so. Also, to be clear, PFAS are very different from microplastics. PFAS are the Teflon chemical.
I wonder if there's a safe way to equip people to just do simple bloodletting if they have high exposure to PFAS. I mean obviously it's better to donate, even in that case, given the steady state of most blood banks. But it's still a bit of a pain in the ass.
It's a common misconception, but microplastics and forever-chemicals (PFAS) are not the same thing. They're two similar, but distinct pollutants.
> Are saunas and blood donations not also effective for this?
Yes, plasma & blood donations are good at reducing PFAS blood concentration. Some(?) firefighting foam contains PFAS, so they tend to have high blood concentrations. Donations have shown to significantly reduce that: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8994130/
All the older firefighting foam did. Some of the new stuff does. There's also some amount of "poisoning" from the old equipment to the new foam.
Unfortunately, PFAS sticks around forever, so everywhere that the old firefighting foam was deployed (e.g. air force bases) still has high levels of PFAS contamination.
There was a scare in 2024 where high levels of PFAS were found in the water supply in the Blue Mountains region of NSW. It took months, but they traced it to a single fire in 1992 where foam was deployed. Scary stuff.
Blood donation helps the donor, but what happens to the recipient? Would it not be possible to accumulate PFAS in your blood stream by receiving PFAS-concentrate blood? Is it that simple?
Honestly, the way the two are conflated is quite annoying. You should be terrified of PFAS. You should be mildly worried about microplastics, mostly because there isn't enough research on the effects yet.
In PFAS's defense, we really needed to poison the whole planet. Otherwise people would have occasionally needed to get wet in the rain, or perhaps scrub their pots and pans. Really, these extremely minor conveniences are worth the devastating cost to ours and future generations.
To people that see this: yes, cast iron is as non-stick as teflon, but you are generally told not to soak or put it in the dishwasher. I don't think you're supposed to put teflon in the dishwasher, but people do.
Regardless, the main thing about cast iron is to use it all the time. If you really, truly use cast iron all the time, it will never have food stick to it, you'll never need to "scrub" it. Hot water in the pan, let it sit for 10 seconds, scour with a normal dishes brush or whatever you use, put the pan on the stove, heat till there's no water, hit quickly with an oil spray. Notice i didn't mention soap. It takes EXACTLY the same amount of time as cleaning an older teflon pan, less the heating part. I just look at the heating as sterilization, and i don't worry about it.
I have 3 induction hobs, i switched to 100% cast iron and stainless cookware, and i'm happy. I just got tired of being upset about flakes/damage to my cookware from other people using it. MIL gave me a set of lodge she didn't want, plus i had 3 pans from ages ago that we re-seasoned and started using. Cast iron griddle, cast iron flat weight.
If my arthritis gets so bad i can't lift the pans at all, i might consider carbon steel or something, but i haven't used it yet. I'm better at cooking on cast iron than stainless, but i can make stainless work, too; it's just more hands-on than cast iron or teflon.
I've used peanut, rapeseed, olive, coconut, avocado oils; butter, bacon and other rendered fat. All work fine, although butter i'd put some other oil in with it. I only use avocado, peanut, olive, and bacon, in that order these days because of diet and other concerns.
To go down the rabbit hole of cast iron...which seemingly is not that deep.
We use cast iron daily, but I have been unable to find any health studies that looked at the quasi plastic polymerized fats that make up the cast iron cooking surface. Not even studies to determine what they are exactly. I wouldn't be slightly surprised if it's found that eating the bits of scraped up "seasoning" while cooking leads to cancer or something.
So I think that leaves stainless steel as the ultimate health conscious cooking pan.
aersolizing fats is a breathing hazard, so no matter what, you're putting carcinogens in your body. Campfire? Bad for your health. Meat anyhow bad for your health.
I draw the line at teflon flakes, you draw the line at what apparently is just another type of "quasi plastic"
so many things contain it, like plumbing tape that a plumber might use right in your water supply - to fix a leak leading to your tap :/ and then the ski waxes until recently. it is really strange lots of these products are still sold all over
PTFE plumbers tape is not the cause of people getting PFAS in their bloodstream. The PRIMARY source of PFAS for most people is via the water supply [1][2] and the food supply, directly. The food supply is contaminated because the water supply is contaminated and these compounds bio-accumulate in vegetation that is irrigated with contaminated water and in animals that consume that vegetation or drink that contaminated water. As someone very concerned about this issue and that takes precautions that put me very much in the long-tail of the population, I also still use PTFE plumbers tape when doing home repairs. PTFE/Teflon is not a risk factor as long as it is not exposed to high temperatures (>350F) (and yes that means you should throw out your nonstick cookware and learn how to use cast iron and stainless steel for cooking).
In order to reduce contamination in my home's drinking water, I have a whole-home water filtration that's lab certified to NSF 53 standards (and beyond) to remove PFAS, and then for drinking and cooking usages, I further filter water via a 5-stage RO system that's certified to NSF 58 standards (and beyond). Not just drinking/cooking incurs contamination, water is aerosolized and breathed in while showering as an example. I only cook using bare metal; cast iron, carbon steel, stainless steel, glass and ceramic bakeware. Even with these precautions, I still get PFAS exposure just via the foods I eat, and being exposed in the overall environment (e.g. through rainfall).
Saunas helping with any kind of detox is complete hocum.
Blood donations clearly do.
Microplastics and PFAS aren't synonyms however.
What isn't established is a dose dependant harm from PFAS. Some things are harmful in minute quantities to the point it doesn't matter if you have a lot or a little.
Lead has a clear dose response but a relatively low threshold for noticeable harm. It's not clear what PFAS curve will look like.
I won't restart the linear no threshold flame wars about radiation harm but let's just say it's not always intuitive.
There is plenty of evidence that sauna does in fact help with detox, specifically phthalates. It's not magic or some intrinsic property of sauna though, just sweat.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3504417/
That’s a great idea. Have you compared the effects of your product with non-modified soluble fibers? Afaik, soluble fibers not only from oats but also from vegetables and beans already have solid effects on toxin-binding in their natural state.
He thinks it's bad to inject drugs, rather than managing calories in/out.
I'm not into GLPs, but I could see a reasonable case made for supporting them. For most of the past 50K years, we either had to hunt, walk around, farm, split wood etc. which means burning 500+ calories daily. Now, most of us sit in offices 8 hours a day using 0 calories and 0 muscle, surrounded by calories.
It's not surprising really that the default in this situation is obesity.
My hypothesis is that PFAS and microplastics are responsible for the drop in female fertility, drop in male fertility, drop in testosterone levels, increase in obesity, etc. These chemicals are pervasive in the environment, causing disruptions to the endocrine system that regulates our body. This is why higher elevation areas seem to lag the trends, as they are not getting as much down stream accumulation in the environment. My sister hypothesis GLP-1s are a chemical that is undoing some of that disruption. If what you are doing works, it'll imo be a modern day Norman Borlaug.
I've signed up and look forward to following your success.
Your mission is near and dear to my heart- I grew up on an US Air Force base that is a PFAS superfund site and didn't find out about it until much later in life. Recently I've jumped into research linking PFAS contamination in dog food to canine Addison's disease.
We've been pretty cavalier with PFAS and it's horrifying.
Looking at the studies on the site I’m only seeing comparisons vs placebo and activated charcoal - why not compare to non modified regular beta glucan that is in most oats?
I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I think microplastics, and the chemicals that leach from them, plasticizers, are incredibly serious issues. In fact, my company, NeutraOat (neutraoat.com), is creating a modified oat fiber supplement to trap plasticizers in the gut and remove them from the bloodstream.
On the other hand, as other commenters mention, a lot of the studies on microplastics are sloppily done and the conclusions are overreaching. These toxicology studies are certainly not up to the standard of the safety studies that are run on pharmaceuticals. The question is if they need to be in order for us to take action on microplastics. Personally, I think the risk/reward ratio is now clearly in favor of taking action on microplastics, even if I have some problems with the studies and I'm not as confident as the OP.
I'm tackling part of the issue of food toxin remediation with my new venture, NeutraOat (neutraoat.com). It's a modified oat fiber supplement that selectively traps BPA, PFAS, and plasticizers in the gut and reduces levels in the blood serum.
The funding for this is tough, though. Everyone loves the idea, but it's difficult to find people to fund R&D to make sure the product actually works over brand building and marketing. I've had to be very scrappy. Hopefully this will change in the future as we build momentum and awareness, but for right now it's tooth and nail.
Sounds interesting. I heard about oat's ability to absorb nasty stuff in the gut for awhile. However, in the UK oats are dried out using glyphosate...a known carcinogen!
Feels like modern society makes it nearly impossible to not be exposed to harmful substances...so I hope you're successful.
I'll try some. For a long time I've been wary of organic oats because of concern about mycotoxins. I first thought about this after buying some Tesco non-organic oats that tasted of mould. I thought maybe pesticides reduced that risk and organic oats would be even worse. I later tasted mould in non-organic Sainsburys oats (which I suspect were from the same supplier as the Tesco ones), and then again from non-organic Mornflake oats (which were presumably not from the same supplier because they tasted different). I eventually switched to non-organic Quaker oats, which for several years had no perceptible mould taste, but not so long ago I had a box of Quaker oats that tasted of mould too.
It now occurs to me that the mould could have grown post-harvest, and maybe reliance on herbicides to desiccate crops could encourage a sloppy attitude toward drying. Maybe organic crops actually have lower risk of mycotoxin contamination because the farmers are forced to take more care with moisture levels. I carefully taste a small portion of each new batch, but I don't think taste is a reliable means of detecting mould contamination. It's also possible that mould grew because of improper storage after the oats were packaged, which is made worse by the modern trend of cardboard/paper packaging.
I'm still not confident with any brand, but I like oats too much to stop eating them.
The whole point of glyphosate is that it deteriorates very very quickly, and your oats should contain exactly zero of it. Obviously that's the theory, I'd love someone to test it. But in US wheat is routinely dessicated with glyphosate so either their bread is giving everyone cancer, or the compound does actually break down as expected. Or maybe it's somewhere in between.
Either way, it's like the article said - it's impossible for us consumers to figure any of this stuff out. We have to rely on public agencies, which are under constant attack from multinational corporations throwing billions of dollars at the issue, because following regulations costs money. And that's in developed countries, if you're buying stuff from places with barely functional food quality inspection then good luck I guess.
> The reported half-life of glyphosate in soil varies from two to 197 days with a typical field half-life of 47 days being suggested.[56] Soil and climate conditions affect glyphosate's persistence in soil. The median half-life of glyphosate in water varies from a few days to 91 days.[56] At a site in Texas, half-life was as little as three days. A site in Iowa had a half-life of 141.9 days.[94] The glyphosate metabolite AMPA has been found in Swedish forest soils up to two years after a glyphosate application.
It has a lower half-life in water, and a lower half-life when it's warmer.
I store my oats both dry and cold.
As for cancer, I don't know - but it certainly is giving everyone parkinsons.
But you see - this is the whole problem. Every time I tried looking into it myself all I could find was that "dessicating crops with glyphosate is safe because it breaks down before it makes it into your food". If that is just simply not true or at the very least "true but only in ideal conditions that happen 5% of the time" then we're all screwed and no one seems to care.
I thought glyphosate was only a danger for people applying it (something that's been denied for a long time)
Also as far as I know it goes into the weeds it kills, not in the plant you want to keep (is your food) ? Else it would also die ?
I have no connection to these people, except I have eaten their jumbo oats. They have been an organic farm since 1949. I doubt they use glyphosate, but you could ask them?
Also, before you demonise glyphosate too much, it is worth realising its role in the widespread adoption of low/no till farming, which reduces fertilizer usage, reduces carbon emissions from the soil, and uses tractor power and time, therefore reducing carbon again.
Basically by killing all of the weeds with something that won't kill the crop you are about to plant, means you don't have to plough. It is a classic trade off, do you want the (hard to quantify and heavily disputed) risk of glyphosate, or higher carbon emissions
No till farming is much more difficult to do organically.
Electric tractors aren't a thing. That is because a battery big enough to power a tractor pulling a plough all day is infeasibly large. Pulling a constant load is a very different thing to a car that coasts most of the time.
Humans are not strong enough to pull ploughs. You could grow food and feed it to draught animals, but as you point out, that is horribly inefficient.
Mythical Electric Tractor or not, you still have carbon being released from the ground by ploughing to control weeds. You can avoid ploughing to control weeds with glyphosate.
When a better solution for weed control comes along we can say goodbye to glyphosate too, I believe it is about as far off as Desktop Linux, as in 'next year'.
Just remember, glyphosate costs farmers money. They wouldn't use it if there was a better way
So I need to put something in my body to prevent other things in my body? I don't mean to be the party pooper but this is my first thought. Health conscious people care about plastics in their body and are probably shopping organic and what not. So you have a high hurdle to climb with any "modified" foods.
Except now I have the problem of trusting that this new supplement isn't contaminated with anything, _and_ that the "microscopic pores" resulting from this "patented process" don't turn out to have some harmful effect in the body.
I'm making a product to help trap plasticizers in the digestive tract and prevent them from getting into the bloodstream, NeutraOat (NeutraOat.com).
I was originally inspired by PlasticList, and actually made a quiz on my website based off their data for people to assess their plastics exposure (quiz.neutraoat.com)
1. Why you/penguins should care about this: PFAS suppress immune function and reduce reproductive success in birds [1]. They transfer from mothers to eggs and disrupt thyroid hormones and immune organ development in avian embryos [2]. In humans, IARC classified PFOA as a Group 1 carcinogen in 2023, which means there is the highest classification (i.e. International Agency for Research on Cancer is convinced PFAS causes cancer). A 2x increase in serum PFAS is associated with a 49% drop in vaccine antibody levels in children [3]. These are the same compounds showing up in >90% of penguin samples in remote Patagonia. They don't break down. They bioaccumulate up the food chain. And the "safer replacements" like GenX are clearly reaching the ends of the earth too. This is bad for penguins and for people.
2. This is a problem I'm taking seriously. My startup, NeutraOat (neutraoat.com) is developing a modified oat fiber that selectively binds PFAS and plasticizers in the GI tract without stripping nutrients like charcoal does. It will also remove PFAS from the blood. Early-stage, binding data is promising. Clinical trial happening in ~6-9 months. Website has our early data and a pre-order signup form.
[1] Vendl et al., "Profiling research on PFAS in wildlife," Ecol Solut Evid, 2024. https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002... [2] Halldin et al., "Developmental exposure to a mixture of PFAAs affects the thyroid hormone system and the bursa of Fabricius in the chicken," Sci Rep, 2019. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-56200-9 [3] Grandjean et al., JAMA 2012;307(4):391–397. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22274686/