Exposure To Some Common Pfas Changes Gene Activity, New Study Finds

New research suggests exposure to some common Pfas or "forever chemical" compounds causes changes to gene activity, and those changes are linked to health problems including multiple cancers, neurological disorders and autoimmune disease. From a report: The findings are a major step toward determining the mechanism by which the chemicals cause disease and could help doctors identify, detect and treat health problems for those exposed to Pfas before the issues advance. The research may also point toward other diseases potentially caused by Pfas that have not yet been identified, the authors said.

The study is among the first to examine how Pfas chemicals impact gene activity, called epigenetics. "This gives us a hint as to which genes and which Pfas might be important," said Melissa Furlong, a University of Arizona College of Public Health Pfas researcher and study lead author.

Too High a Price for Benefits

[BrendaEM]

Forever lingering is bad attribute for a cancer-causing substance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

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[manu0601]

PFAS are special here because they are quite hard to get rid of. The C-F bond is the most resistant that chemistry can produce, it is very hard to destroy. They are also very hard to excrete from the body: half-life of PFOA (the oldest PFAS) in your blood is several years. As a consequence, the accumulate in the environment and in living organisms, including human beings.

I don't think it matters anymore

[rsilvergun]

I don't think there's enough democracy left in the world to do anything about this. There's certainly aren't enough people who aren't busy panicking over every little moral thing out there.

We have solid polling that indicates Trump won the election due to panic over trans kids in sports and healthcare for trans kids. Specifically the discredited nonsense called rapid onset gender dysphoria and the belief that your kid might just turn trans someday because of something they saw on TV...

That's just on

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[jacks smirking reven]

How are we to take RFK's opinions on plastics against the White House's National Strategy To End the Use of Paper Straws [whitehouse.gov]. What would the politicization of everything be without having to make drinking straws a matter of political ideology.

The fact that sentence and document exists should be looked at when we found lead in the Roman's drinking water. "Damn, they sure fucked themselves up"

Can we get a source that isn't The Guardian?

[sabbede]

If the first thing a site does when you open it is talk about having to fight Elon Musk (?!), it isn't worth going any further. The Guardian is a garbage propaganda outlet and everything they publish must be suspect as a result.

Oh, they are also funded by billionaires, despite their claims. Bill Gates has given them millions, and he isn't the only one. They need it, they're hemorrhaging money.

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[jacks smirking reven]

What do you consider reputable sources of journalism?

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[smooth wombat]

The Guardian is a reputable source of journalism. The OP is just whining. You'll note they didn't criticize the content, only the source. That is standard tactic nowadays.

That said, they probably consider NewsMax or Breitbart as the epitome of "reputable" sources.

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[HiThere]

Which "The Guardian"? Certainly the one I kept getting in my mailbox was NOT reputable journalism. Perhaps "The Manchester Guardian" is reputable. But I've never seen a copy. And if the US edition of "The Guardian" (without adjectival mods) is the same company as the British edition, then neither one is trustworthy, as they just say what they think will sell. And they occasionally directly contradict each other.

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[Anonymous Coward]

"Britons are most likely to trust journalists working for the likes of The Times and The Guardian to tell the truth - overall a third (34%) of Britons say they trust these newspapers, but this is still down four percentage points from 38% in mid-October." - https://yougov.co.uk/politics/... [yougov.co.uk]

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[jacks smirking reven]

Oh you are probably right, that's why I ask, everybody gets their info from somewhere.

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[HiThere]

Claiming that it's important to tight Elon Musk is not a sign that the results are untrustworthy, but it may well be taking as being extremely partisan. OTOH, anyone who trusts Musk is as intelligent as someone who trusts Zuckerberg.

I am not sure what this proves

[Retired Chemist]

I am not suggesting that Poly fluoroalkanes are not a problem in the environment, but I am not sure what this study proves. Lots of chemicals including ones in nature effect gene activity. Aside from everything else, it is an important part of how biochemistry functions in living organisms. I think if you took any class of compounds, you would find some affected gene activity. Separating out the effects of one class of chemicals from all the others (and their interactions) is going to be very difficult. Also, you might as well face the reality, cancer is what you will die from if something else does not kill you first. Everyone dies eventually.

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[ceoyoyo]

It's been well known for quite a while that some fluoroalkanes cause disease. Not in the "oh, you might get cancer in forty years" way but in the "lots of cows are dying mysteriously" way. Studying the effects of those chemicals on biological systems, including genetic expression, can tell us a lot about what they're doing and potentially ways to treat those diseases.

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[buck-yar]

They're trying to find the exact method by which these PFAS negatively affect the body. If we can detoxify people of these toxins, they might live longer and be healthier during that time. They appear to harm DNA, impede the repair process, and alter how DNA is read/transcribed.

In recent years, a growing body of research has shown that PFAS can exert their toxicity through disruption of both DNA integrity and epigenetic regulation. This includes changes in DNA methylation patterns, histone modifications, chromatin remodeling, and interference with DNA repair mechanisms. These molecular-level alterations can impair transcriptional regulation and cellular homeostasis, contributing to genomic instability and long-term biological dysfunction. In neural systems, PFAS exposure appears particularly concerning. It affects key regulators of neurodevelopment, such as BDNF, synaptic plasticity genes, and inflammatory mediators. Importantly, epigenetic dysregulation extends to non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs), including microRNAs (miRNAs) and long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs), which mediate post-transcriptional silencing and chromatin remodeling. Although direct evidence of transgenerational neurotoxicity is still emerging, animal studies provide compelling hints. Persistent changes in germline epigenetic profiles and transcriptomic alterations suggest that developmental reprogramming might be heritable by future generations. https://www.mdpi.com/2305-6304... [mdpi.com]

Here appears to be one mechanism, inhibition of a detoxifying enzyme. Which would negatively affect the body's ability to remove other toxins

"Sulfotransferase (SULT) enzymes catalyze the sulfate conjugation of drugs, other xenobiot

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[Retired Chemist]

The basic problem with PFAs versus other toxins is that they are extremely unreactive. That makes them difficult to remove from the environment or the body. Knowing the mechanism of action is not going to help with that. Our biochemistry has a large selection of methods for dealing with foreign chemicals, which unfortunately to not work for PFAs. It is quite possible that the issue is collateral damage when trying to remove them.

Mildly contaminated

[manu0601]

Firefighters in this study are mildly contaminated (lucky them!). 95th percentile for PFOA in this study is 3.30 g/L. In France, the Esteban study reported 95th percentile for PFOA at 5.257 g/L. This is the general population, not firefighters.

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[manu0601]

I actually typed the mu characters in my comment, but slashdot ate it. Thank you for pointing the error. Next time I will use mg/mL.

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[manu0601]

Did I? The person that programmed Slashdot to silently filter mu characters made the mistake, IMO.

Pfas?

[dohzer]

*PFAS

This begs the question:

[Rambo Tribble]

Are there Pfas in Sydney's jeans?