Kickstart: A brief look at the big issues facing forever chemicals

The focus on PFAS production and its impact on the environment has been growing in the past few years. There are an increasing number of bans, fines and public hearings related to PFAS. None of that should be a surprise. People are understandably mad after learning their groundwater is contaminated — and in some cases has been for decades.

Our sister paper Rubber News recently hosted PFAS Live, a special online livestream conference to provide in-depth conversations on the state of PFAS. A replay of the 90-minute event is available here.

RN Editor Bruce Meyer has a roundup of key takeaways from the event if you don't have time to watch it now.

Issues surrounding these "forever chemicals" are complex, as you'd expect — that even includes defining what materials fall under the PFAS label. It is important that the industry get involved in discussions regarding the materials, speakers said.

"We have a challenging problem," Peter Schmitt, managing director at Montesino, noted during PFAS Live. "The devil is in the details. And there's a risk of those details not being properly understood and the wrong scale being used to make decisions."

The scares over a plastic skull carried by a traveler passing through the Salt Lake City airport recently have nothing to do with Halloween.

Instead, the skull, placed in checked baggage, prompted a security shutdown of the airport on Sept. 18 because electronics and components within it set off fears that it was an explosive device. It was actually a medical training device, the Transportation Security Administration said in a news release. The skull and the parts packed within it are used to help spinal and neurosurgeons prepare for a lobotomy procedure. A passenger headed to a trade show in Cancún, Mexico, had intended it to be part of a display there.

Instead, security shut down operations at the airport for two hours as TSA agents brought in an explosives expert to help check it out before they made contact with the passenger.

"Ultimately, TSA determined the item was not permitted to travel on a commercial aircraft. The item was retained by TSA to be picked up by the traveler upon his return to [Utah]," the administration said. Agents also suggested that travelers carrying unusual items should contact TSA to clear them in advance.

Parma, Ohio, is embracing the plastic pink flamingo kitsch in a big way.

The Cleveland suburb had been mocked for years as being home to the type of lowbrow culture that would use pink flamingo lawn ornaments. Rather than fight those comments, residents decided they were the city's "unofficial bird," giving rise to even more placements of the lawn ornaments.

An Ohio legislator is now calling for the city to add a 7-foot pink flamingo statue (made of steel, unfortunately) in its central business district.

"I want to make Parma the flamingo capital of the United States," State Rep. Sean Patrick Brennan wrote in a letter to Cleveland Magazine.

Parma has no direct connection to the plastic pink flamingos created by Don Featherstone in 1957, when he was hired by Union Products Inc. of Leominster, Mass., to sculpt new lawn ornaments.