An Interesting Experiment in Trying to Involve Journalists in Reporting Real Science Correctly.

[NNadir]

One of the standard half-serious jokes I often repeat in my writings here when confronting articles from journalists linked and discussed here, typically about energy and the environment which are often sensationist and misleading, is that "One cannot get a degree in journalism if one has passed a college level science course with a grade of C or better."

Journalism, as is the case in the American political disaster in which journalists have been and are actively working to normalize an intellectually deficient and declining criminal fraud as a Presidential candidate, while demeaning as "too old" an activist highly functional President, is generally horrible where scientific issues are involved. One result of this marketing of bizarre ideology by journalists is climate change. I regard the major issue in climate change to be selective attention, for example, the magnification of the views of extreme scientific minorities in climate denial, or the demonization of nuclear energy, which I continue to insist is the last, best hope for humanity.

Thus it was with some interest that I came across this paper in a scientific journal in which scientists involved themselves with, and reviewed, journalism in connection with a very serious issue, PFAS (Per/Poly Fluorinated Alkylated Substances) contamination in Europe: PFAS Contamination in Europe: Generating Knowledge and Mapping Known and Likely Contamination with “Expert-Reviewed” Journalism Alissa Cordner, Phil Brown, Ian T. Cousins, Martin Scheringer, Luc Martinon, Gary Dagorn, Raphaëlle Aubert, Leana Hosea, Rachel Salvidge, Catharina Felke, Nadja Tausche, Daniel Drepper, Gianluca Liva, Ana Tudela, Antonio Delgado, Derrick Salvatore, Sarah Pilz, and Stéphane Horel Environmental Science & Technology 2024 58 (15), 6616-6627

Unfortunately I will not have much time to discuss this paper in much detail, but a few excerpts and a graphic follow.

From the introduction:

The entire Earth is contaminated by per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), (1?3) yet for most places, monitoring data are nonexistent, limited, or difficult to access. This article reports on the methodology for a Europe-wide estimation of PFAS contamination locations, (4) based on and adding to existing models for uncovering and estimating known and suspected PFAS sites. PFAS are a class of over 12,000 synthetic organic chemicals of concern. (5) This concern is driven by their extreme persistence (6) but also by the toxicity, bioaccumulation potential, mobility, and even global warming potential of various PFAS. (7) These so-called “forever chemicals” are widely used in hundreds of consumer products and industrial applications such as nonstick and high-temperature resistant coatings, firefighting foams, and stain-resistant and waterproofing treatment. (8) PFAS have been linked to many health effects, including several types of cancers, liver impacts, adverse reproductive and developmental effects, thyroid impacts, and altered immune function. The broad social costs of PFAS contamination are externalized onto the public and governments, (9) generating a heavy burden on society with estimations of $62.6 billion in annual healthcare costs in the US and as much as $16 trillion in annual healthcare and remediation costs globally. (10,11)

PFAS have been broadly detected in environmental media including surface water, groundwater, raw and finished drinking water, soil, air, landfill leachate, sewage sludge, food, and dust. (12?15) As examples, a recent analysis of tap water samples in the United States collected between 2016 and 2021 detected PFAS at 45% of tested locations, (16) and the 2019 French National Biomonitoring Programme measured serum levels of 17 PFAS and detected PFAS in 100% of the 993 participants. (17) It has been argued that PFAS have exceeded a “planetary boundary” of “widespread and poorly reversible risks associated even with low-level PFAS exposures” since global rainwater samples have PFAS levels above proposed regulatory limits designed to protect public health... (1)

...In addition to data gaps due to a lack of testing, the present study was motivated by two additional data gaps. First, unlike in the US where many PFAS testing datasets have been made public by federal and state governments, academic research groups, and environmental advocacy organizations, (19?22) there were very few publicly available data on PFAS contamination across the EU. Second, in most cases, legal protections for industry trade secrets and confidential business information prevent the public from knowing where PFAS are used and emitted. (23,24) An exception to this is the US Toxics Release Inventory program, which has required reporting since 2020 by some firms in a subset of industries for a small number of PFAS. (25) But in most cases, even if a specific company is known to produce and/or use PFAS, it is difficult or impossible for the public to know whether PFAS are used at individual facilities...

The authors enlisted five investigative journalists in five countries, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, and The Netherlands, in the "FPP" or "Forever Pollution Project" and paired them with a team of PFAS scientists, noting " journalistic projects aiming at generating data in collaboration with scientists rather than reporting on already-produced data are not common."

Not common, indeed. I would expect that most scientists feel as I do, that science journalism (except generally when it appears in major science journals) that journalism is oblivious when reporting science.

Further down in the article:

In an unprecedented experiment of “expert-reviewed journalism”, the journalists discussed and validated all major decisions and choices on the mapping work with an informal advisory group of seven experts. The continued dialog included social scientists Alissa Cordner (Whitman College, Walla Walla, USA) and Phil Brown (Northeastern University, Boston, USA); environmental scientists Derrick Salvatore (Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, USA), Kimberly K. Garrett (Northeastern University, Boston, USA), Ian Cousins (Stockholm University, Sweden), and Martin Scheringer (ETH Zürich, Switzerland); and environmental lawyer and consultant Gretta Goldenman (Global PFAS Science Panel, Belgium). As examples, the project’s “expert-reviewers” were solicited to help distinguish PFAS manufacturing facilities from PFAS users; to determine which PFAS of interest would be shown on our interactive map, as the tool could only display contamination levels for six (perfluorooctanesulfonate [PFOS], perfluorooctanoic acid [PFOA], perfluorononanoic acid [PFNA], perfluorobutanesulfonate [PFBS], perfluorohexanoic acid [PFHxA], and perfluorohexanesulfonate [PFHxS]); and how to define a PFAS “hotspot” in the absence of a general definition (defined in the FPP as any location where total PFAS have been measured in any media over 100 ng/L).

The map which is interactive in the full paper, and, I think, at the link given in the caption but cannot be so here:



The caption:

Figure 1. Map of Forever Pollution, August 1, 2023, Le Monde, reproduced with permission, available at https://www.lemonde.fr/en/les-decodeurs/article/2023/02/23/forever-pollution-explore-the-map-of-europe-s-pfas-contamination_6016905_8.html.

I don't expect journalism to become a serious mirror of reality in my now short remaining lifetime, but we have to start somewhere; we have to try something, and I applaud this effort.

I wrote earlier today about PFAS and the very dangerous "hydrogen will save us" fantasy often hyped in the scientifically illiterate media earlier today:

A Brief Note on the Toxicology Associated With Hydrogen Fuel Cells.

Have a nice Sunday afternoon.

[GreenWave]

1. Some very Eastern countries not reporting...

And at my Alma Mater, broadcast journalists had to get a B or better in foreign language so as not to embarrass one and all when they need a name or say "whoo n tah" correctly. (junta, )