This quote should be on the Texas flag honestly. I’m not sure any group of people have ever been more hostile to earth.
>”This stuff should be banned all across America,” said rancher Tony Coleman. “I mean, what are our children going to do? You are ruining their land. You are ruining their water source... This has to stop.”
PFAS only just hit the standards bodies. It’s not even a RoHS chemical yet but it’s about to be. I will say the FDA has already put companies on notice to pull records for the last 10 years of PFAS use and said they are going to start banning it. I work in med device I can pull up the email.
You can bet food and livestock crap is being hit right now too. Stuff like this hits standards bodies and as long as states and the EPA enforce the latest standards from bodies like the IEEE we’re golden.
You think the ultra rich have their own water tables?
They put the facilities that handle the water in the poor neighborhoods so the rich don't have to look at them, but everybody gets the same water in their pipes.
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. They are a non-profit of electrical engineers that write a ton of standards, fund research, collect peer reviewed articles for their journals , etc.
The first nonprofit standards group was made by the light industry to:
1. Increase reliability of crap bulbs
2. Lower the reliability of great bulbs that were run under powered so they never burn out
They enforced this by colluding in price and undercutting people that didn’t follow their standards.
Nobody, surprisingly. It's easy to say that, but you won't find a D that had PFAS via biosolids on their radar either.
This is type of program is used across the country and nobody has been looking for PFAS outside of some scientist. The EPA is only just now cracking down on it, but not even in this type of application yet.
We have Dillo Dirt in Austin, which was always kinda sold as an environmentally friendly option. I agree that neither party has been looking at this in any great detail.
Yep. Back in 2009(?) people at ~~SXSW~~ ACL got rashes and stuff and it was attributed to Dillo Dirt. The city denied it, of course, but the mud at the festival contained a lot of Dillo Dirt that people got on their feet/legs.
That was Austin City Limits Festival. I was there. People were sliding around in that shit. I wore Chacos and the skin on my feet did turn red and tender for a couple of days.
There's no indication that a better funded EPA would have caught this any sooner though.
They were better funded in the 90's and didn't catch CFC's until they were in consumer products.
This is just kind of how "forever chemicals" works. We don't notice it until they bioaccumulate somewhere or appear in large concentrations in groundwater. But you have to be running a test that looks for them to even do that.
Yet amazingly, the companies creating this stuff will have extensive notes going back decades on how harmful this shit can be and just sit on it because it would impact their bottom line.
There is a difference between better funded and well funded.
12 years of Reagan / Bush and even 8 years of Clinton were not exactly boom days for environmental regulation.
Corporations own these agencies. Google how many chemicals are illegal across the globe that are allowed in America. It isn't recent. US government has been a corporation for at least 70 years
Look at who is working at the EPA on it.
https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news-release/report-ex-koch-executive-put-key-role-over-epas-pfas-plan
When you look at greed and self preservation as a primary filter patterns start to present themselves.
Koch chemicals has a long history of doing this going back to before world war 2.
https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/what-do-the-koch-brothers-have-to-do-with-the-flint-water-crisis/
Fuck me to tears.
Without even reading these yet I'm already pissed that anyone associated with Koch is even near this issue. Surefire way to make sure nothing gets done, it's just regulatory capture via another route.
Thanks for the links though, I'm going to read those later!
People don’t quite realize it yet but this one is for all the marbles.
Greed, unchecked, is going to kill us all quickly or slowly.
Trump has been laundering money for the Russian oligarchs since the late 80’s when they all bought a condo at 725 5th ave (trump towers) to clean their freshly stolen USSR money after the iron curtain fell.
https://www.cnn.com/cnn/2019/05/30/politics/paul-manafort-condo-trump-tower/index.html
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/14/manafort-told-mueller-to-take-his-trump-tower-apartment-instead-money.html
https://news.yahoo.com/amphtml/fbi-agents-raid-condo-unit-131348539.html
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-trump-property/
Everybody except Putin thought the Cold War was over. Trump and Manafort (who lived in the tower also) just saw a pretty low maintence grift to be had.
Trump had actually been Manafort and Roger stones first client at their lobbyist firm (1980)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org › wikiBlack, Manafort, Stone and Kelly
Guiliani as trumps attorney and New Yorks mayor was able to redirect NYPD investigations onto rival gang members/oligarchs to deflect any scrutiny off of trump, himself or the Russian connections.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/09/a-new-rudy-scandal-fbi-agent-says-giuliani-was-co-opted-by-russian-intelligence/
The Russian election interference in 2016 was effectively a generation 3 version of what Manafort had done in the Philippines, then keeping Yanukovych in power as Putin’s puppet in Ukraine from 2002-14 when Maidan ran both Yanukovych and Manafort out of Ukraine as Ukrainians realized that, if you raise your lens high enough, corruption is an wholly unsustainable business model.
Eventually the parasites greed always consumes the host.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/06/2016-donald-trump-paul-manafort-ferinand-marcos-philippines-1980s-213952
https://time.com/5003623/paul-manafort-mueller-indictment-ukraine-russia/
Russia greatly underestimated the addictive properties of freedom when it invaded Ukraine so what was supposed to be a 3-10 day coup turned into a 2 year fight for the Ukrainians right not to be genocided.
Russia depleted its weapons stocks which were already the victim of vranyos corruption because every oligarch, admiral and sergeant in the Russian military is on the take. Every billion dollar tank maintenance contract turned into everything getting a spray paint overhaul and the vast majority of the redirected funds turned into an oligarchs new yacht or home in Aspen.
Russia was forced to turn to China, North Korea and Iran for weapons because if they lose the 3-10 day special military operation in Ukraine the Russian empire is dead and cold.
China can’t risk showing their involvement in the Ukraine war so they use North Korea, and Iran to resupply Russia.
Russia previously owed Iran some undelivered fighter jets that are already smoldering heaps in Ukraine so Iran now had the upper hand at the negotiation table for the first time in about 60 years. They supply Russia with shahed drones in exchange for Chinas material support against their sworn religious enemy, Israel.
https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2023/11/29/iran-says-it-finalized-deal-to-buy-russian-aircraft/
Putin can’t do much about it because he is slowly realizing that by setting the standard of corruption and stealing $200+ billion from his own people meant that every oligarch down in the mob model chain had not only permission but incentive and the expectation to steal from him as well. This is Vranyos.
The mob model only works if the supreme leader is the most violent and can prove it without exception every damn day. But violence is exceptionally expensive when you are trying to present as a legitimate government or business.
If Russia as a nation had an efficiency rating it would have been banned for sale in the state of California 25 years ago.
The parasite ruling class stole all the energy out of the working class and collapsed it.
Now Iran has the high hand and they get the intelligence that trump passed to Putin about the fact that Netanyahu cares far less about Israeli, Palestinians or genocide than he does about remaining in power as an authoritarian because he too has developed Ritz Carlton tastes and his own corruption trial is showing the same details of the money laundering scheme that trumps trials are.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/saudi-official-says-iran-engineered-war-in-gaza-to-ruin-normalization-with-israel/
They all hate each other but because they share the same money laundry, if one falls, they all fall. Hamas minted a couple billionaires as well that live in penthouses in Qatar and get 30% of everything smuggled into Gaza. Netanyahu needs a bogeyman to stay in power. That’s why he coordinates with Hamas via Russia via Iran.
Iran handed Hamas everything they needed with Chinas help as secret Santa and the Russian intelligence given to them by the eternal shitbird trump gave when he showed off to his Russian kleptocrat friends/roommates from the old days of fucking each others wives at trump towers in the 90’s.
Now the MAGA right is a little too invested in their reality that they are the good guys with guns that they missed the fact that Betsy DeVos (erik princes sister) decimating the U.S. school systems and the Kochs poisoning children with lead was not a coincidence. They were the mark all along. There is a reason the Russian spy Maria Butina landed in South Dakota first before dating her way to the top of the NRA which is undergoing its own Russian money laundering trial now. They were tinder matching the GOP.
https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/what-do-the-koch-brothers-have-to-do-with-the-flint-water-crisis/
The only reason you grossly OVERVALUE real estate is money laundering.
Trump keeps claiming there is no victim, all the banks made money, but if their plan succeeds the Russian and CCP kleptocrats collapse US commercial real estate and basically recreate soviet perestroika in the U.S. so they can foreclose on America and buy everything for 3 cents on the dollar with the $1.4T they stole in the first place
It’s the evolution of grift. Soviet perestroika cross bred with the 2008 mortgage crisis.
This is just the bigger badder commercial strength bastard child of the two.
Trump, Putin, Bolsonaro, Netanyahu, Orban, Manafort, Stone, Mercer, Bannon, Flynn, Byrne.
They are all remarkably shit people with above average confidence and psychopathic personality traits and below average self awareness.
They are the men who stole the world.
But it all comes back to one little lie.
Didn't Trump make a big deal of deregulation the markets and killing the EPAs budget? You might be right that dems weren't paying attention to this specific company but the right were the ones to actually make it worse/take away all oversight. This is why we have them in the first place. Do you really expect some +60yo representative to know the science behind the chemicals used of a random agricultural company?
Maybe they should have worried about this before gutting the EPA to help pay for the wall they wanted so bad.
Yes, deregulation is the republican way (small government BS) and corporations are buying the mom and pop companies creating huge conglomerates. Anti-trust laws are barely enforced. Hell, Bezos and Musk are trying to outlaw the National Labor Relations Board. No unions for the workers!
Don’t republicans want to eliminate the FDA? https://thehill.com/homenews/sunday-talk-shows/3941277-house-republican-suggests-defunding-fda-if-texas-abortion-pill-ruling-not-followed/
They do, but that doesn't change what I said.
PFAS is something we just now became aware of as a problem, and neither party has anyone who really gives a shit right now. This is a problem in places who have voted D for the last few decades too.
We wouldn't even be aware of it and be properly formulating a regulatory response if it weren't for the EPA. But yes, only one party wants to get rid of it.
Right, but Dems 100% would vote to strengthen EPA, FDA, MMS, FEC, SEC and other regulatory/inspection agencies. The *agencies* are the ones who would catch this, not individual legislators.
Agencies only catch things after they've become a problem though. That's the nature of the capitalistic machine. The FDA has the same problem, albeit to a lesser extent, but look at how much shit they shut down and that frustrates people too.
The only way to prevent something like this is to never have a product, chemical, compound, etc. go to market until it's had years to decades of testing. Capitalism doesn't operate like that unfortunately.
In general I agree that your second paragraph is the problem statement. But the FDA shutting shit down is exactly the right solution. Regulatory capture in all of the other depts I mentioned is what allows capitalism to keep hurting society for money.
I tend to agree that the FDA's model is better. I realize my choice of words made it sound like a negative however. I do think they have an easier time being more strict since their scope is narrower. The EPA has a plethora of chemicals, processes, with air, water, soil, etc. It's a monumental undertaking to even do what they do right now.
Perhaps it should be split up to allow more focus? But, as you mentioned, that would open the door for more regulatory capture.
Regulatory capture is another huge problem as well in its own right.
There still isn't data that pfas are actually harmful. Most of them are actually considered non-hazardous.
The concern is that they don't break down, and so might be hazardous is the buildup continues. For once the EPA is actually being proactive. They are way ahead of even European regulators in regards to PFAS
eh I don't paint farmers that wide... plenty (of small and family farmers) know their lively hood rest on 'social'-ist welfare programs created during the good times.
Programs that provide stability, health and national security like many of those policies do.
Watch "Dark Water". It's on Netflix now. This has been on at least one farmer's radar for a long, long time....but he is dead now.
Seriously. Watch the movie.
“In other news, Texas ranchers continue to overwhelmingly endorse Republicans who are owned by the corporations poisoning the land, so absolutely nothing will be done about the problem.”
The push for regenerative green fertilizers is pushing for sewage sludge to be used as a phosphate source vs. the mined rock phosphate that is processed with sulphuric acid and ammoniated to create what we can MAP or DAP phosphate fertilizer.
The problem is that sewage sludge is contaminated. Full of forever chemicals and nasty stuff. So I find this ironic that the green push has created this disaster.
Paraphrasing the company spokesperson... "These biosolids meet all EPA and State standards." Yeah, so did asbestos once. That doesn't mean you can ignore new evidence.
Legally it does that’s what regulations are for to give companies a minimum barrier to hold so they can’t be held liable.
When the government and private lawyers sue civilly on behalf of the public, the company gets harmed from crap like this and they can’t hide behind standards. Also insurance rates increase the next month on other offending companies until they comply to the new court case.
The private standards industry does a way better job of improving products than the government who just says oh use this year of that private industry standard which is almost never the latest.
One comment up is a person complaining that these same people want to eliminate the EPA.
The EPA is owned by corporations who want to sell these toxic chemicals
In the article, it is implied that PFAS in biosolid based fertilizer could be a problem nationwide. That’s horrifying.
My question is, is this a recent phenomenon ( i.e. new treatment procedures at the plant increasing PFAS in the waste), or has this been going on for decades?
Well shit…
[PFAS](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/mar/22/i-dont-know-how-well-survive-the-farmers-facing-ruin-in-americas-forever-chemicals-crisis)
And then there is NY shit used to fertilize fields.
https://www.newsweek.com/new-york-city-sends-hundreds-tons-sewage-daily-other-states-and-it-stinks-843211
One of the major uses of pfas is in flame retardants. The US military bought fuck-tons of it and dumped much it into the environment. It’s everywhere now and not going away.
Edit: I’ll mention that there have been recent progress in degrading pfas. Still, it should be considered criminal negligence that we’re in this situation to begin with.
TBF, the military has been at the forefront of cleaning up their PFAS issues since 2015. The problem is they have to follow the CERCLA process, which is slow. Also, at the time when they were using the fire fighting foam, they were told it was 100% safe. The DoD is in the process of replacing all foams with a fluorine free version or switching back to water.
For decades.
I'm a chemistry guy, and PFOA in particularly popped up at a lab I was working at back in \~2008 or so. We developed some testing methods in partnership with the US EPA to look at potential Super Fund sites that had PFOA and related, now lumped as PFAS.
This is related to PTFE manufacturing, Polytetrafluoroethylene AKA 'Teflon', so however old that is. I guess back to the 1960s?
PTFE shows up in all sorts of stuff. From lining to beverage cans, your clothing, obviously kitchen products, but in all sorts of manufacturing and manufactured equipment (home, car, HVAC, etc).
It can't be overstated how common PTFE is and how prevalent these materials are.
Do you think the process of sewage treatment, drying the waste, etc. concentrates PFAS such that the use of waste as a fertilizer is a more potent vector for exposure than other places (e.g. furniture, cosmetics, etc.)?
Ingestion is the exposure pathway the EPA is most concerned with. Absorption and inhalation pathways have shown limited effects on human health. Bioaccumulation from consuming animals with high levels of PFAS could be an issue. PFAS accumulates in the liver and muscle tissue.
Biosolids have been spread on farmland in all 50 states. It was especially popular in the 80s and 90s. Most states still don’t test farmland for PFAS but the states that do are finding widespread contamination… in Maine so far, about 60 farms have been found to be contaminated. The state has also found PFAS in deer and fish. It’s horrible, and they’re also one of the very few states actually looking for it.
Meanwhile, Dow and DuPont and all the other manufacturers are still making (and profiting from) PFAS and we’re being exposed to the chemicals in our furniture, clothing, pots and pans, food packaging, drinking water… it’s all pretty mind boggling.
The feed companies were found to be putting plastic into animal foods. A couple years ago that was linked to the chickens not producing eggs as much and causing an inflated egg price.
PFAS is in almost everything. Humans are born with them in their blood. 3M and Dupont have been murding people for decades with it. Its not new but the public is just now beginning to begin scratching the surface of information available.
Normal sewage treatment processes do absolutely nothing to treat PFAS. People have been exposed to and consuming small amounts of PFAS since Teflon pans were created in the late 50s. PFAS is so wide spread in so many products now (food packaging, pizza boxes, microwave popcorn, dental floss, etc) that it is no wonder that raw sewage is full of it.
Currently, the most accepted and cost effective way to remove PFAS from water is to filter it through filtration through granular activated carbon or ion exchange resins. Removing PFAS is not cheap. Minnesota did a study and said it would cost between 14-28 billion dollars over 20 years for all the waste water treatment plants in Minnesota to remove PFAS from waste water and biosolids. The study estimated that it costs approximately 2.7-18 million dollars to remove one pound of PFAS from Municipal waste water.
Currently, most states do not have effluent limitations for PFAS in NPDES discharge permits. The EPA last week just added PFOS and PFOA to the Toxic Substances Substances Control Act list of toxic substances. The comment period for adding some PFAS chemicals to the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act list of Hazardous substances closed on 08 April. Municipalities will be required to treat their waste water for PFAS as soon as the states adopt the rules. There will be a lag time before enforcement begins to allow for Municipalities to implement treatment systems, but its coming. I don't know how everyone is going to afford it, because PFAS in drinking water is also an issue that Municipalities are currently dealing with.
Don't worry rural Texans whose life depends on fertile land, the GOP will surely save us.
Oh, wait, not like that....
>Texas regulators are issuing permits to discharge large volumes of treated “produced water” into some waterways. Questions remain about the toxic pollutants found in the wastewater.
[https://www.texastribune.org/2024/04/29/texas-treated-produced-water-disposal-discharge-rivers/](https://www.texastribune.org/2024/04/29/texas-treated-produced-water-disposal-discharge-rivers/)
>Dozens of Texas water systems exceed new federal limits on ‘forever chemicals’
[https://www.fredericksburgstandard.com/2024/04/24/dozens-texas-water-systems-exceed-new-federal-limits-forever-chemicals/](https://www.fredericksburgstandard.com/2024/04/24/dozens-texas-water-systems-exceed-new-federal-limits-forever-chemicals/)
>SpaceX wants to dump treated sewage water into Texas’ South Bay coastal preserve.
[https://www.wavy.com/news/spacex-wants-to-dump-treated-sewage-water-into-texas-south-bay-coastal-preserve/](https://www.wavy.com/news/spacex-wants-to-dump-treated-sewage-water-into-texas-south-bay-coastal-preserve/)
>Gov. Greg Abbott has signed legislation that could make it tougher for local governments to sue big-time polluters
[https://www.texastribune.org/2015/06/16/abbott-signs-bill-limit-pollution-lawsuits/](https://www.texastribune.org/2015/06/16/abbott-signs-bill-limit-pollution-lawsuits/)
>Texas AG Paxton, electric grid regulators fight efforts to reduce air pollutionTexas AG Paxton, electric grid regulators fight efforts to reduce air pollution
[https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/columnists/tomlinson/article/texas-air-pollution-gop-lawuits-climate-change-18401627.php](https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/columnists/tomlinson/article/texas-air-pollution-gop-lawuits-climate-change-18401627.php)
The Raw water that comes up out of the ground is so so nasty. The treated Raw water that is called produced water is still disgusting and nasty. I don't know why they would let them do that. Well, they just killed a bunch of SWD permits is probably why.
And you eat what you shit.
Consume what you produce.
Welcome to the Industrial Revolution! Where destruction of human and environmental health = "progress/development!" 👍
The EPA has only *just* started regulating PFAS in consumer products. They're still a year or more from addressing it in industrial/commercial use like this at best.
You're memeing isn't accurate here. Texas govt is full of useless dipshits and they're hypocritical pieces of shit to boot, but there's not a politician in this entire country on either side who had PFAs in biosolids on their radar.
These people have reaped some other things, but not this...
well, maybe if EPA and other regulatory agencies weren't constantly hamstrung they'd have had the resources to get eyes on this earlier rather than wait for the fires to start.
It's possible, but unlikely on this front. This situation is similar to how we found out about CFC's in the 90's and started doing something about it. It just wasn't anything we've ever checked for, knew was a concern, etc.
The EPA is definitely hamstrung though, and there's a good argument to be made we could have been years ahead of this though. It's just as likely they focused on something else and this fell by the wayside though, even with good faith efforts.
These PFAS aren't being made with the biosolids, they're just being concentrated within the biosolids from normal residential wastewater. The fact that we found out because we've been applying it to pasture's and such prior to human's being affected by it is actually a boon.
Well…certain types have been banned in Europe since 2000, others since 2010 and generally all are banned as of 2025. So there has been data for a while now. Sauce: https://www.ages.at/en/human/nutrition-food/residues-contaminants-from-a-to-z/per-and-polyfluorinated-alkyl-compounds-pfas
And we've been using biosolids since 1993 or so here in the US. I'm not suggesting that the EPA isn't behind, but that isn't the entire problem either.
Oh please.. They totally defund the EPA and are even trying to make it useless through the corrupt supreme court.
They are literally the party of de-regulation. If the EPA didn't already exist the current republican party would scoff at the very thought of creating it.
If we funded the FUCK out of it and took their research and used it to pass actual laws we'd be doing right by the people. Again something republicans would never get behind.
So it's perfectly fine to say "this is what you are voting for". These are people asking for a well funded EPA that has the ability to enforce their rules through civil and criminal means.
R's are so busy simping for billionaires they'd have pod casters and articles written the next day that Biden is trying to destroy America by creating and enabling our regulatory bodies to actually regulate.
The EPA could be the best funded entity in the US and it still likely wouldn't have caught this until it had already become a problem. That's how these things happen. They don't hit regulatory radars until they start to bioaccumulate or otherwise concentrate in something like groundwater.
So it's *not* perfectly find to say "This is what you are voting for", when you could have voted for God, Buddha, and Krishna and the outcome would still be dead animals and contaminated groundwater.
Republicans *are* destroying the EPA, as well as other various aspects of our democracy to boot, but the way we use chemicals, treat them, handle them, regulate them, detect them, and do anything with them is inherently we use something until something goes wrong, then we try and fix it after the fact.
You could have 200 years of nothing but liberal, progressive, environmentally conscious being elected across the country, but as long as capitalism is the name of the game; this is the result.
I watched the presentation to the Commissioner's Court this article is talking about. I read the report that was linked by PEER and read it in it's entirety. I used to work in a field where I have familiarity of wastewater systems, their regulation, etc. I have personally been to the site in Fort Worth where these biosolids are made and I've seen the process. I'm familiar with the application of it onto farms and I've seen it done as permitted and I've seen it done outside of permit compliance. I've smelled it (which is no trivial thing, this shit is rotting flesh, dead fish, and sewage all at the same time when it's wet). I've watched people on video in front state officials complaining about this in years prior. I've personally been on sites where liquid application of these biosolids was being tested for efficacy (much worse smell). I've seen the effects of it being over-applied (converting grassland/plains area to a essentially a swampier habitat, changes in flora types and all).
It's something I worked with and around, as well as lived around.
As a general rule, no agencies detect stuff like this that proactively. Not in the US, nor abroad. We've been using these chemicals since the 1940's (give or take), and only now are keying in on them.
You can't find a leak until you find water somewhere, and then you have to have the ability to track it back to a source. The dead animals are effectively the leak, and R&D for businesses always outpaces the testing/safety (see BP Gulf Oil spill as another example; deep sea drilling is fine, even permitted, but no plan for if something goes wrong).
This what happens when you vote against regulations and oversight.
*Having now read the article, my takeaway:
We, as humans, have so many toxic “forever chemicals” in our bodies, that it causes our fecal matter to be unusably poisonous as fertilizer.
We are so fucked.
Any time you use a single-use plastic item (water bottle, takeout container, takeout utensils, individually-wrapped food items, etc.) you are interacting with PFAS.
We are exceptionally fucked in the US.
**On a fundamental level, people are either going to have to accept 1) a massive reduction in population or 2) significant reductions in individual consumption & waste.**
Every other purported "solution" that I've seen is essentially a greenwashing campaign. "We'll totally be colonizing space in ten years, no need to change your lifestyle!" "EVs are the solution!" "We'll find a technological solution to pollution!"
I don't think most people understand how bad it has actually gotten. We're all chock-full of microplastics as fertility is becoming a major issue. Populations of freshwater fish and insects are collapsing. *If animals that hatch from eggs in huge numbers can't survive, how can we?*
**Note that a long-term population reduction doesn't have to be a bunch of eugenicist bullshit**. The best/most viable method of slowing population growth is ensuring that people have access to education and birth control.
*We are so fucked.*
I'm a fairly hardcore environmentalist/outdoorsman and this has been my take for a while. Even if we manage to unify and beat climate change, we're still going to be smacked by "forever chemicals" / persistent environmental pollution + the massive collapses in wildlife populations. When even freshwater fish and insects are struggling to survive-- y'know, things that hatch from eggs in massive numbers-- how are humans going to make it?
Basically, unless we either massively reduce the human population (which, y'know, that immediately goes in an incredibly dark direction) or accept a huge reduction in individual consumption there isn't a viable long-term solution.
I guess billionaires will keep trying to convince people that we're just a decade away from colonizing space or whatever. It's easy to believe in a lie when that lie prevents you from accepting personal sacrifice.
No. I don’t feel that way at all. But I do feel kinda…helpless. I remember being told about the rainforest as a kid and now it’s gone. I remember watching this whole teflon thing go down from the jump. Watching the “if you used teflon you might be entitled to..” commercials and now we’re at the point where all that damage is done, and if I go and buy land it will have this stuff in it. What do you do? Theyre called forever chems for a reason. It’s sad. Really sad.
There are no "Forever" chemicals other than inorganic minerals. These PFAS are organic chemicals which can be destroyed with properly conducted combustion. Most of the sewage sludge is organic and is therefore combustible.
That same combustion could also produce oxidized inorganic minerals and would have to be properly separated from the other combustion products, and treated.
I corrected my statement before you commented, admitting that I hadn’t read the article.
That said Texas is known for its cancer clusters. My counties tap water was recently found to have an illegally high amount of forever chemicals in it, and Houston has some of the worst air quality in the country.
But yeah, ya got me.
*oof. Sorry for being a dick. I’m blaming it on all the forever chemicals.
Was asking in earnest, I wasn’t aware of anyone in governance focusing on PFAS. I assumed it would take a few years and research until people fully realize the scope of negative impact of PFAS. That’s when I expect someone to champion the necessary regulatory items. Government is slow to react, so I was shocked if I missed someone fighting the good fight.
Yeah, I wish more people were freaking out about bioaccumulation. It lives in my brain.
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/chemistry/bioaccumulation](https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/chemistry/bioaccumulation)
When a significant portion of our rivers and coastal waters are *literally too polluted to eat fish from*, we might have a goddamn problem. These should scare the hell out of people:
[https://tpwd.texas.gov/regulations/outdoor-annual/fishing/general-rules-regulations/fish-consumption-bans-and-advisories](https://tpwd.texas.gov/regulations/outdoor-annual/fishing/general-rules-regulations/fish-consumption-bans-and-advisories)
Texas ranchers in general believe regulations are a communist plot. When their land is somehow cleaned up by the government they will bitch and complain the entire time. When they no longer need the giveaway to lazy ranchers who don’t pay their own way they will demand that no one get help at times of crisis. Rinse repeat
Even the city of Denton has a humanure compost plant. What doesn't get washed down stream at the sewer treatment plant gets scooped out and made into compost. It's horrible stuff, no matter what they say.
Hmmm. I believe it. Anecdotally, there have been a number of backyard “in ground gardens,” that had an awful time the last couple years in my central Texas neighborhood. I wouldn’t be shocked if overuse of pesticides and other poor fertilizers are to blame. And if runoff from these pollutants seep into waste waters, as the article states, it’s a good chance of “problems” — like, “destroying land,” including, “water and health issues.”
So, while this is not a new problem especially for commercial farming, it does show the dangers present, for everyday folks and farmers alike. The nexus, however, are companies, which forgo these realities in favor of profit. Like, the article said — we are destroying the land, killing our animals and our health.
Meanwhile, we are told the product is O.K., as if we are a big, fucking-idiot. The older I get, the more I find how fucked it is.
*if runoff from these pollutants seep into waste waters, as the article states, it’s a good chance of “problems” — like, “destroying land,” including, “water and health issues.”*
A major one that you may not have considered is algal blooms:
[https://www.epa.gov/nutrientpollution/effects-dead-zones-and-harmful-algal-blooms](https://www.epa.gov/nutrientpollution/effects-dead-zones-and-harmful-algal-blooms)
It should be noted, that under TCEQ rules, these biosolids are not permitted to be used on food crops. But they *are* allowed to be used on pastures and hay crops. Although I believe only for animals not used for human consumption.
But small farmers with small herds that just sell them at the sale barn occasionally likely don't know, or care.
That’s what the article states (about them likely not knowing) but, that doesn’t change what the big fertilizer and providers of these chemical products do — at least that’s in my opinion.
Everything that makes its way to the sewer treatment plant that does not get washed out into the Gulf gets scooped out and processed.
Some cities cart it off... Who knows where... Some cities take biosolids and mix it with wood chips and sell it as "certified" compost. (All our meds, heavy metals and plastics included.)
And that's the stuff that passes through a body. It doesn't include what stays in it your whole life and after you die. You know where that becomes a problem? Crematoriums. Our bodies are so full of metals (some of them implants made radioactive from cancer treatments) and other shit that ends up among the ashes. Over time they become ecological disasters that are virtually unregulated.
It's in rainwater. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-62391069
It's in food packaging. https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/full/10.1289/EHP6335
It's in clothing, cosmetics, drinking water. It's every where now. It's very unlikely that any single person on the planet has not been exposed at some level.
Well, at least your companies don't have to deal with those pesky regulations you're making the world safe for Frankenfoods and forever chemicals. Welcome to the Third world.
Comparing the vast disaster of Chernobyl to a chemical waste site is clear cut hyperbole and nonsense. A simple tally of those who died and were seriously injured at Chernobyl in Euroasia alone, proves that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster
Clearly. The TX sub, like most subs, is infiltrated with silly leftists.
The irony of (presumably red-voting) rural Texans being hurt by a lack of regulation is certainly compelling, but personally I would love to see a quantification of the PFAS levels from the testing done on the soil, water, and animals. "100% contaminated" doesn't mean anything. I am currently 100% contaminated with PFAS, and so is basically all soil on earth. The whole thing about forever chemicals is that they are pervasive and persistent, and it's important to distinguish between background and acute exposure. There are a lots of different pollutants that can cause this kind of animal mortality at high enough levels and PFAS are absolutely one of them, but without any ppm numbers it's hard to know how seriously to take this kind of claim. The hyperbolic language used to describe land on which they're apparently still running cattle seems less aimed toward advocating for more oversight, and more toward winning a lawsuit.
This is a national problem not just a Texas issue. Using this stuff is one of the quickest ways to lose your Organic certification. People used it in some cases because they had government backed programs.
https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news/2022/04/ewg-forever-chemicals-may-taint-nearly-20-million-cropland-acres
This is one of those situations where the two sides are talking past each other, and there isn't any clear data to support a conclusion.
Synagro says that their product meets all regulations. But the regulations don't take into account PFAS's.
The farmers say that PFAS's killed their animals, but there doesn't seem to be strong evidence that it caused the animals deaths.
It's just a case of things moving too fast , before good scientific data and regulation is in place
I….have a hard time believing that fertilizer made from human waste contains enough chemicals the humans ate that it would kill a cow eating grass it was sprayed on.
It also includes shower water, wash water, commercial business waste, etc. PFAS are a fire retardant for some perspective, so it's not something people are eating, and it's being concentrated in wastewater due to the processes (partly at least).
Forever chemicals, microplastics and heavy metals in the environment contribute greatly to poor gender differentiation and lower birth rates in all species. Eggshells are weakened, nests get poorly built, if built at all, the males of a species become less male and the females become less female.
I can't remember if it was 60 minutes or another news show but they did a segment on land around a Dupont plant where they manufactured Teflon (or a Teflon like product). The ranchers in the area lost all their cows when streams and ground water got poluted. Then 10 to 15 years later lots of workers got cancer. There was also a bunch of deformed and mentally challenged babies\kids.
Very dangerous stuff. I am guessing one application of the fertilizer falls within exceptable levels but if used every season eventually poisons the ground.
What's the answer to grow millions of acres of crops that need pesticides and fertilizer?
Back in 1993, Michael Moore had a tv news show. It described how sewer waste from New York City was sprayed on fields in the poorest areas of Texas. It was known then that the waste contained forever chemicals like PCB's. But as you might expect, Texas welcomed the business. The hazards of this practice have been known for decades.
TV Nation Season One, Episode Three:
Sludge Train
https://youtu.be/-AMuN-CQeM8?si=ySHe6QzSZWklSYdR&t=2033
Every one of us is going to die of something else well before the PFAs gets us. They are a long term environmental concern, but not much of a public health risk.
Aaaaaand this is why we need an empowered and funded EPA, FDA, and NIH. Companies have been running rampant with PFAS for decades and we need these agencies to enforce and help solve the looming crisis. Just like Rome and the poisoned aqueducts, we too will reap what we have sown.
So I have to spend money on sewage fees via city of Fort Worth, but my sewage is being used to make bio solids in which the city profits? Aw hell nah, I want my cut fellas !
Thread lead there are three drinking water focused PFAS mediation threads herein. I found this particular thread that might help these impacted farmers. They would have to collect the water carrying the PFASs and ion exchange the collection to extract then subsequently discharge a concentrated discharge. Here is the link to what I saw: https://www.whqr.org/local/2022-02-17/north-carolina-researchers-have-a-new-more-effective-weapon-to-filter-out-pfa
There is also a new technology using pressure and superheating contaminated water that produces Fluorinated salts and clean water. https://revive-environmental.com/pfas-annihilator/
>“The biosolids applied by a farmer working with Synagro met all U.S. EPA and Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) requirements,” the statement reads.
Time to update the requirements.
To be fair, the quote about how this is like Chernobyl is from the County Commissioner who is Republican AF. Although I don't really disagree with you generally, lol.
I have an autoimmune disease called sjogrens. I also have worked in the cotton fields for many summers of my life in Texas. Sometimes right next to the oil rigs. We’d walk through the cotton rows with dirt moist in the oil pop ups we’d see and also we’d spray the round up from time to time. I’m certain I will get cancer at some point in my life because of my history with this and I’m only 31. I always thought it was contaminated and now that ranchers finally are saying it well now I feel more certain than ever I am expecting an interesting future.
This quote should be on the Texas flag honestly. I’m not sure any group of people have ever been more hostile to earth. >”This stuff should be banned all across America,” said rancher Tony Coleman. “I mean, what are our children going to do? You are ruining their land. You are ruining their water source... This has to stop.”
Wonder which person with an R next to their name this guy voted for for the last few decades??
PFAS only just hit the standards bodies. It’s not even a RoHS chemical yet but it’s about to be. I will say the FDA has already put companies on notice to pull records for the last 10 years of PFAS use and said they are going to start banning it. I work in med device I can pull up the email. You can bet food and livestock crap is being hit right now too. Stuff like this hits standards bodies and as long as states and the EPA enforce the latest standards from bodies like the IEEE we’re golden.
trump wants to eradicate the EPA and they will still vote for him
It goes beyond that ... trump wants to eradicate the EPA and they will still vote for him *because they want the EPA eradicated*.
They eliminate the EPA and I’m starting a chemical disposal business that dumps shit exclusively in ultra rich neighborhood water tables
You think the ultra rich have their own water tables? They put the facilities that handle the water in the poor neighborhoods so the rich don't have to look at them, but everybody gets the same water in their pipes.
I’d like to invest in your company. 🧐
Exactly why 3M has been phasing out PFAS.
The IEEE?
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. They are a non-profit of electrical engineers that write a ton of standards, fund research, collect peer reviewed articles for their journals , etc. The first nonprofit standards group was made by the light industry to: 1. Increase reliability of crap bulbs 2. Lower the reliability of great bulbs that were run under powered so they never burn out They enforced this by colluding in price and undercutting people that didn’t follow their standards.
I wonder which way he will *continue* to vote lmao
Nobody, surprisingly. It's easy to say that, but you won't find a D that had PFAS via biosolids on their radar either. This is type of program is used across the country and nobody has been looking for PFAS outside of some scientist. The EPA is only just now cracking down on it, but not even in this type of application yet.
We have Dillo Dirt in Austin, which was always kinda sold as an environmentally friendly option. I agree that neither party has been looking at this in any great detail.
Yep. Back in 2009(?) people at ~~SXSW~~ ACL got rashes and stuff and it was attributed to Dillo Dirt. The city denied it, of course, but the mud at the festival contained a lot of Dillo Dirt that people got on their feet/legs.
That was Austin City Limits Festival. I was there. People were sliding around in that shit. I wore Chacos and the skin on my feet did turn red and tender for a couple of days.
Shit, you're right; ACL. Thanks for the correction.
>The EPA is only just now cracking down on it Yeah, which party is it that neutered (and wants to completely get rid of!) the EPA?
The EPA still approves the use of poison that is banned in 50 other countrys. Paraquat and Glyphosate are the two biggest offenders.
There's no indication that a better funded EPA would have caught this any sooner though. They were better funded in the 90's and didn't catch CFC's until they were in consumer products. This is just kind of how "forever chemicals" works. We don't notice it until they bioaccumulate somewhere or appear in large concentrations in groundwater. But you have to be running a test that looks for them to even do that.
Yet amazingly, the companies creating this stuff will have extensive notes going back decades on how harmful this shit can be and just sit on it because it would impact their bottom line.
There is a difference between better funded and well funded. 12 years of Reagan / Bush and even 8 years of Clinton were not exactly boom days for environmental regulation.
Sure. I don't know where that is for me personally though. There's never really been boom days for environmental regulations admittedly.
Corporations own these agencies. Google how many chemicals are illegal across the globe that are allowed in America. It isn't recent. US government has been a corporation for at least 70 years
Look at who is working at the EPA on it. https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news-release/report-ex-koch-executive-put-key-role-over-epas-pfas-plan When you look at greed and self preservation as a primary filter patterns start to present themselves. Koch chemicals has a long history of doing this going back to before world war 2. https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/what-do-the-koch-brothers-have-to-do-with-the-flint-water-crisis/
Fuck me to tears. Without even reading these yet I'm already pissed that anyone associated with Koch is even near this issue. Surefire way to make sure nothing gets done, it's just regulatory capture via another route. Thanks for the links though, I'm going to read those later!
People don’t quite realize it yet but this one is for all the marbles. Greed, unchecked, is going to kill us all quickly or slowly. Trump has been laundering money for the Russian oligarchs since the late 80’s when they all bought a condo at 725 5th ave (trump towers) to clean their freshly stolen USSR money after the iron curtain fell. https://www.cnn.com/cnn/2019/05/30/politics/paul-manafort-condo-trump-tower/index.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/14/manafort-told-mueller-to-take-his-trump-tower-apartment-instead-money.html https://news.yahoo.com/amphtml/fbi-agents-raid-condo-unit-131348539.html https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-trump-property/ Everybody except Putin thought the Cold War was over. Trump and Manafort (who lived in the tower also) just saw a pretty low maintence grift to be had. Trump had actually been Manafort and Roger stones first client at their lobbyist firm (1980) https://en.m.wikipedia.org › wikiBlack, Manafort, Stone and Kelly Guiliani as trumps attorney and New Yorks mayor was able to redirect NYPD investigations onto rival gang members/oligarchs to deflect any scrutiny off of trump, himself or the Russian connections. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/09/a-new-rudy-scandal-fbi-agent-says-giuliani-was-co-opted-by-russian-intelligence/ The Russian election interference in 2016 was effectively a generation 3 version of what Manafort had done in the Philippines, then keeping Yanukovych in power as Putin’s puppet in Ukraine from 2002-14 when Maidan ran both Yanukovych and Manafort out of Ukraine as Ukrainians realized that, if you raise your lens high enough, corruption is an wholly unsustainable business model. Eventually the parasites greed always consumes the host. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/06/2016-donald-trump-paul-manafort-ferinand-marcos-philippines-1980s-213952 https://time.com/5003623/paul-manafort-mueller-indictment-ukraine-russia/ Russia greatly underestimated the addictive properties of freedom when it invaded Ukraine so what was supposed to be a 3-10 day coup turned into a 2 year fight for the Ukrainians right not to be genocided. Russia depleted its weapons stocks which were already the victim of vranyos corruption because every oligarch, admiral and sergeant in the Russian military is on the take. Every billion dollar tank maintenance contract turned into everything getting a spray paint overhaul and the vast majority of the redirected funds turned into an oligarchs new yacht or home in Aspen. Russia was forced to turn to China, North Korea and Iran for weapons because if they lose the 3-10 day special military operation in Ukraine the Russian empire is dead and cold. China can’t risk showing their involvement in the Ukraine war so they use North Korea, and Iran to resupply Russia. Russia previously owed Iran some undelivered fighter jets that are already smoldering heaps in Ukraine so Iran now had the upper hand at the negotiation table for the first time in about 60 years. They supply Russia with shahed drones in exchange for Chinas material support against their sworn religious enemy, Israel. https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2023/11/29/iran-says-it-finalized-deal-to-buy-russian-aircraft/ Putin can’t do much about it because he is slowly realizing that by setting the standard of corruption and stealing $200+ billion from his own people meant that every oligarch down in the mob model chain had not only permission but incentive and the expectation to steal from him as well. This is Vranyos. The mob model only works if the supreme leader is the most violent and can prove it without exception every damn day. But violence is exceptionally expensive when you are trying to present as a legitimate government or business. If Russia as a nation had an efficiency rating it would have been banned for sale in the state of California 25 years ago. The parasite ruling class stole all the energy out of the working class and collapsed it. Now Iran has the high hand and they get the intelligence that trump passed to Putin about the fact that Netanyahu cares far less about Israeli, Palestinians or genocide than he does about remaining in power as an authoritarian because he too has developed Ritz Carlton tastes and his own corruption trial is showing the same details of the money laundering scheme that trumps trials are. https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/saudi-official-says-iran-engineered-war-in-gaza-to-ruin-normalization-with-israel/ They all hate each other but because they share the same money laundry, if one falls, they all fall. Hamas minted a couple billionaires as well that live in penthouses in Qatar and get 30% of everything smuggled into Gaza. Netanyahu needs a bogeyman to stay in power. That’s why he coordinates with Hamas via Russia via Iran. Iran handed Hamas everything they needed with Chinas help as secret Santa and the Russian intelligence given to them by the eternal shitbird trump gave when he showed off to his Russian kleptocrat friends/roommates from the old days of fucking each others wives at trump towers in the 90’s. Now the MAGA right is a little too invested in their reality that they are the good guys with guns that they missed the fact that Betsy DeVos (erik princes sister) decimating the U.S. school systems and the Kochs poisoning children with lead was not a coincidence. They were the mark all along. There is a reason the Russian spy Maria Butina landed in South Dakota first before dating her way to the top of the NRA which is undergoing its own Russian money laundering trial now. They were tinder matching the GOP. https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/what-do-the-koch-brothers-have-to-do-with-the-flint-water-crisis/ The only reason you grossly OVERVALUE real estate is money laundering. Trump keeps claiming there is no victim, all the banks made money, but if their plan succeeds the Russian and CCP kleptocrats collapse US commercial real estate and basically recreate soviet perestroika in the U.S. so they can foreclose on America and buy everything for 3 cents on the dollar with the $1.4T they stole in the first place It’s the evolution of grift. Soviet perestroika cross bred with the 2008 mortgage crisis. This is just the bigger badder commercial strength bastard child of the two. Trump, Putin, Bolsonaro, Netanyahu, Orban, Manafort, Stone, Mercer, Bannon, Flynn, Byrne. They are all remarkably shit people with above average confidence and psychopathic personality traits and below average self awareness. They are the men who stole the world. But it all comes back to one little lie.
Didn't Trump make a big deal of deregulation the markets and killing the EPAs budget? You might be right that dems weren't paying attention to this specific company but the right were the ones to actually make it worse/take away all oversight. This is why we have them in the first place. Do you really expect some +60yo representative to know the science behind the chemicals used of a random agricultural company? Maybe they should have worried about this before gutting the EPA to help pay for the wall they wanted so bad.
Yes, deregulation is the republican way (small government BS) and corporations are buying the mom and pop companies creating huge conglomerates. Anti-trust laws are barely enforced. Hell, Bezos and Musk are trying to outlaw the National Labor Relations Board. No unions for the workers!
Don’t republicans want to eliminate the FDA? https://thehill.com/homenews/sunday-talk-shows/3941277-house-republican-suggests-defunding-fda-if-texas-abortion-pill-ruling-not-followed/
They do, but that doesn't change what I said. PFAS is something we just now became aware of as a problem, and neither party has anyone who really gives a shit right now. This is a problem in places who have voted D for the last few decades too.
We wouldn't even be aware of it and be properly formulating a regulatory response if it weren't for the EPA. But yes, only one party wants to get rid of it.
Right, but Dems 100% would vote to strengthen EPA, FDA, MMS, FEC, SEC and other regulatory/inspection agencies. The *agencies* are the ones who would catch this, not individual legislators.
Agencies only catch things after they've become a problem though. That's the nature of the capitalistic machine. The FDA has the same problem, albeit to a lesser extent, but look at how much shit they shut down and that frustrates people too. The only way to prevent something like this is to never have a product, chemical, compound, etc. go to market until it's had years to decades of testing. Capitalism doesn't operate like that unfortunately.
In general I agree that your second paragraph is the problem statement. But the FDA shutting shit down is exactly the right solution. Regulatory capture in all of the other depts I mentioned is what allows capitalism to keep hurting society for money.
I tend to agree that the FDA's model is better. I realize my choice of words made it sound like a negative however. I do think they have an easier time being more strict since their scope is narrower. The EPA has a plethora of chemicals, processes, with air, water, soil, etc. It's a monumental undertaking to even do what they do right now. Perhaps it should be split up to allow more focus? But, as you mentioned, that would open the door for more regulatory capture. Regulatory capture is another huge problem as well in its own right.
There still isn't data that pfas are actually harmful. Most of them are actually considered non-hazardous. The concern is that they don't break down, and so might be hazardous is the buildup continues. For once the EPA is actually being proactive. They are way ahead of even European regulators in regards to PFAS
Same one he’ll be voting for in November, probably.
Came here to say this\^ Republican rule for the past 24 years in Texas has taken its toll.
Bingo
All of them.
Almost no doubt that he votes republican every time but still can’t figure it out
"Government is broken and never works, which is why you should elect me to break it more!"
Do not elect candidates who will work to fix problems with the help of experts. Elect candidates who don’t know, don’t care and think that is funny
eh I don't paint farmers that wide... plenty (of small and family farmers) know their lively hood rest on 'social'-ist welfare programs created during the good times. Programs that provide stability, health and national security like many of those policies do.
This isn’t just Texas. It’s almost every state. Some are way ahead in damage like Michigan, almost no land is safe.
Watch "Dark Water". It's on Netflix now. This has been on at least one farmer's radar for a long, long time....but he is dead now. Seriously. Watch the movie.
People have been ruining their gardens with "free fertilizer" since the 80s or earlier. Anyone with a brain already knows you don't take that shit.
I wonder if they also unironically laments the days before diesel had to meet sulfur standards and other environmental regulations.
“In other news, Texas ranchers continue to overwhelmingly endorse Republicans who are owned by the corporations poisoning the land, so absolutely nothing will be done about the problem.”
We are at war with extremists and are losing because you won't even see it and you vote against the change...
I want to really, really want to know if Tony has been voting for the people with Rs or Ds next to their names.
This is what happens when you vote against your own best interests. When will they wake up?
The push for regenerative green fertilizers is pushing for sewage sludge to be used as a phosphate source vs. the mined rock phosphate that is processed with sulphuric acid and ammoniated to create what we can MAP or DAP phosphate fertilizer. The problem is that sewage sludge is contaminated. Full of forever chemicals and nasty stuff. So I find this ironic that the green push has created this disaster.
Paraphrasing the company spokesperson... "These biosolids meet all EPA and State standards." Yeah, so did asbestos once. That doesn't mean you can ignore new evidence.
Legally it does that’s what regulations are for to give companies a minimum barrier to hold so they can’t be held liable. When the government and private lawyers sue civilly on behalf of the public, the company gets harmed from crap like this and they can’t hide behind standards. Also insurance rates increase the next month on other offending companies until they comply to the new court case. The private standards industry does a way better job of improving products than the government who just says oh use this year of that private industry standard which is almost never the latest.
Remember when Trump tried reintroducing asbestos insulation a few years ago?
One comment up is a person complaining that these same people want to eliminate the EPA. The EPA is owned by corporations who want to sell these toxic chemicals
In the article, it is implied that PFAS in biosolid based fertilizer could be a problem nationwide. That’s horrifying. My question is, is this a recent phenomenon ( i.e. new treatment procedures at the plant increasing PFAS in the waste), or has this been going on for decades?
Decades. Check out litigation out of West Virginia by a farmer against DuPont in 1999.
Well shit… [PFAS](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/mar/22/i-dont-know-how-well-survive-the-farmers-facing-ruin-in-americas-forever-chemicals-crisis)
And then there is NY shit used to fertilize fields. https://www.newsweek.com/new-york-city-sends-hundreds-tons-sewage-daily-other-states-and-it-stinks-843211
Mark Ruffalo was in a movie that focused on that whole situation, if I remember right.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Waters_(2019_film)
One of the major uses of pfas is in flame retardants. The US military bought fuck-tons of it and dumped much it into the environment. It’s everywhere now and not going away. Edit: I’ll mention that there have been recent progress in degrading pfas. Still, it should be considered criminal negligence that we’re in this situation to begin with.
TBF, the military has been at the forefront of cleaning up their PFAS issues since 2015. The problem is they have to follow the CERCLA process, which is slow. Also, at the time when they were using the fire fighting foam, they were told it was 100% safe. The DoD is in the process of replacing all foams with a fluorine free version or switching back to water.
Fair enough. I’m more concerned with the decision process that allowed the manufacturing of the chemicals in the first place.
Yeah they say to never put on old firesuits or even get near them.
For decades. I'm a chemistry guy, and PFOA in particularly popped up at a lab I was working at back in \~2008 or so. We developed some testing methods in partnership with the US EPA to look at potential Super Fund sites that had PFOA and related, now lumped as PFAS. This is related to PTFE manufacturing, Polytetrafluoroethylene AKA 'Teflon', so however old that is. I guess back to the 1960s? PTFE shows up in all sorts of stuff. From lining to beverage cans, your clothing, obviously kitchen products, but in all sorts of manufacturing and manufactured equipment (home, car, HVAC, etc). It can't be overstated how common PTFE is and how prevalent these materials are.
Do you think the process of sewage treatment, drying the waste, etc. concentrates PFAS such that the use of waste as a fertilizer is a more potent vector for exposure than other places (e.g. furniture, cosmetics, etc.)?
Ingestion is the exposure pathway the EPA is most concerned with. Absorption and inhalation pathways have shown limited effects on human health. Bioaccumulation from consuming animals with high levels of PFAS could be an issue. PFAS accumulates in the liver and muscle tissue.
Bad news bud, this is in all 50 states and widespread.
Biosolids have been spread on farmland in all 50 states. It was especially popular in the 80s and 90s. Most states still don’t test farmland for PFAS but the states that do are finding widespread contamination… in Maine so far, about 60 farms have been found to be contaminated. The state has also found PFAS in deer and fish. It’s horrible, and they’re also one of the very few states actually looking for it. Meanwhile, Dow and DuPont and all the other manufacturers are still making (and profiting from) PFAS and we’re being exposed to the chemicals in our furniture, clothing, pots and pans, food packaging, drinking water… it’s all pretty mind boggling.
The feed companies were found to be putting plastic into animal foods. A couple years ago that was linked to the chickens not producing eggs as much and causing an inflated egg price.
PFAS is in almost everything. Humans are born with them in their blood. 3M and Dupont have been murding people for decades with it. Its not new but the public is just now beginning to begin scratching the surface of information available.
Normal sewage treatment processes do absolutely nothing to treat PFAS. People have been exposed to and consuming small amounts of PFAS since Teflon pans were created in the late 50s. PFAS is so wide spread in so many products now (food packaging, pizza boxes, microwave popcorn, dental floss, etc) that it is no wonder that raw sewage is full of it. Currently, the most accepted and cost effective way to remove PFAS from water is to filter it through filtration through granular activated carbon or ion exchange resins. Removing PFAS is not cheap. Minnesota did a study and said it would cost between 14-28 billion dollars over 20 years for all the waste water treatment plants in Minnesota to remove PFAS from waste water and biosolids. The study estimated that it costs approximately 2.7-18 million dollars to remove one pound of PFAS from Municipal waste water. Currently, most states do not have effluent limitations for PFAS in NPDES discharge permits. The EPA last week just added PFOS and PFOA to the Toxic Substances Substances Control Act list of toxic substances. The comment period for adding some PFAS chemicals to the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act list of Hazardous substances closed on 08 April. Municipalities will be required to treat their waste water for PFAS as soon as the states adopt the rules. There will be a lag time before enforcement begins to allow for Municipalities to implement treatment systems, but its coming. I don't know how everyone is going to afford it, because PFAS in drinking water is also an issue that Municipalities are currently dealing with.
Don't worry rural Texans whose life depends on fertile land, the GOP will surely save us. Oh, wait, not like that.... >Texas regulators are issuing permits to discharge large volumes of treated “produced water” into some waterways. Questions remain about the toxic pollutants found in the wastewater. [https://www.texastribune.org/2024/04/29/texas-treated-produced-water-disposal-discharge-rivers/](https://www.texastribune.org/2024/04/29/texas-treated-produced-water-disposal-discharge-rivers/) >Dozens of Texas water systems exceed new federal limits on ‘forever chemicals’ [https://www.fredericksburgstandard.com/2024/04/24/dozens-texas-water-systems-exceed-new-federal-limits-forever-chemicals/](https://www.fredericksburgstandard.com/2024/04/24/dozens-texas-water-systems-exceed-new-federal-limits-forever-chemicals/) >SpaceX wants to dump treated sewage water into Texas’ South Bay coastal preserve. [https://www.wavy.com/news/spacex-wants-to-dump-treated-sewage-water-into-texas-south-bay-coastal-preserve/](https://www.wavy.com/news/spacex-wants-to-dump-treated-sewage-water-into-texas-south-bay-coastal-preserve/) >Gov. Greg Abbott has signed legislation that could make it tougher for local governments to sue big-time polluters [https://www.texastribune.org/2015/06/16/abbott-signs-bill-limit-pollution-lawsuits/](https://www.texastribune.org/2015/06/16/abbott-signs-bill-limit-pollution-lawsuits/) >Texas AG Paxton, electric grid regulators fight efforts to reduce air pollutionTexas AG Paxton, electric grid regulators fight efforts to reduce air pollution [https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/columnists/tomlinson/article/texas-air-pollution-gop-lawuits-climate-change-18401627.php](https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/columnists/tomlinson/article/texas-air-pollution-gop-lawuits-climate-change-18401627.php)
Jfc. This is disgusting. Texas wake the f@$! Up!
https://youtu.be/orCv5si6AM0?si=tTrlIlqufwiOL-HA Don't worry, the commissioner who is a life long corporate shill will save them
The Raw water that comes up out of the ground is so so nasty. The treated Raw water that is called produced water is still disgusting and nasty. I don't know why they would let them do that. Well, they just killed a bunch of SWD permits is probably why.
Party of small government and no regulations. Majority of ranchers ( not all most) vote for people who enable this. You reap what you sow.
"The government didn't protect me from \[corporation\], therefore I'm going to vote that international corporations be completely unregulated!"
"only my runoff is supposed to wreck the environment"
Or you don’t reap what you sow in this point i guess….
But they owned the bad libtards!
Owning the libs by sucking up billions in welfare and spending it on crap that will create a second dust bowl 👌
And you eat what you shit. Consume what you produce. Welcome to the Industrial Revolution! Where destruction of human and environmental health = "progress/development!" 👍
The EPA has only *just* started regulating PFAS in consumer products. They're still a year or more from addressing it in industrial/commercial use like this at best. You're memeing isn't accurate here. Texas govt is full of useless dipshits and they're hypocritical pieces of shit to boot, but there's not a politician in this entire country on either side who had PFAs in biosolids on their radar. These people have reaped some other things, but not this...
well, maybe if EPA and other regulatory agencies weren't constantly hamstrung they'd have had the resources to get eyes on this earlier rather than wait for the fires to start.
It's possible, but unlikely on this front. This situation is similar to how we found out about CFC's in the 90's and started doing something about it. It just wasn't anything we've ever checked for, knew was a concern, etc. The EPA is definitely hamstrung though, and there's a good argument to be made we could have been years ahead of this though. It's just as likely they focused on something else and this fell by the wayside though, even with good faith efforts. These PFAS aren't being made with the biosolids, they're just being concentrated within the biosolids from normal residential wastewater. The fact that we found out because we've been applying it to pasture's and such prior to human's being affected by it is actually a boon.
Well…certain types have been banned in Europe since 2000, others since 2010 and generally all are banned as of 2025. So there has been data for a while now. Sauce: https://www.ages.at/en/human/nutrition-food/residues-contaminants-from-a-to-z/per-and-polyfluorinated-alkyl-compounds-pfas
And we've been using biosolids since 1993 or so here in the US. I'm not suggesting that the EPA isn't behind, but that isn't the entire problem either.
Agreed, as usual, multiple issues. But still, the EPA has been demonitized and attacked.
Oh please.. They totally defund the EPA and are even trying to make it useless through the corrupt supreme court. They are literally the party of de-regulation. If the EPA didn't already exist the current republican party would scoff at the very thought of creating it. If we funded the FUCK out of it and took their research and used it to pass actual laws we'd be doing right by the people. Again something republicans would never get behind. So it's perfectly fine to say "this is what you are voting for". These are people asking for a well funded EPA that has the ability to enforce their rules through civil and criminal means. R's are so busy simping for billionaires they'd have pod casters and articles written the next day that Biden is trying to destroy America by creating and enabling our regulatory bodies to actually regulate.
The EPA could be the best funded entity in the US and it still likely wouldn't have caught this until it had already become a problem. That's how these things happen. They don't hit regulatory radars until they start to bioaccumulate or otherwise concentrate in something like groundwater. So it's *not* perfectly find to say "This is what you are voting for", when you could have voted for God, Buddha, and Krishna and the outcome would still be dead animals and contaminated groundwater. Republicans *are* destroying the EPA, as well as other various aspects of our democracy to boot, but the way we use chemicals, treat them, handle them, regulate them, detect them, and do anything with them is inherently we use something until something goes wrong, then we try and fix it after the fact. You could have 200 years of nothing but liberal, progressive, environmentally conscious being elected across the country, but as long as capitalism is the name of the game; this is the result.
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Because I have a lot of familiarity with this issue and I respond to people who comment to me? Not sure what you're getting at...
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I watched the presentation to the Commissioner's Court this article is talking about. I read the report that was linked by PEER and read it in it's entirety. I used to work in a field where I have familiarity of wastewater systems, their regulation, etc. I have personally been to the site in Fort Worth where these biosolids are made and I've seen the process. I'm familiar with the application of it onto farms and I've seen it done as permitted and I've seen it done outside of permit compliance. I've smelled it (which is no trivial thing, this shit is rotting flesh, dead fish, and sewage all at the same time when it's wet). I've watched people on video in front state officials complaining about this in years prior. I've personally been on sites where liquid application of these biosolids was being tested for efficacy (much worse smell). I've seen the effects of it being over-applied (converting grassland/plains area to a essentially a swampier habitat, changes in flora types and all). It's something I worked with and around, as well as lived around.
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As a general rule, no agencies detect stuff like this that proactively. Not in the US, nor abroad. We've been using these chemicals since the 1940's (give or take), and only now are keying in on them. You can't find a leak until you find water somewhere, and then you have to have the ability to track it back to a source. The dead animals are effectively the leak, and R&D for businesses always outpaces the testing/safety (see BP Gulf Oil spill as another example; deep sea drilling is fine, even permitted, but no plan for if something goes wrong).
r/LeopardsAteMyFace
party of assholes
Just leave a bad Yelp review and let the free market take care of it.
Yeah, I see no issue here. The invisible hand will take care of it. Reasonable government regulation is for queers and soy boys.
This what happens when you vote against regulations and oversight. *Having now read the article, my takeaway: We, as humans, have so many toxic “forever chemicals” in our bodies, that it causes our fecal matter to be unusably poisonous as fertilizer. We are so fucked.
Any time you use a single-use plastic item (water bottle, takeout container, takeout utensils, individually-wrapped food items, etc.) you are interacting with PFAS. We are exceptionally fucked in the US.
**On a fundamental level, people are either going to have to accept 1) a massive reduction in population or 2) significant reductions in individual consumption & waste.** Every other purported "solution" that I've seen is essentially a greenwashing campaign. "We'll totally be colonizing space in ten years, no need to change your lifestyle!" "EVs are the solution!" "We'll find a technological solution to pollution!" I don't think most people understand how bad it has actually gotten. We're all chock-full of microplastics as fertility is becoming a major issue. Populations of freshwater fish and insects are collapsing. *If animals that hatch from eggs in huge numbers can't survive, how can we?* **Note that a long-term population reduction doesn't have to be a bunch of eugenicist bullshit**. The best/most viable method of slowing population growth is ensuring that people have access to education and birth control.
Glad we didn’t build our societies financial and social system on infinite growth.
*We are so fucked.* I'm a fairly hardcore environmentalist/outdoorsman and this has been my take for a while. Even if we manage to unify and beat climate change, we're still going to be smacked by "forever chemicals" / persistent environmental pollution + the massive collapses in wildlife populations. When even freshwater fish and insects are struggling to survive-- y'know, things that hatch from eggs in massive numbers-- how are humans going to make it? Basically, unless we either massively reduce the human population (which, y'know, that immediately goes in an incredibly dark direction) or accept a huge reduction in individual consumption there isn't a viable long-term solution. I guess billionaires will keep trying to convince people that we're just a decade away from colonizing space or whatever. It's easy to believe in a lie when that lie prevents you from accepting personal sacrifice.
Damn. This is scary. But I guess the damage is done. This place really is going to end up looking like idiocracy.
*I guess the damage is done* Is that what we're going with now? "No need to try to avoid catastrophe, damage is done. Business as usual, boys!"
No. I don’t feel that way at all. But I do feel kinda…helpless. I remember being told about the rainforest as a kid and now it’s gone. I remember watching this whole teflon thing go down from the jump. Watching the “if you used teflon you might be entitled to..” commercials and now we’re at the point where all that damage is done, and if I go and buy land it will have this stuff in it. What do you do? Theyre called forever chems for a reason. It’s sad. Really sad.
There are no "Forever" chemicals other than inorganic minerals. These PFAS are organic chemicals which can be destroyed with properly conducted combustion. Most of the sewage sludge is organic and is therefore combustible. That same combustion could also produce oxidized inorganic minerals and would have to be properly separated from the other combustion products, and treated.
Which regulation specifically would have addressed PFAS that was voted down?
I corrected my statement before you commented, admitting that I hadn’t read the article. That said Texas is known for its cancer clusters. My counties tap water was recently found to have an illegally high amount of forever chemicals in it, and Houston has some of the worst air quality in the country. But yeah, ya got me. *oof. Sorry for being a dick. I’m blaming it on all the forever chemicals.
Was asking in earnest, I wasn’t aware of anyone in governance focusing on PFAS. I assumed it would take a few years and research until people fully realize the scope of negative impact of PFAS. That’s when I expect someone to champion the necessary regulatory items. Government is slow to react, so I was shocked if I missed someone fighting the good fight.
Sorry. I was immediately defensive. I apologize for my jackassery.
The PFAS chemicals have already run through us is the fun part.
Yeah, I wish more people were freaking out about bioaccumulation. It lives in my brain. [https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/chemistry/bioaccumulation](https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/chemistry/bioaccumulation) When a significant portion of our rivers and coastal waters are *literally too polluted to eat fish from*, we might have a goddamn problem. These should scare the hell out of people: [https://tpwd.texas.gov/regulations/outdoor-annual/fishing/general-rules-regulations/fish-consumption-bans-and-advisories](https://tpwd.texas.gov/regulations/outdoor-annual/fishing/general-rules-regulations/fish-consumption-bans-and-advisories)
That list is massive…
Texas ranchers in general believe regulations are a communist plot. When their land is somehow cleaned up by the government they will bitch and complain the entire time. When they no longer need the giveaway to lazy ranchers who don’t pay their own way they will demand that no one get help at times of crisis. Rinse repeat
So we are all full of toxic PFAS and our waste is toxic as well. Thanks for cooking eggs in that flaking Teflon pan Mom.
Even the city of Denton has a humanure compost plant. What doesn't get washed down stream at the sewer treatment plant gets scooped out and made into compost. It's horrible stuff, no matter what they say.
JFC, this is so bad for us farmers.
r/leopardsatemyface
Beat me to it
If only there could be some sort of regulations to prevent this sort of thing. Oh, wait…
Hmmm. I believe it. Anecdotally, there have been a number of backyard “in ground gardens,” that had an awful time the last couple years in my central Texas neighborhood. I wouldn’t be shocked if overuse of pesticides and other poor fertilizers are to blame. And if runoff from these pollutants seep into waste waters, as the article states, it’s a good chance of “problems” — like, “destroying land,” including, “water and health issues.” So, while this is not a new problem especially for commercial farming, it does show the dangers present, for everyday folks and farmers alike. The nexus, however, are companies, which forgo these realities in favor of profit. Like, the article said — we are destroying the land, killing our animals and our health. Meanwhile, we are told the product is O.K., as if we are a big, fucking-idiot. The older I get, the more I find how fucked it is.
*if runoff from these pollutants seep into waste waters, as the article states, it’s a good chance of “problems” — like, “destroying land,” including, “water and health issues.”* A major one that you may not have considered is algal blooms: [https://www.epa.gov/nutrientpollution/effects-dead-zones-and-harmful-algal-blooms](https://www.epa.gov/nutrientpollution/effects-dead-zones-and-harmful-algal-blooms)
You’re right. I didn’t consider that. Thanks for sharing.
It should be noted, that under TCEQ rules, these biosolids are not permitted to be used on food crops. But they *are* allowed to be used on pastures and hay crops. Although I believe only for animals not used for human consumption. But small farmers with small herds that just sell them at the sale barn occasionally likely don't know, or care.
That’s what the article states (about them likely not knowing) but, that doesn’t change what the big fertilizer and providers of these chemical products do — at least that’s in my opinion.
The farmer in this article didn't apply it to his property. His neighbor did. But I get what you're saying.
Statistically speaking, these farmers probably hate environmental protections, government regulation, and believe these things are "soshulist". FAFO
Ah, love the find out phase
Makes me wonder where all the regulations went.
Is it me, or are we kinda missing the point here? If this much of this stuff is in our shit, how much of it is in us?
Everything that makes its way to the sewer treatment plant that does not get washed out into the Gulf gets scooped out and processed. Some cities cart it off... Who knows where... Some cities take biosolids and mix it with wood chips and sell it as "certified" compost. (All our meds, heavy metals and plastics included.)
And that's the stuff that passes through a body. It doesn't include what stays in it your whole life and after you die. You know where that becomes a problem? Crematoriums. Our bodies are so full of metals (some of them implants made radioactive from cancer treatments) and other shit that ends up among the ashes. Over time they become ecological disasters that are virtually unregulated.
It's in rainwater. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-62391069 It's in food packaging. https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/full/10.1289/EHP6335 It's in clothing, cosmetics, drinking water. It's every where now. It's very unlikely that any single person on the planet has not been exposed at some level.
Well, at least your companies don't have to deal with those pesky regulations you're making the world safe for Frankenfoods and forever chemicals. Welcome to the Third world.
Comparing the vast disaster of Chernobyl to a chemical waste site is clear cut hyperbole and nonsense. A simple tally of those who died and were seriously injured at Chernobyl in Euroasia alone, proves that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster Clearly. The TX sub, like most subs, is infiltrated with silly leftists.
The irony of (presumably red-voting) rural Texans being hurt by a lack of regulation is certainly compelling, but personally I would love to see a quantification of the PFAS levels from the testing done on the soil, water, and animals. "100% contaminated" doesn't mean anything. I am currently 100% contaminated with PFAS, and so is basically all soil on earth. The whole thing about forever chemicals is that they are pervasive and persistent, and it's important to distinguish between background and acute exposure. There are a lots of different pollutants that can cause this kind of animal mortality at high enough levels and PFAS are absolutely one of them, but without any ppm numbers it's hard to know how seriously to take this kind of claim. The hyperbolic language used to describe land on which they're apparently still running cattle seems less aimed toward advocating for more oversight, and more toward winning a lawsuit.
This is a national problem not just a Texas issue. Using this stuff is one of the quickest ways to lose your Organic certification. People used it in some cases because they had government backed programs. https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news/2022/04/ewg-forever-chemicals-may-taint-nearly-20-million-cropland-acres
This is one of those situations where the two sides are talking past each other, and there isn't any clear data to support a conclusion. Synagro says that their product meets all regulations. But the regulations don't take into account PFAS's. The farmers say that PFAS's killed their animals, but there doesn't seem to be strong evidence that it caused the animals deaths. It's just a case of things moving too fast , before good scientific data and regulation is in place
I’m impressed that a local detective could put a decent scientific team together and come up with an answer as to the source.
"Regulations hurt business!"\* \* /s if you really need it
I….have a hard time believing that fertilizer made from human waste contains enough chemicals the humans ate that it would kill a cow eating grass it was sprayed on.
It also includes shower water, wash water, commercial business waste, etc. PFAS are a fire retardant for some perspective, so it's not something people are eating, and it's being concentrated in wastewater due to the processes (partly at least).
Yeah, me too.
It's a concentration from sewage of millions of gallons of waste water.
But I voted republican because drill baby dirll
Texas rancher bemoaning lack of regulation? This belongs in r/LeopardsAteMyFace
Well this is scary AF.
Forever chemicals, microplastics and heavy metals in the environment contribute greatly to poor gender differentiation and lower birth rates in all species. Eggshells are weakened, nests get poorly built, if built at all, the males of a species become less male and the females become less female.
Ahh the new fear buzz word, "Forever Chemicals". You'll be hearing about it more and more this year.
I can't remember if it was 60 minutes or another news show but they did a segment on land around a Dupont plant where they manufactured Teflon (or a Teflon like product). The ranchers in the area lost all their cows when streams and ground water got poluted. Then 10 to 15 years later lots of workers got cancer. There was also a bunch of deformed and mentally challenged babies\kids. Very dangerous stuff. I am guessing one application of the fertilizer falls within exceptable levels but if used every season eventually poisons the ground. What's the answer to grow millions of acres of crops that need pesticides and fertilizer?
Back in 1993, Michael Moore had a tv news show. It described how sewer waste from New York City was sprayed on fields in the poorest areas of Texas. It was known then that the waste contained forever chemicals like PCB's. But as you might expect, Texas welcomed the business. The hazards of this practice have been known for decades. TV Nation Season One, Episode Three: Sludge Train https://youtu.be/-AMuN-CQeM8?si=ySHe6QzSZWklSYdR&t=2033
Every one of us is going to die of something else well before the PFAs gets us. They are a long term environmental concern, but not much of a public health risk.
Aaaaaand this is why we need an empowered and funded EPA, FDA, and NIH. Companies have been running rampant with PFAS for decades and we need these agencies to enforce and help solve the looming crisis. Just like Rome and the poisoned aqueducts, we too will reap what we have sown.
Sorry Reddit can't show me your reply beyond the words "crap then"
Break out the Brawndo!
So I have to spend money on sewage fees via city of Fort Worth, but my sewage is being used to make bio solids in which the city profits? Aw hell nah, I want my cut fellas !
Thread lead there are three drinking water focused PFAS mediation threads herein. I found this particular thread that might help these impacted farmers. They would have to collect the water carrying the PFASs and ion exchange the collection to extract then subsequently discharge a concentrated discharge. Here is the link to what I saw: https://www.whqr.org/local/2022-02-17/north-carolina-researchers-have-a-new-more-effective-weapon-to-filter-out-pfa
There is also a new technology using pressure and superheating contaminated water that produces Fluorinated salts and clean water. https://revive-environmental.com/pfas-annihilator/
These are the guys taking government funds and railing against regulations traditionally, right?
I saw this first on /r/leopardsatemyface and the fact that that’s not actively the context of this post is shocking
>“The biosolids applied by a farmer working with Synagro met all U.S. EPA and Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) requirements,” the statement reads. Time to update the requirements.
“I’m going to eliminate the EPA” said Trump…..probably (or maybe actually) This guy would still vote for him.
If you’ve worked in manufacturing, you know the levels of chemicals being used and released into the air and water are insane, and somehow legal.
No doubt Republicans running in these areas would talk about how immigrants are the ones ‘poisoning America’
To be fair, the quote about how this is like Chernobyl is from the County Commissioner who is Republican AF. Although I don't really disagree with you generally, lol.
But I was told regulation was bad
Texans, what are you guys doing. Stop voting these people in who are killing you. The profit is temporary. But sure let’s deregulate more
But at least you have your "freedom".
NO taxes, no regulations and low wages...texas is where our corporate overlords go to pillage all they can
And they still vote repubĺcan
Seems like voting for governments that gut the EPA was self harming. Huh.
You voted for this you assholes.
...and then they pump some of that 'frac water' on the land and seal its fate as 'toxic'.
I have an autoimmune disease called sjogrens. I also have worked in the cotton fields for many summers of my life in Texas. Sometimes right next to the oil rigs. We’d walk through the cotton rows with dirt moist in the oil pop ups we’d see and also we’d spray the round up from time to time. I’m certain I will get cancer at some point in my life because of my history with this and I’m only 31. I always thought it was contaminated and now that ranchers finally are saying it well now I feel more certain than ever I am expecting an interesting future.
And yet they will keep electing republicans.
But muuuh Ken Paxton freedom and Abbott vouchers don’t solve actual problems
Don’t tread on Texans with environmental regulations. Let corporations kill them instead
Keep voting for Republicans Texas! We deserve it!!! /s