Freaking out about DD and toxic Prime drink PFA chemicals

[ChainReacting]

Would appreciate someone to chat with, even if it’s not comforting, as I’ve just been reading up about the lawsuits around the seriously high levels of chemicals (3x the lifetime amount!) in Prime hydration drink.

DD (10) is obsessed with it for the past two years. Absolutely obsessed. I have let her buy and drink one bottle of each of the flavours - including the lawsuited Grape - but that looks to have been a terrible decision. I’m not qualified to understand the science completely but the level of toxicity seems to be very high. She will have inherited a genetic pre-disposition to cancer anyway and now I can’t sleep thinking that we’re given her cancer. Sorry that this isn’t a true AIBU but could really do with a handhold. Thanks very much!

It’s not clear from your post how much she has drank.

”Obsessed” makes it sound like she drinks it every day.

But they you say you’ve let her by one of each flavour. What - ever? Per week?

Are you ensuring that her food is UPF free, as much as possible? That is very important too, seeing as you are so concerned about chemicals in her drink.

Thanks for replying - sorry, my head is all over the place. One bottle of each ever. But one of the lawsuits is stating that in one Grape bottle, there is x3 the EPA healthy lifetime limit of chemicals if I’m reading the reports properly.

That’s in America,we have different food standards here,nothing to worry about.

Unless you are in America of course.

We bought them in America as she couldn’t get them here. Feel awful.

What do you mean 3x the amount of lifetime chemicals in one bottle?

@LadyKenya yes, am pretty good about UPFs in general, this just slipped past my radar as it was a real ‘treat’ for her

Can you post the link to the documents you're reading? Your interpretation sounds off. Even in the US these things have to pass assessment of the ingredients!

This is a huge over reaction
she has drunk a bottle of drink / maybe five bottles (don’t know how many favours there are)
The sentence about life time chemicals makes no sense
where are you getting your information

these drinks are pretty rank and over processed but the chances her health being damaged is incredibly tiny

there is a seperate issues around any genetic disposition to cancer - have you / her had counselling around this and medical advice

The chemicals they are referring to are found in the air,water,soil and food all around the world.

@ButtSurgery @rubyslippers there are lots of articles about it which seem to be based on the class action lawsuit - the level is on page 14, paragraph 59 drive.google.com/file/d/17yRey6-jMEwT4DySy3rLdLjU-0b8ymq-/view

I think this is about PFAs from plastic, isn’t it? So not actually about the drink but about the bottle.

TBH anyone who drank from a water bottle, or ate from tupperware, or had a microwave meal before about 2010 will have had far, far more exposure.

It sounds like a bit of a scare thing, the bottles are apparently used by many other drink manufacturers, so shouldn't pose a hazard, the drinks do/may have high levels of caffeine, so I wouldn't be giving them to kids. I think it's all these chemicals may do this and that so I wouldn't be too panicked.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/us-news/prime-sports-drink-hit-lawsuit-32653824

https://www.just-drinks.com/comment/could-forever-chemicals-court-case-be-nail-in-coffin-for-viral-drinks-brand-prime/?cf-view

And sorry, it probably makes no sense as I don’t understand the science behind it.

I feel like this is a massive overreaction. One bottle of each ffs. Not a bottle every day.

Right, I've found the class action lawsuits. The claims made in the lawsuit is the drinks contained very high levels of PFAs which are usually from plastic but can also be from poor quality drinking water - such as from the taps in Iowa apparently!

They are also found in the air, water, fish, the ground, your clothing, food packaging, cosmetics, fire fighting foam, and a host of other sources. Pretty hard to avoid anyway. I'm 2007 98% of the USA population were assessed to have PFAs detectable in their blood.

So many questions.

Why did the woman have the drink tested? What's the source of the alleged contamination? Why weren't these drinks recalled by the US Health agencies if they were so dangerous?

This is the company leading the lawsuit:
https://milberg.com/news/pfas-prime-hydration-grape-class-action/

So tbh, I'd have a huge amount of perspective on this given the prevalence of these chemicals the world over and not be remotely panicked.

I really wouldn't panic. The internet is the absolute worst place to look at stuff like this as it's full of over exaggerated claims about how awful some things are.

Asbestos is a good example of this. We all know that it's a killer and the internet is full of millions of articles, posts and videos about how there is no safe amount of asbestos to inhale and how you can get sick from relatively small amounts of asbestos in cosmetics etc. In reality though, the majority of people that worked for decades in environments that were heavily contaminated with asbestos don't die from an asbestos related illness. I'm not saying that asbestos is great but just that there is a lot of hyperbole and misinformation about things that have been proven to be extremely dangerous. I can't imagine the chemical that's in PRIME is anywhere closer to asbestos and it is incredibly unlikely that consuming a drink three times ever is going to have catastrophic health impacts for your daughter.

The lawsuit refers to one unverified independent study, the case hasn’t been heard yet could likely be thrown out as the plantiff wants $5 million despite being absolutely fine. And how much could DD have drunk of it if you bought it on holiday in the US? The caffeine in these drinks is insane though, may as well let her have a triple espresso as at least that’s natural. So I’d be banning it from now on but stop panicking about the cancer risk, it’s unfounded, you get PFAs in fish and presumably you wouldn’t panic if she had sushi for lunch…

One bottle of each in her life, ever?

Come on OP. Where are your critical thinking faculties in this? Obviously that is not going to kill her.

In the kindest possible way, OP, calm down.

Our daily environments are absolutely full of horrible chemical shit that isn't good for us. It's all slowly giving us cancer and making us fat and killing us.

A few bottles of Prime makes no difference when stacked against air pollution, beauty products, hair products, processed food, processed drinks, airborne pathogens, food and drink storage items.....

Thanks all for the replies and advice - am reading and re-reading them and the links, it’s helping a lot. You are all so decent to reply, thank you

With the greatest of respect I think you need to relax a bit or you'll spend the rest of your and their life worrying every time they have a piece of salmon, processed food, fatty foods, sugary foods, food from
A restaurant. Food from a street vendor, a sip of a drink someone else has touched, chewing gum, unpasteurised cheese, alcohol, cakes, fizzy drinks, vapes, smoking, drugs...

I don’t know about the drink specifically but the chemicals are a genuine concern - the fact that most people have them in our bodies doesn’t make it ok. This link should be helpful.

https://www.niehs.nih.gov/health/topics/agents/pfc

But try not to panic OP. It’s obviously not desirable but on the other hand we are all exposed to these chemicals every day and some much more than others depending on lifestyle. The effects on individuals vary massively so try not to get too focused in that.

Instead focus on what you can do like healthy eating, fewer UPFs, exercise etc, buy organic food and cotton etc wherever you can afford it. You could look at having natural materials in your home with fewer toxic dyes etc, and reduce exposure to flame retardants like in duvets and mattresses and pillows, improve air quality, reduce toxic chemicals in beauty and hair products etc. That is as much as many of us can do. We have to make the best choices that we can and try to reduce fearful thoughts about the what ifs.

Then use any anxious energy to lobby MPs relentlessly

My understanding of the lifetime limit is that it is the concentration of PFOS per litre in drinking water that will keep you under the safe limit after a whole lifetime of drinking. It’s not 0.02micrograms over a lifetime. It’s that when you are drinking 2L per day and continue doing that for life, you shouldn’t be drinking more than 0.02 micrograms per litre, or 0.04 micrograms per day.

So if what they’re saying is it’s got three times this level, then each drink has 0.06 micrograms or 1.5days worth of PFOS in. Compare that with the 365 days worth that they say you can safely drink each year in your drinking water. It’s not worth worrying about!

Here is the updated standard