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...
I feel it's needless to say that's not actual advice.. but well, better safe than sorry lol.
EDIT: I mean, of all the health reasons not to drink beer.. PFAS is _probably_ not the main one to worry about? I'm not a doctor, but it seems there's already enough known adverse effects that this additional piece of information is probably not a dealbreaker for those who drink?
This study is almost like an intentional parody of people who miss the forest for the trees: "lead poisoning a leading cause of death in gunshot victims!"
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 for drawing conclusions, since PFAS contamination tends to correlate with industry and population), and animal models, mostly in non-mammalian species.
As you correctly note, lead was known to be toxic since long before leaded gasoline -- the "question" was more about the delivery mechanism (auto exhaust) than the toxicity of the element itself.
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-...
https://pubs.acs.org/cms/10.1021/acs.est.4c11265/asset/image...
Vermont is in the clear.
> 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.
We didn't rationally trade health for convenience, few people recognized any kind of trade-off was even occurring.
Alcohol: mouth and throat, laryngeal, esophageal, female breast, colorectal, stomach, and liver cancer.
PFAS: testicular cancer...
Nope to PFAS!
> Researchers tested 23 different beers from across the U.S. and found that 95% contained PFAS
23 beers across the 10,000+ breweries in the US? Ok, lets find out more
> By modifying a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) testing method for analyzing levels of PFAS in drinking water, Hoponick Redmon and colleagues tested 23 beers. 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.
So, 95% of the beer they tested from a few known water-contaminated locales had PFAS, but I don't think 95% of the beer produced in the US is brewed in such places. Yeah, it makes sense that garbage water in = garbage beer out (this tracks with non-PFSA issues too)
JoeAltmaier•1h ago
Bender•1h ago
[1] - https://www.beer-brewing.com/beer_brewing/beer_brewing_water...
[2] - https://www.ewg.org/research/getting-forever-chemicals-out-d...
justin66•1h ago
Bender•1h ago
robthebrew•1h ago
Bender•1h ago
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.
ch4s3•58m ago
timr•44m ago
d4v3•22m ago
> Conventional water treatment employed at municipal drinking water treatment plants have been shown to be nearly ineffective at removing PFAS. This can leave the burden and cost of implementing more sophisticated water treatments to brewers unless public water suppliers implement tertiary treatment to remove PFAS from finished water prior to distribution. Anion exchange and activated carbon treatments have been shown to more effectively remove longer-chain PFAS and PFSAs but were less effective in removing PFCAS and the alternative shorter-chain PFAS and PFECAs. Reverse osmosis treatment showed significant removal of PFAS of different chain lengths in drinking water, but can be prohibitive due to high operational costs and energy usage. In areas with known contamination, beers from macro- breweries were less likely to have detectable PFAS than craft beers brewed at a smaller scale, potentially due to more effective and expensive filtration of tap water at larger breweries.
cluckindan•58m ago
ChoGGi•1h ago
catlikesshrimp•1h ago
A link to the source of the information can be found in TFA https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.4c11265
notherhack•1h ago
onemoresoop•58m ago
https://www.ewg.org/interactive-maps/pfas_contamination/map/