A PSA for consumers about limiting exposure to PFAS
WASHINGTON — At first, Tomas Monarrez didn’t notice the labels when he went shopping for pots and pans.
“Completely toxin free!” said a big green message on a line of nonstick frying pans in the cookware aisle at a store in the nation’s capital. “No PFOA!” boasted the label on a 12-piece kitchen set.
“Oh, wow,” Monarrez, an economist at a think tank, said, when asked if he had ever heard of the toxic chemicals that manufacturers were declaring their products free of.
“I didn’t know anything. Should I buy these?” Monarrez asked. “So all these are bad?
Federal regulators are sorting out how to handle health risks from a group of widely used nonstick and stain-resistant compounds. But even reading labels may not be enough to guide consumers who want to limit their exposure to the manmade industrial material, known as perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS.
Scientists say there are many steps people can take to minimize their contact with the compounds, which federal toxicologists say show links to health problems.
Some changes are simple, such as checking on the safety of your drinking water or buying different pots and pans. Others require spending and lifestyle changes — for example, passing up fast food or other takeout because the containers the food may be packaged in.
For those concerned about exposure, there’s one critical thing to know about PFAS compounds: “They’re everywhere,” Linda Birnbaum, head of the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences, told a recent gathering of her agency’s advisory council.
“The carpets and the chairs and maybe the clothes you’re wearing,” Birnbaum said.
There are thousands of versions of the compounds, including PFOA and another early version, both now phased out of production in the U.S. PFAS are used in products including nonstick cookware, but also in stain- and steam-resistant bags for microwave popcorn and many other food containers and packaging, shaving cream, dental floss, stain protection for fabrics and rugs and outdoor garb — for starters.
Federal studies of people heavily exposed to the compounds have found links between high blood levels of older kinds of PFAS and a range of health problems, including liver issues, low birth weights, and testicular and kidney cancer.
It’s probably impossible to avoid all exposures, says Leonardo Trasande, a children’s environmental health specialist and vice chair for research at New York University’s pediatrics department, and a PFAS expert.
But there are “safe and simple steps to limit exposure based on what we know,” Trasande says. Trasande himself recommends two precautions. One is shunning nonstick cookware in favor of cast iron or stainless steel, Trasande said.
The other is eschewing food packaging as much as possible.