Thursday, April 21, 2022 - The list of ways that toxic, carcinogenic PFAS forever chemicals have contaminated our air, water, earth, and consumer products grows every day. One way that many people overlook poisoning themselves is by eating pork, chicken, or beef that has regularly consumed drinking water for many years that was heavily contaminated with PFAS. Cattle, for instance, that are led to the nearest watering hole or had PFAS drinking water piped into their feed troughs may have heavy accumulations of the carcinogen in their flesh. When we eat meat from contaminated animals we instantly ingest thousands of times the FDA-approved safe limit of PFAS forever chemicals. Meat-eating is said to be eating high up on the food chain and it appears the higher up we eat the greater the risks of eating forever chemicals. Politico, in reviewing studies conducted by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) has concluded that forever chemicals are also everywhere chemicals and that it may be impossible to clean them up or avoid them. They wrote, "America is just beginning to come to grips with the scale and scope of contamination from a large group of human-made chemicals known collectively as PFAS." " ... it's clear that they're everywhere. The same properties that make them useful in items like non-stick cookware and firefighting foams are what also makes them so hard to clean up when they migrate into soil and water, potentially leading to health impacts at high levels of exposure." People who have developed cancer from PFAS chemicals in their food, milk, and water are filing PFAS cancer lawsuits. Not only are the meat products Americans eat subject to PFAS forever chemical accumulations, but also, to a much lesser extent, are the fruit and vegetables we eat. Crops may be watered with PFAS contaminated water and fertilized with sludge manufactured with waste from nearby water treatment facilities. "There's potential for PFAS to contaminate the sludge, which is a byproduct of the wastewater treatment process, by infiltrating landfills and industrial discharges. When these chemicals then contaminate crops and animals, those products can then be unsafe to consume and farmers can suffer as a result." Politico points out that two farms in Maine were recently shuttered "due to unsafe PFAS contamination." Vegetable crop contamination should be taken seriously, however, the bioaccumulation of forever chemicals in the flesh of chickens, pork, and beef is a more serious concern.
Bioaccumulation is at the root of the PFAS chemical contamination crisis because the Chemicals do not break down in the environment or animal or human body. While there are thousands of man-made forever chemicals, perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS) are the two most prevalent forms of the toxin. Wikipedia defines bioaccumulation as the gradual accumulation of substances, such as pesticides or other chemicals, in an organism. Scientists writing for the National Institute of Health have called attention to the problem of bioaccumulation of forever chemicals in beef and dairy. "Beef and dairy products may be important vectors of human exposure to perfluoroalkyl acids (PFAAs)," they wrote. According to the NIH, "the results of this study suggest that long-chain PFAAs have a relatively high potential for transfer to milk and beef from the diet of dairy cows."
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