Read the full article by Matthew Rozsa (Salon.com)
… “The 285 firefighters who worked for Fire Rescue Victoria — a fire department in the Australian city of Melbourne — continued their public service despite the crises that surrounded them. They were diligent about their work during the Black Summer Bushfires that spanned 2019 to 2020. They persisted even as the COVID-19 outbreak became one of the worst pandemics in modern history.
But these firefighters were also participating in a study to see if scientists could remove so-called ‘forever chemicals’ from their bodies. As a result of the firefighters’ efforts and those of the scientists who conducted the research, the public now knows a little more about whether these controversial chemicals — which are absolutely everywhere — can even be escaped.
The parameters of the study, which was published in the journal JAMA Open in 2022, were straightforward: The firefighters were divided into three groups so that the amount of PFAS in their blood could be measured over the course of 12 months. During the 12 months of the experiment, one group of firefighters donated plasma every six weeks; a second group donated whole blood every 12 weeks; and the final group did not donate blood at all.
After the results were analyzed, scientists learned that ‘plasma and blood donations caused greater reductions in serum PFAS levels than observation alone over a 12 month period.'” …