It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Biden signs memorandum for new environmental protections in Antarctic
Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin, NASA and other research organizations have discovered two seafloor troughs that could allow warm ocean water to reach the base of Totten Glacier, East Antarctica's largest and most rapidly thinning glacier. President Joe Biden on Friday signed a national security memorandum that provides new policies regarding the Antarctic region, particularly in climate change research. Photo by NASA/UPI
May 17 (UPI) -- President Joe Biden on Friday signed a memorandum updating United States policy on the Antarctic region in an effort to protect it from the effects of climate change.
The national security memorandum replaces the 1994 policy on Arctic and Antarctic regions and establishes key objectives by which the United States will lead and participate in activities through the Antarctic Treaty System.
The new policy has four primary objectives:Protect the "relatively unspoiled" Antarctic environment and related ecosystems Preserve and pursue opportunities for scientific research and understand Antarctica's relationship to climate change Maintain the Antarctic as a region of peaceful international cooperation Ensure the protection of living resources and ecosystems in the region
"We remain vigilant against actions by countries that could threaten U.S. national interests by bringing international discord to the Antarctic region," the White House said in a statement.
"The United States, represented by the Department of State at ATS bodies, will work with international partners through the ATS to promote peace and science in the region, and promote international cooperation while safeguarding U.S. national interests."
The U.S. National Science Foundation manages three year-round Antarctic research facilities.
The foundation collaborates with other federal science agencies on research in aeronomy and astrophysics, ecology, atmospheric sciences, biology and medicine, geology and geophysics, glaciology, ocean and climate systems, and living marine resources.
Research conducted by the United States and other countries continues to demonstrate the damages of global climate change on the Antarctic region, including through ocean warming and acidification, ozone depletion, rising sea levels, and air and water pollution.
American research also has revealed the risks and uncertainties of climate "tipping points" such as the collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet.
The United States said it will continue to encourage countries to set "ambitious" 2035 nationally determined contributions under the Paris Climate Agreement to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius and establish a system of protected marine areas in the Antarctic.
The updated policy builds on the Biden-Harris administration's commitment to modernize outdated climate and environmental policies, according to the White House.
Human activity over natural inputs determines the bacterial community in an ice core from the Muztag ata glacier
SCIENCE CHINA PRESS
IMAGE:
THE LOCATION OF MUZTAG ATA GLACIER ON THE TIBETAN PLATEAU AND THE INFLUENCE OF WESTERLY JET AND INDIAN MONSOON ARE SHOWN IN PANEL A. THE ICE CORE SAMPLING STRATEGY IS ILLUSTRATED IN PANEL (B). BRIEFLY, THE 74 M ICE CORE WAS CUT INTO 10 TO 15 CM SECTIONS AND DATED, THEN SECTIONS WITH ENVIRONMENTAL PROXIES AVAILABLE ARE USED FOR DNA EXTRACTION AND BACTERIAL 16S RRNA GENE AMPLICON SEQUENCING.
This study is led by Dr. Yongqin Liu (Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences). The Tibetan Plateau (TP) has the third-largest number of glaciers after the Antarctic and Greenland. Bacteria, deposited on glacier surfaces through dry and wet deposition, undergo in-situ growth and are subsequently preserved in ice cores following environmental selection pressures such as UV radiation and low temperatures. Since glacier bacteria are largely transported from distant or local sources by atmospheric circulation, changes in source ecosystems can also affect the composition of surface glacier bacteria. Therefore, the characteristics of bacterial communities in ice cores can serve as indicators of past climates and human activities.
The team investigated the bacterial community from a 74 m ice core of Muztag ata glacier on the Tibetan Plateau to link biological indicators with past climate and anthropogenic activities. They observed an increase in bacterial richness throughout the ice core, which was associated with higher NH+4, an indicator of agricultural development. Meanwhile, the evenness demonstrated negative correlations with DOC and MAP, and positive correlation with δ18O, Na+, K+, Mg2+, Ca2+, Cl−, SO42-, and NO3-. These indicators collectively offer promising insights for inferring past climate and environmental changes.
The researchers further investigate the composition of bacterial communities in ice cores. Cluster analysis at the bacterial family level indicates three distinct groupings of samples. Through cluster analysis at the bacterial family level, they uncovered three distinct groupings of samples. Cluster A encompasses the years 1953 to 1991, Cluster B consists of 11 samples from 1933 to 1951, while the majority of samples in Cluster C are dated between 1907 and 1930. It was found that the bacterial community composition was shaped by a combination of human activity, natural inputs, and air temperature, with a pronounced human influence becoming evident after the 1950s. Furthermore, the relative abundance of animal gut-associated bacteria, including Aerococcaceae, Nocardiaceae, Muribaculaceae, and Lachnospiraceae, was associated with livestock number changes in the Central Asian region. Together with other bacterial lineages, they jointly explained 59.8% of the livestock number changes.
"These new findings not only quantify the relationship between bacterial diversity and community composition with past climates and human activities but also highlight how changes in land use, driven by agriculture and livestock, intensify the presence of potentially harmful bacteria on glaciers. This enhances our understanding of regional climate and human activities." Dr. Liu says.
This study provides a comprehensive analysis of the century-long dynamics of bacterial communities in the Muztag Ata ice core. The identified bacterial markers offer valuable insights into past environmental conditions and human activities in the source regions, underscoring the microbial potential in ice core climate studies.
The linear regression between bacterial richness (a) and evenness (b) with the dated ice core age is shown. (c) shows the correlation between bacterial richness and evenness with the measured environmental proxies. Significant correlations (at P<0.05) are marked with asterisks. rBC, refractory black carbon; MAP, mean annual precipitation; DOC, dissolved organic carbon.
The community structure variations are visualized based on the Bray- Curtis dissimilarity of bacterial community at the family-level, following Hellinger transformation. Panel (a) shows the hierarchical clustering using complete linkage approach, panel (b) shows the principal component ordination plot with the quadrants labelled, panel (c) shows the distance-based linear modelling
results and the axes are labelled based on human influence (inferred from NH4+ and rBC patterns) and temperature (inferred from δ18O pattern).
Panel (a) shows the annual changes in the relative abundance of animal husbandry indicative lineages (Aerococcaceae, Nocardiaceae, Muribaculaceae, and Lachnospiraceae) and animal stock numbers (cattle and sheep) across the ice core. Panel (b) shows the Pearson correlation between the relative abundance of indicative lineages and animal stock numbers. For panel (a), grey areas represent the consistent year-to-year changing patterns (increase or decrease). The average value before and after 1950 was labelled with dashed lines. Animal stock numbers were obtained from the Russian Agricultural Statistics at https://www.ier.hit-u.ac.jp/rrc/English/pdf/RRC_WP_No67.pdf.
A hiker discovered bones, weapons, and money on a thawing glacier. It turned out to be a 400-year-old mystery.
Morgan McFall-Johnsen Updated Fri, May 10, 2024
BUSINESS INSIDER A hiker discovered bones, weapons, and money on a thawing glacier. It turned out to be a 400-year-old mystery.
A hiker discovered the 400-year-old remains of a wealthy man on a glacier in the Swiss Alps.
Melting ice revealed the mysterious man had traveled with many coins, weapons, and possibly mules.
The discovery points to an ancient economy supported by dangerous routes through high mountain passes.
The Theodul Glacier was expanding when a mysterious man in thin leather shoes trekked across its surface about 400 years ago.
This field of ice high in the Alps, below the range's iconic and imposing Matterhorn, formed a treacherous pass between what's now Switzerland and Italy. It was the middle of the Little Ice Age, and more ice was forming along its edges every year.
That had changed by 1984. The glacier was retreating, and the leather-shoed man was gradually emerging from the ice into the sun when a hiker stumbled upon his remains.
"They're not combat weapons. These are fencing weapons. These are ceremonial weapons that the rich had on them," said Pierre-Yves Nicod, a curator at the Valais History Museum in the Swiss Alps. Business Insider spoke with Nicod in French and translated his words into English.
"And then the clothes are not combat clothes," he added. "They are also the clothes of a wealthy person, of a gentleman."
The man's bones showed no signs of trauma, and he clearly wasn't robbed, so archaeologists believe he must have died by accident. Perhaps he fell into a crevasse or faced an unfortunate change in weather.
What was a rich man doing up there on the snow and ice in the first place?
Clues point to an answer: This man may have been part of an ancient economy that spread across the peaks of the Alps. He's a snapshot archaeologists wouldn't have if the mountains weren't changing so drastically.
You see, the mysterious man, his belongings, and the mules were frozen deep in the ice for hundreds of years. Then humans started burning coal, oil, and gas for energy. How the climate crisis reveals ancient artifacts Nicod shows off an ancient bow discovered on a glacier.Morgan McFall-Johnsen
For about two centuries now, our use of fossil fuels has been releasing greenhouse gases into the air, mainly carbon dioxide and methane.
The new scientific field of glacial archaeology thrives in the Alps. For about four decades, archaeologists have been trekking across the glaciers of Switzerland and Italy, retrieving artifacts that are thawing into view.
The problem is that these artifacts aren't surfacing within ancient buried towns or temples. The Theodul traveler was carrying this locket among other bits of jewelry and pendants.Morgan McFall-Johnsen
"It's one of the difficulties of glacial archaeology that we find these objects in the ice, and therefore out of all archaeological context," Nicod said.
In short, it's often hard to know what exactly you've found. A clue in an old illustration
He wasn't a soldier for hire, after all, a 2015 paper found. He carried a silver pendant engraved with a cross and anointed with wax, perhaps from a religious candle.
Fragments of wool and some silk indicate the fine clothes he wore. His weapons were all manufactured in present-day Germany. His coins were mostly minted in Northern Italy. Nicod with the traveler's pendant engraved with a cross.Morgan McFall-Johnsen
In a 2022 report, Nicod and his colleague Philippe Curdy pointed to an illustration from 1643 showing a caravan of merchants ascending to an Alps mountain pass.
"In the background, there are the mountains and then a merchant with all these loads who has his mules, who's climbing up to the peaks," Nicod said.
The wealthy man in the glacier was a merchant, they believe, representing a remarkable economy that has long persisted between towns separated by 15,000-foot peaks. Throughout the Alps, from ancient times into the modern period, people have braved frozen mountain passes to hawk their wares. Even at the end of summer, large glaciers adorn the high passes of the Alps in the Valais region of Switzerland.Morgan McFall-Johnsen
"We see that the passage over the glacier was used all the time — Bronze Age, Iron Age, Roman time," Romain Andenmatten, a local archaeologist, told BI. "The simplest way is to go over the glacier." Romain Andenmatten with a horseshoe found on a melting glacier.Morgan McFall-Johnsen
The Theodul Pass was a common route from the Valais region of modern-day Switzerland to the Aosta Valley of modern-day Italy.
Today, it's a ski slope and occasional archaeological site. Not everything in the ice is archaeology
Carefully cushioned in custom-cut foam inside a plastic storage bin, the ancient traveler's belongings emit the faint smell of rot, of decaying wood and leather. The Theodul traveler's knives, razor, and various appendages for attaching accessories to his clothes are carefully stored in the Valais History Museum archives.Morgan McFall-Johnsen
Organic materials such as these must be retrieved quickly once they're exposed on the ice. Lying in a melty puddle under direct sunlight, they can decompose in just a couple of years. Even dried out and stored carefully indoors, the putrid scent gives away their age.
"It smells like the past," Nicod said. "This isn't too bad."
The melting ice yields fouler-smelling findings, including the belongings of a couple who disappeared in the 1940s, Nicod said. Glacier hikers have discovered the bodies of people who went missing still more recently. Sometimes the findings themselves are dangerous. Nicod said people had found undetonated bombs on the ice.
It's not just the Alps. Across the planet, the shifting environments caused by the climate crisis are revealing other terrors that were once buried deep.
Thawing permafrost in Russia released anthrax from a once frozen reindeer carcass, causing a deadly outbreak in 2016.
Droughts are withering rivers and reservoirs so much that their receding banks have unveiled shipwrecks, human remains, Spain's very own Stonehenge, and a couple of formerly submerged villages.
The top image shows an 11th-century Romanesque church partially exposed in a reservoir in Vilanova de Sau, Spain. The bottom image shows the same spot five months later.AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti
Some tragedies melting out of the ice are such ancient history that they only evoke wonder — such as Ötzi the Iceman, one of the most significant archaeological finds ever. Two mountaineers with Ötzi, Europe's oldest natural human mummy, in the Otztal Alps between Austria and Italy.Paul HANNY/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images
Like the wealthy traveler of Theodul, Ötzi was discovered by a hiker. He had surfaced on a melting glacier on the other side of the Alps, on the border of Italy and Austria, in 1991.
The ice had kept Ötzi mummified since his death in about 3300 BC — he's older than Stonehenge and the Egyptian pyramids. His impeccably preserved body offers an otherwise impossible glimpse into Neolithic life, everything from his male-pattern balding to his hand-poke tattoos and meaty diet.
Andenmatten is hopeful that the glaciers dwindling away on the Swiss side of the Alps will yield the next Ötzi. Andenmatten coming out of a freezer where artifacts are stored in the basement of the Valais History Museum archives.Morgan McFall-Johnsen
Archaeologists have a unique window into the sheer breadth of humans' footprints on our environments — both the wonder and the terror of our capabilities over the ages. As human-caused climate change devastates mountain glaciers, archaeologists discover more high-altitude feats of ancient human history.
Andenmatten and his colleagues go searching for artifacts in August and September, when the glacier is meltiest and most likely to reveal objects. But as temperatures rise, the season of ice melt expands and so does their archaeological season.
"The good time slot is every year bigger," Andenmatten said.
Venezuela becomes first country to lose all of its glaciers
At beginning of 20th century, Venezuela had 6 glaciers
By Ehren Wynder
May 9 (UPI) -- Venezuela is the first country in modern history to lose all of its glaciers after climate scientists declared its remaining glacier little more than an ice field.
Climatologist Maximiliano Herrera earlier this week posted on X that Venezuela's Humboldt Glacier has shrunk to an area of two hectares and has gone static, downgrading it to an ice field.
The Humboldt Glacier, also known as La Corona, was the last remaining one in Venezuela after the country lost at least five others in the past century due to the effects of climate change.
Several glaciologists now say the clump of ice clinging to the Sierra Nevada National Park in the Andes now is too small to be considered a glacier.
While there is no global standard for the minimum size an ice mass must be to be considered a glacier, the U.S. Geological Survey said 10 hectares is a commonly accepted metric
Glaciologists James Kirkham with the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative and Miriam Jackson with the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development said in the joint statement to the BBC that glaciologists define a glacier as an "ice mass that deforms under its own weight."
Mark Maslin, a professor of earth system sciences at University College London, told the BBC that "glaciers are ice that fills valleys" and an ice field the size of Humboldt is "not a glacier."
In the beginning of the 20th century, Venezuela boasted six glaciers spanning a combined 386 square miles.
A study from 2020 suggested the glacial area in Venezuela shrank by 98% between 1952 and 2019. The rate of glacial retreat rose around 1998 to a peak of nearly 17% per year from 2016 to 2019.
While researchers say glaciers are intimately linked with cultural identity, their rapid loss also leads to rising sea levels.
The Venezuelan government in December attempted to remediate the disappearing ice field by covering it with a thermal blanket, similar to covers used in European countries to protect ski slopes in warmer weather.
Climate scientists criticized the measure, arguing the synthetic cover will degrade and contaminate the environment with microplastics over time.
Maslin said mountain glaciers need enough ice to reflect the sun's rays and keep the air cool during the summer months. Now the Humboldt Glacier has lost so much ice that there's no direct way to reverse the melt.
"Once a glacier's gone, the sunlight heats the ground, makes it much warmer and makes it much less likely to actually build ice up over the summer," he said.
Kirkham and Jackson said between 20% to 80% of glaciers globally could be gone by 2100 and "a portion of this loss is already locked in" due to carbon emissions.
Rapidly lowering emissions, however, could save other glaciers, "which will have enormous benefits for livelihoods, and energy, water and food security," they said.
Herrera said on X that Indonesia, Mexico and Slovenia were the next countries most likely to face glacier extinction.
Maslin said those countries "make logical sense" because of their proximity to the equator and their low-lying ice caps, which are more vulnerable to global warming.
Icy reception for plan to 'save' Venezuela's last glacier
by Margioni BERMÚDEZ MARCH 5, 2024
A small patch of ice among bare rock is all that remains of Venezuela's last glacier, which the government hopes to restore to its former glory using a geothermal blanket
Experts say that would be too little too late.
While glacier melt is a global phenomenon blamed on climate change, Venezuela is the first country in the Andes mountain range—which stretches all the way to Chile in the south—to lose all its glaciers.
Venezuela has lost five in total, adding up to some 1,000 hectares of ice, in the last century or so.
"In Venezuela there are no more glaciers," Julio Cesar Centeno, a university professor and advisor to the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), told AFP.
"What we have is a piece of ice that is 0.4 percent of its original size."
Centeno and other experts are convinced the loss of La Corona glacier on Humboldt peak, some 4,900 meters (more than 16,000 feet) above sea level, is irreversible.
But the government announced a plan in December to slow and even reverse the thaw by covering the area with a thermal mesh made of polypropylene plastic warding off the Sun's rays.
The cover was delivered to Humboldt peak by helicopter in 35 separate pieces, each measuring 2.75 meters by 80 meters, in December, but the government has not said whether it has already been unrolled.
The most optimistic estimates give the remaining ice cover four to five years.
Similar covers are used in European countries, mainly to protect ski slopes in warmer weather.
"It allows us to maintain the temperature of the area and prevent the entire glacier from melting," said Jehyson Guzman, governor of the western state of Merida that used to be home to Venezuela's glaciers.
Nothing left to save
But scientists of the University of Los Andes (ULA) are skeptical.
They say La Corona ceased to be a glacier since shrinking to just two hectares of the 450 hectares it used to cover. Scientists use a guideline of 10 hectares as the minimum size of a glacier.
Before La Corona, Venezuela also lost its glaciers on the peaks of El Leon, La Concha, El Toro and Bolivar.
"It is an illusory thing, a hallucination, it is completely absurd," said Centeno of the government's plan.
He and a team of other scientists will ask Venezuela's supreme court to scrap the project, which they say could have other, negative, impacts as the plastic blanket degrades over time.
"These micro plastics are practically invisible, they end up in the soil and from there they go to crops, lagoons, into the air, so people will end up eating and breathing that," he said.
The last remnants of La Corona are to be found on Humboldt peak some 4,900 meters above sea level.
Enrique La Marca, zoologist and ecologist, fears the cover could harm rare species of mosses and lichens, even hummingbirds that call the rocky environment home.
"That life will die because it will not have the necessary oxygen," he said.
An ice remnant
The most optimistic estimates give the remaining ice-cover "four to five years" before disappearing completely, said La Marca, who researches the impacts of glacier melt due to climate change.
Some calculations point to a mere two years.
"It's an ice remnant," not a glacier, added physicist Alejandra Melfo, a ULA expert on the topic.
Forestry engineer and mountaineer Susana Rodriguez said the disappearance of La Corona will also affect Venezuelan tourism, as many people who used to climb the Humboldt peak did so on the ice.
"Now everything is rock, and what remains is so deteriorated that it is risky to step on it. There are cracks," said Rodriguez, who has accompanied several outings on the glacier.
PFAS Explained: These Forever Chemicals Are Being Banned from a Variety of Outdoor Products. Now Gear Makers Are Scrambling
PFAS are poisoning America’s watersheds and will eventually be banned in several states. That will require the outdoor gear industry to make some major changes
Outdoor gear is in the midst of a sea change. A common family of chemicals used for waterproofing, stain resistance, and durability — PFAS — is being banned in textiles in California and in apparel in New York starting in 2025. As a result, outdoor gear companies are working hard to remove these chemicals from their products. With PFAS being utilized in DWR treatments on wind jackets, waterproof treatment on down, tent fabrics, rain jackets, and much more, this will require a major shift for the industry. But what is PFAS, and why is it being banned?
The reality is that the PFAS found in rain jackets is just the tip of the iceberg. PFAS have been in use for decades across a range of products and industries, including the outdoor industry. And the full impact of that toxic legacy is now turning up in our environment and in our bodies at an alarming rate.
What Is PFAS?
PFAS, short for perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, was originally developed by Dupont in 1938, and a version of it quickly found its way into any number of household goods under a familiar name: Teflon. Its waterproof and stain-resistant properties made it extremely popular. Today there are nearly 15,000 chemicals in the PFAS family, including PFOS (Perfluorooctane sulfonic acid) and PFOA (Perfluorooctanoic Acid), which are found in everything from rain jackets to food packaging to shampoo.
What makes these chemicals unique is the carbon and fluorine bonds in their atomic structure. Because carbon and fluorine bonds are very strong, they do not break down easily. For that reason, they are known as “forever chemicals.” They build up in the environment, and they build in the human body. Based on an analysis of survey data from the National Center for Health Statistics for the years 2011 to 2012, it is estimated that 97 percent of Americans have PFAS in their bloodstream.
A lot of the coverage in outdoor media is currently focused on how legislation (particularly in California) is going to affect rain jacket quality, which makes sense given that many modern rain jackets (although not all) rely on PFAS for waterproofing. PFAS is found in the DWR; and it’s found in the waterproof membrane. Gear companies that have not already transitioned toward a PFAS-free chemistry for their outdoor apparel are scrambling to get there before California’s deadline.
But if you already own gear that contains PFAS, feel free to hang on to it. First off, it’s not the only thing you’ve got that contains PFAS. If your shirt (or your kid’s shirt) is advertising itself as “stain resistant,” then it probably utilizes PFAS. It’s in shampoo, nail polish, and toilet paper. Up until very recently, it was in carpets. It’s practically omnipresent inside your home. But more importantly, there is currently no indication that PFAS passes the skin barrier readily enough to pose a risk.
How PFAS Gets into the Bloodstream
A sign warns hunters not to eat deer because of elevated levels of PFAS chemicals in game animals.
Photo by Drew YoungeDyke, National Wildlife Federation via AP
PFAS gets into your body when you ingest it, which means breathing, eating, or drinking. Here’s how that is currently happening.
For most Americans, the risk of breathing in PFAS is relatively minor. This is mainly an issue for individuals who work in chemical plants where PFAS is being manufactured. However, there may be risks to individuals who live near these factories. One exception to this is skiers and snowboarders, as there is risk of exposure when applying ski wax containing PFAS. Vermont has banned PFAS in ski wax and popular ski destinations, including Park City, Utah, have followed suit.
Accidentally munching on some PFAS is more of an issue. While the potential risk from teflon pans is reasonably well known at this point in time, we know less about how common PFAS is in food packaging. Studies have shown that eating out more often, as well as consuming certain high-risk products like tea and microwave popcorn, is associated with higher levels of PFAS in the bloodstream. As a result, much more legislation — including from California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington — is focused on removing PFAS from food packaging.
Unfortunately for hunters and anglers, eliminating processed foods from your diet will not necessarily protect you from PFAS exposure. In some states, deer have been found with high levels of PFAS in their system. So have freshwater fish.
PFAS Is in the Water
The biggest problem with PFAS is that it’s increasingly turning up in the water supply. There are a few reasons this is happening. PFAS leaching out of landfills, due to the sheer number of products in said landfills that contain PFAS. Another source of contamination is a type of firefighting foam called AFFF, which contains PFAS. This foam was very effective at fighting fires, but in places where it was used, including training grounds, it leached into the groundwater. This was a particular problem for the military, which contaminated the water with PFAS as a result of AFFF at more than 300 of their fire training sites. While some states have banned AFFF, it is still used by the military and municipal firefighters in some instances. A third issue is that the manufacturing plants that produce PFAS have been polluting rivers and watersheds. Dupont and the state of Ohio have already reacheda settlement for $110 million dollarsto clean up the PFOA that Dupont dumped into the Ohio River. Dupont’s subsidiary, Chemors, is currently embroiled in litigation overcontamination in Cape Fear Riverin North Carolina. And the outdoor industry proper is a part of this problem, too. Gore (of Gore-tex notoriety) is currently dealing with its own lawsuit as a result ofair and groundwater PFAS contaminationto the community near their Cherry Hill, Maryland, plant.
Protecting Yourself and Your Family
If you’re concerned about PFAS exposure, your first step should be to check out what PFAS testing has been done on your local water supply. As of 2022, the EPA’s recommendation for PFOS and PFOA (two of the most common PFAS chemicals) in drinking water is 0.04 ppt (parts per trillion). If your well or municipality’s water source turns out to be affected, you can reduce your exposure by changing the water you use for cooking and drinking. Be judicious about switching to bottled water, however, as the water sources used by some bottled water companies are also contaminated by PFAS. A better choice is to get a filter that is regulated to NSF/ANSI 53-2022 standards, like Epic Water Filters.
First off, it’s worth noting that it’s not just rain gear that is being affected by this upcoming legislation. California’s Assembly Bill No. 1817 covers all apparel as well as textiles, such as backpacks. But the biggest change will be to rain gear, particularly rain gear that utilizes a Gore-tex membrane. While Gore-tex came out with a PFAS-free membrane in 2021, it is expected that the rest of their line will not be permissible under the upcoming law. (We reached out to Gore for this story, but did not hear back in time for publication.)
Outdoor enthusiasts are likely to be split on the issue of their rain gear. Some may be wondering if they need to wait until the ban goes into effect in 2025 to start purchasing PFAS-free gear. The answer is, no. If you’re looking to purchase a rain jacket that is free from PFAS today, you have a few options, including Patagonia’s Boulder Fork, Cotopaxi’s Ceilo series, or Fjallraven’s Keb Eco Shell. If you have an existing jacket that you are interested in re-upping the waterproofing on, you can also purchase PFAS-free technical washes, like those from Nikwax.
Other companies are working on getting their apparel lines up to date with these new regulations in time for the deadline at the end of this year. Companies like Forloh fall into this category. This is especially tricky when PFAS is being used for component parts — in my test of the best down jackets earlier this year, several companies told me that their jackets were PFAS free with the exception of the paint on the zipper.
But others may be concerned that great rain jackets are simply being regulated out of existence. First, there is a temporary exemption in both New York and California’s laws, for “severe wet conditions.” The law is specific that “hiking, camping, skiing, climbing, bicycling, and fishing” are not considered “severe wet conditions.” As examples of activities where severe wet conditions might be encountered, it gives “offshore fishing, offshore sailing, whitewater kayaking, and mountaineering.” When queried, both Stone Glacier and Kuiu stated that certain products in their lineup would fall under this latter category. But even this reprieve for “severe wet conditions” is limited to three years, with complete bans coming into effect in 2028.
I think there is no question that consumers are going to see a difference in how gear that is PFAS-free performs, especially as it pertains to how long waterproofing lasts without retreatment. But how big of a difference it will be and the extent to which typical outdoor users will be impacted remains to be seen. OL plans to run a long-term test of current for-sale jackets containing PFAS in both the waterproof membrane and the DWR finish. We’ll compare this against current best-in-class PFAS free chemistry to see how they compare. However, due to the importance of reducing PFAS in our environment, we will be prioritizing PFAS-free gear in our testing and review stories going forward.
