A thorough new review article in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH) highlights the emerging, yet still poorly understood, links between exposure to PFAS, also known as “forever chemicals,” and mental health outcomes, such as depression.
The article reviews what is known and unknown about PFAS chemicals in the environment, exposure routes, effects, and persistence in the body, and documents racial and socioeconomic inequalities in exposure to PFAS. More research, with community participation, is urgently needed to better inform regulatory strategies to minimize PFAS exposure.
“Despite growing public concern, substantial knowledge gaps remain regarding the full spectrum of PFAS-related health effects,” the authors write, “particularly those related to mental health and the disproportionate burden on marginalized communities.”
Led by Shiryn D. Sukhram and Ji Kim, with co-authors Sabrina Musovic, Ayotunde Anidugbe, Emiliano Corte, Tasneem Ahsan, Selvia Rofail, Nicolli Mesquita, and Miguel Padilla, the article appears in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.
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That is a universal pattern in human material and intellectual production and action. We invent something having either never considered or never cared about the unknown consequences including environmental impact, including to so called biological systems. Plastics and takeaway food wrappers are vivid examples. We make then and then dump them in the environment without any mechanism for clearing the oceans and the fish and animals including people of microplastics and industrial chemicals. The whole human world is toxic, physically, emotionally, psychologically and spiritually. It’s poisoned the whole Earth. This is so obvious. Let’s have that as the starting point rather then the conclusion of our critiques. We just endlessly flesh out the infinite varieties of the main thing and we never tackle the main thing hence the infinite varieties persist. The main thing is the monstrous and vast global mechanism called human civilization and it’s conditioning of the brain and shaping of the destructive life activities and destroyer of health, psychologically, emotionally, physiclally and spiritually. It’s a very simple problem when you put it like that because we are asking only one question that will solve all these other little questions. What do we do about that vast and destructive mechanism that is human civilization that is tearing up and destroying everything of any value including the human beings ensnared and destroyed by it? See what a social and historical death spiral we have created for ourselves and then let’s consider how we break free. We made the system historically through our own efforts and we can’t let it destroy us. There is no point shirking the question because you find it scary because the real thing is much more scarier still so it’s better to enter it now through a question rather then later when the nuclear bombs start falling or when the fascists are at your door.
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