Robert Lustig explains why PFAS, the indestructible chemicals in Teflon and thousands of other products, contaminate our water and won't leave our bodies. He compares them to DDT, which predicted childhood obesity decades later, and asks why regulators haven't acted.
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PFAS is basically everywhere now because it was Teflon, you know, perfluoro octanoic acid, pfoa and, you know, so it's perfluorate, perfluoro alkylating substances and there are a whole bunch of them and they're in the water and you can't get rid of them. They're for forever chemicals. They're with us forever. Just like DDE is the metabolite of DDT. We haven't used DDT since 1972, but I can still measure DDE in all of your urine. And the concentration of DDE in pregnant mother's urine predicts obesity in the offspring at age 5.
The point I was trying to make is even if you see it in.
Animal, it.
Means it's in the environment.
Of course, affecting our environment. So why.
Isn'T anybody doing anything about.
It to stop?
Well, that's why we've done all this work and that's why we've published this paper, is to get people on the prevention kick, because there's no other way to deal with this other than prevention.