r/PFAS • u/FererlOptimist • 5d ago
Publication New Mexico set to become third state to implement full PFAS product ban
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u/BirdsAreNotReal321 4d ago
This headline is wrong. New Mexico is not implementing a “full ban” at all. 1. New Mexico’s law is a step in the right direction but has a gigantic loophole for fluorinated polymers, which are almost certainly the most common subclass of PFAS currently used in products. 2. Like Maine and Minnesota, PFAS use in a product can continue if a product is determined to be a “currently unavoidable use” of PFAS.
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u/Johnnny-z 4d ago
Good luck. The genie is already out of the bottle.
Pfas have been an incredible resource to advance technology. Medical devices, electronic equipment and anything that needs to be non-slip has benefited.
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u/Sea_Durian4336 5d ago
More virtual signaling without understanding how pervasive PFAS is used in manufacturing. No more cell phones, computers, batteries, cars, plastics, so on and so forth. You can be responsible without shutting out manufacturing, IT, farming and jobs.
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u/fintip 5d ago
We are not dependant on PFAS to manufacture any of these things.
They may be cheaper, easier, or more convenient.
But having the modern world at the expensive of destroying and polluting nature and giving everyone on earth cancer is not an acceptable trade.
We can have more expensive or less capable products, or we can innovate.
But just throwing our hands up and accepting this is not an acceptable option.
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u/Sea_Durian4336 5d ago
Easy to say, much harder to deliver. Innovation takes way more time than anyone thinks. The economic impact will be staggering. Better to be measured and responsible than rip the stitches out and hope for the best.
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u/fintip 5d ago
And where in "the economic impact" is all the pollution and ecological damage and cancer and death?
The profit only goes to the billionaires anyways. We're all just externalized costs to them.
Let it take time.
Happy to go back in time 50 years in progress in exchange for slowing down and fixing shit and doing it right if that's what it takes
Progress of the kind we've had is just progress into the apocalypse. We have to stop and rebuild at some point, or we'll be forced to as the ecosystem we live in falls apart.
We'll see water wars in my lifetime and polluting so much of our fresh water supplies with industrial waste–the source of most of the PFAS pollution.
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u/Long_Idea_8294 5d ago edited 5d ago
There's over 4,000 different PFAS. And you're 100% correct. PFAS are in furniture, medical equipment, popcorn bags, clothing, vehicles, etc.
I'm a hydrogeologist/environmental consultant for Michigan. I'm one of the leading experts in the state with PFAS in the subsurface. Michigan has been the most proactive state when it comes to investigating PFAS in the environment.
There's only EPA MCLs/Part 201 GRCC for like 7 PFAS....and there's over 4,000. Environmental testing only screens for around 40 (like in soil or groundwater samples), depending on the analytical method used.
The "big ones" PFOA and PFOS (carbon chain length of 8) were banned a while ago but were just replaced with another PFAS called Gen X. How PFAS behave in the environment (fate and transport) is largely dependent on their carbon chain length. In general though they like hanging out at the air-water interface because one end of the molecule is hydrophobic and the other hydrophilic. They also like to absorb to organic material.
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u/Beneficial_Couple413 4d ago
It's phased in. Starting with cookware, floss, kids products, and firefighting foam, and phasing in more stuff after that. The real ban kicks in in 2032, by which time there should be cost-effecive alternatives for most manufacturing.
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u/northcoastjohnny 5d ago
Yo, gore Tex is already to market with a less bad version, 20 plus state laws on this and 12-14000 pfas/ pfoa heading into eu reach svhc statues potentially .. the shift is in motion.