6 ms·
Doing whole blood donations seems to significantly reduce PFAS in the blood. Here's one paper: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/279
by seethishat 2mo ago
Doing whole blood donations seems to significantly reduce PFAS in the blood. Here's one paper:
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2790905 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...
Edit: This also helps others who are in accidents, car wrecks, have Cancer, etc. Yes, we pass on the PFAS to others, but the immediate need for blood is more urgent than the potential long term impacts of PFAS.
- hombre_fatal 2mo agoMy girlfriend accidentally told the donation center she went to Mexico, and they banned her from donating for four years. Apparently you'd only go to Mexico to eat brain tacos and share needles with cows. Surely there's a better way to filter out risky blood.
- notrealyme123 2mo agoI was banned roughly the same time for being in the US. I guess its mostly so they don't need to check for unexpected things.
- hombre_fatal 2mo agoI get it, just seems like it could be more granular, especially since she could have just said no.
- seethishat 2mo agoYes... travel, tattoos, drug use and sexual behavior can and should disqualify a person from donating blood.
- hombre_fatal 2mo agoWell, it's the having of an infectious blood borne thing that disqualifies you.
- smcg 2mo agom-m sex is still disqualifying even if all parties are completely clean and safe. it's discriminatory.
- sarchertech 2mo agoAll anal sex in the US requires a 3 month waiting period (as does any kind of sex with a new partner) not just male to male. Anal sex is inherently much more likely to transit HIV and HIV tests have a higher false negative rate for new infections.
- Duwensatzaj 2mo ago0.4% of the US population has HIV. 12-15% of gay men in the US have HIV. The rules exist for a very real reason.
- 486sx33 2mo ago[dead]
- tristor 2mo agoMSM is one of the highest risk activities you can do for bloodborne diseases. If this is discriminatory, life is discriminatory. Life is not fair, and there is nothing any artificially constructed social system will ever do to force mother nature's hands to make life fair. I fully support the rights of people to love and be in relationships with whoever they wish, but that doesn't mean you have the right to contaminate the blood supply due to the inherently high risk of your day-to-day life. I have never been able to donate blood because of my travels due to their locations and frequencies. I am not going to give up travel to donate blood. MSM is a much higher risk activity than travel, and yet I am also excluded due to my lifestyle risk. It's not fair, but it is reasonable.
- maerF0x0 2mo agoPeople have more unprotected, regrettable sex during travel and vacations, so maybe they're on to something?
- ClumsyPilot 2mo agoSounds like something you should test rather that just rely on heuristics
- lotsofpulp 2mo agoSounds like something you should evaluate with a cost/benefit analysis, including the false negative and false positive rates.
- tristor 2mo agoHeuristics work, why would you not rely on heuristics?
- jolmg 2mo agoGenerally, because they're discriminatory. It's like how racial profiling in law enforcement can be a heuristic that can work. Though, in the case of blood donations, it seems that tests aren't accurate enough to be able to rely solely on them. Also, being discriminated against on being able to donate blood is not as big of a deal. Though in some places with public health systems, stuff like getting a surgery may somewhat depend on you and family/friends donating a certain amount of blood.
- Ferret7446 2mo agoReality is discriminatory. Discriminating between blood containing disease vs blood that doesn't is, quite literally, discriminatory.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- vablings 2mo agoAll of these things can mostly be tested. When I donated regularly in the UK after being in the southern US, they screen me for west nile virus but still take my blood and use it.
- buckle8017 2mo agoBlood is tested for disease, but the false negative rate for each test is its own risk. If you got blood from an addict living on the street engaging in prostitution and tested it, would you trust that blood? I wouldn't.
- ctoa 2mo agoThe bigger worry isn't really false negatives, modern PCR based testing is incredibly good. There is always risk but it's frankly extremely low. The bigger issue is that blood is pooled before testing to make that powerful testing economical. If you increase the rate at which you get (also possibly false) positives you risk having to throw out whole batches of pooled donations.
- buckle8017 2mo agoThe false negative rate for HIV testing in newly infected people is actually pretty high, like 50% within the first few months high.
- ctoa 2mo agoNo, it's not though. That's true for antibody tests commonly used for individuals because it's cheap. The window period for nucleic acid testing that is used for blood supply is very short. This test is similar to what's used to confirm a positive antibody test, but isn't used for individual testing because it is too expensive. Hence the pooling.
- sarchertech 2mo agoThe UK also has a wait time for many countries including Mexico. https://my.blood.co.uk/eligibility/travel/article?id=47&title=Mexico https://my.blood.co.uk/eligibility/travel/article?id=47&titl... Granted it’s shorter, but there are longer wait periods depending on the country. It’s defense in depth because false negatives happen and some viruses take time to show up on tests.
- throwaway27448 2mo agoI don't get the sense we have any standards for actually vetting the blood that's donated, which is deeply concerning
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- ch4s3 2mo agoWe do test the blood, but they also do coarse grained screenings like this to avoid some level of waste on intake.
- account42 2mo agoWe do, they are just not cheap enough to do on individual donations so you have to throw away a big batch every time they catch something.
- ch4s3 2mo agoWe do test the blood, but they also do coarse grained screenings like this to avoid some level of waste on intake. It's like having client and server side validation.
- tsimionescu 2mo agoWith travel, I understand that there is a higher risk of lots of diseases, and testing against all possible infectious diseases is not feasible. Drug use is also obviously disqualifying. But why would you care about someone's sexual behavior? The blood must be tested for common drugs and common blood borne diseases regardless, and it's perfectly possible to engage in sexually risky behaviors and not have any venereal disease (unlike with drug use, where it implicitly means you will have levels of those drugs in your blood), just like it's possible to be very careful with your sexual behavior and still get a disease. Note: for tattoos, I have no idea if the problem is also related to venereal diseases, or if there is any problem from contamination with the tattoo ink itself, and I don't care enough about this subject to look it up.
- zdragnar 2mo agoFor tattoos, if the artist isn't using a brand new set of needles for you, you risk bloodborne disease transmission, with hepatitis B being a particular danger.
- sarchertech 2mo ago> But why would you care about someone's sexual behavior? The blood must be tested for common drugs and common blood borne diseases regardless, and it's perfectly possible to engage in sexually risky behaviors and not have any venereal disease Men who have sex with men are something like 50-100x more likely than the general population to acquire HIV. HIV tests do not have a 0% false positive. They will not catch all very recent infections. The rationale for excluding them until recently is that it’s defense in depth and it doesn’t hurt the blood supply much because they only make up about 2-3% of the population. The current rule is that MSM don’t face a blanket ban, but if you’ve had anal sex in the last 3 months you have to wait because anal sex is inherently more likely to transmit HIV and the tests may not catch a very new infection. Other diseases like Hepatitis have a similar issue.
- otherme123 2mo agoThe answer to all of that is mainly hepatitis C, that can have a window detection of 6 months, even more. And yes, you can be very careful and get a disease. But they are playing statistics here: over 60% of injected drug users have Hep-C, that means a lot of prostitutes. They won't and shouldn't trust anyone who say "hey, I had unsafe sex against all advice, but was very careful with the tattoo in a dark cellar and the heroin party, pinky promise".
- josefritzishere 2mo agoSounds like a wild party.
- Georgelemental 2mo ago> eat brain tacos What's wrong with that? Animal brains are a common dish in many countries, including France, Asia, and parts of the United States
- tim-tday 2mo agoVector for prion disease.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- bitshiftfaced 2mo ago"Accidentally"? Implying she should've lied about it even though they probably have some reason (evaluating risk presumably) for asking?
- hombre_fatal 2mo agoLet's say a year ago, you walked across a bridge in Mexico for five minutes to see if it's true that Mexico has a yellowish haze like in the movies. Oh, it doesn't. Then you walked back to Texas. A year later, you go to a blood donation center and they ask you: "Did you go to Mexico in the last N years?" If you say "Yes", you are banned for four years. If you say "No", you donate liters of blood over the next four years. If you were in this exact situation, how would you weight which answer is better?
- bitshiftfaced 2mo agoI understand where you're coming from. But on the off chance something unrelated were to go wrong with the blood down the line, it could be shown that a false answer was knowingly given. You have to weigh this risk against keeping "the privilege to give blood". I guess it depends on your values and risk tolerance.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- rayiner 2mo ago> Surely there's a better way to filter out risky blood It's simple Bayesian probability. Blood tests have a relatively high error rate. Hep-B tests have a 6-12% false negative rate early in the disease, and Hep-C is 3-6% even later in the course of the disease. That's considered a "very low" false-negative rate for a blood test. In Bayesian terms, blood tests don’t “screen” for a disease. They reduce the odds ratio of contaminated blood by a factor of 10 or so. But the ultimate odds still depends heavily on the prior odds—the prevalence of the disease in the donor population: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prior_probability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prior_probability. Even with testing, you can reduce the risk of contaminated blood by drawing blood from a pool of donors that has lower prevalence rate of diseases.
- comrade1234 2mo agoThere are other ways she can donate her blood.
- maxweylandt 2mo agoDo blook banks have a way of filtering out PFAS? Or are we giving each other forever chemicals through blood donations?
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- Rohansi 2mo agoA life saving blood transfusion or avoid forever chemicals likely already in my body, hmmm what to choose...
- GordonS 2mo agoBut does it have to be one or the other? Or is there some possibility of somehow removing the PFAS from donated blood?
- cogman10 2mo agoWhat makes PFAS so difficult to deal with is the fact that they are particularly inert. Teflon works because it doesn't react with almost anything. I've seen some studies about using UV light to kill off PFAS, but that's not going to be desirable when you want those red blood cells to also survive.
- buckle8017 2mo agoNot without filtering other things we need.
- BenjiWiebe 2mo agoI think people getting blood usually have lost a bunch of their own first. And blood isn't usually given just for fun, it's to save their lives, i.e. PFAS isn't a huge concern at that point.
- SoftTalker 2mo agoBloodletting making a comeback? And having actual benefits this time?
- lesuorac 2mo agoThere's kinda a significant difference between bloodletting and blood donation. For starters, you're not supposed to donate blood when you're sick. The other being the quantity. A donation is 1-2 pints. Wikipedia lists bloodletting as easily 3 pints [1]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloodletting#Use_in_the_1600s_through_the_19th_century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloodletting#Use_in_the_1600s_...
- lelandfe 2mo agoAlthough PFAS is helping bloodletting make a comeback https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/jan/16/bloodletting-recommended-for-jersey-residents-after-pfas-contamination https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/jan/16/bloodletting...
- dumbmrblah 2mo agoI really love the pedantry, thanks for the laugh
- DANmode 2mo agoSo get routine bloodwork done?
- jenkinstrigger 2mo agome to the plague doctors: we are SO back
- mrhottakes 2mo agoIt never went away; now they call it "therapeutic phlebotomy"
- Forgeties79 2mo agoMedical leeches are actually a real thing.
- bigmadshoe 2mo agoAren’t we just donating the PFAS to potentially sicker patients?
- OGWhales 2mo agoI'd assume donated blood matches the average level that people already have in them, so not sure it really matters. But if you donated regularly enough, you could be donating blood that has lower than average levels!
- evilduck 2mo agoPFAS doesn't immediately harm you like missing a few pints of blood does. And it's not like you're concentrating higher levels of PFAS into the recipient, they likely have the same average blood concentration levels as the donor does since we're all equally exposed to the same sources.
- blitzar 2mo agoReason #136 for why tech-bros need a blood boy to infuse from daily.
- wolttam 2mo ago> we pass the PFAS to others Is there no way to filter them out of withdrawn blood?
- tristor 2mo agoThat's correct.
- JCharante 2mo agoI used to donate blood regularly but now that I'm in Japan they require me to be decently fluent in Japanese to "understand" the risks, despite having done it a bunch of times in other countries (and other medical procedures not requiring Japanese knowledge).
- bdavisx 2mo agoI wonder what it would cost in the US to have a pint of blood taken - I can't donate. Guess I could do it myself...
- seethishat 2mo agoI'm not sure there are any regulations around opting to do that in the US. Do you have a phlebotomist friend? If so, they might do it for you, but it can be risky and they might not want to take the risk, get sued, etc. It is an interesting question. Are there companies that draw and discard?