My work health insurance recently offered a free scale and blood pressure monitor, I thought that's a nice perk, I'll use that, so I ordered with the intent of never using their app, just using it for my own tracking. The first time I used it, I got an email from my insurance company congratulating me and giving me suggestions. Both devices have a cellular modem in them, and arrived paired to my identity.
I destroyed them and threw them in a dumpster like that Ron Swanson gif.
All to say, little cellular modems and a small data plan are likely getting cheap enough it's worth being extra diligent about the devices we let into our homes. Probably not yet to the point of that being the case on a tv, but I could certainly see it getting to that point soon enough.
Similarly, I had a workplace dental provider ship me a ‘smart toothbrush’.
Turns out they track the aggregate of everyone’s brushing and if every employee brushes their teeth, the plan gets a discount.
”Lower rate based on group's participation in Beam Perks™ wellness program and a group aggregate Beam score of "A". Based on Beam® internal brushing and utilization data.”
Technology is starting to become genuinely terrifying. Computers used to sit on desks in full visibility, and we used to be in control. Now they're anywhere and everywhere, invisible, always connected, always sensing, doing god knows what, serving unknown masters, exploiting us in unfathomable ways. Absolutely horrifying.
I'd have tried to disassemble it, locate the SIM card or cellular modem, and see if it could be used for other traffic. A wireguard tunnel fixes the privacy problem, and I can always use more IP addresses and bandwidth.
Until people start abusing these "features", they will not go away.
The data plans on some embedded modems are quite different from consumer plans. They are specifically designed for customers who have a large number of devices but only need a small amount of bandwidth on each device.
These plans might have a very low fixed monthly cost but only include a small data allowance, say 100 KB/month. That's plenty for something like a blood pressure monitor that uploads your results to your doctor or insurance company.
If you are lucky that's a hard cap and the data plan cuts off for the rest of the month when you hit it.
If you are unlucky that plan includes additional data that is very expensive. I've heard numbers like $10 for each additional 100 KB.
I definitely recall reading news articles about people who have repurposed a SIM from some device and using it for their internet access, figuring that company would not notice, and using it to watch movies and download large files.
Then the company gets their bill from their wireless service provider, and it turns out that on the long list of line items showing the cost for each modem, a single say $35 000 item really stands out when all the others are $1.
If you are lucky the company merely asks you to pay that, and if you refuse they take you to civil court where you will lose. (That's what happened in the articles I remember reading, which is how they came to the public's attention).
If you unlucky what you did also falls under your jurisdiction's "theft of services" criminal law. Worse, the amount is likely above the maximum for misdemeanor theft of services so it would be felony theft of services.
Through what technical or legal mechanism is the company identifying or locating you - assuming you never logged in or associated the product with your identity?
What law is preventing Best Buy from telling TVManufacturer that a credit card with these last 4 digits bought the TV with this exact serial number?
And once the SIM connects near your house, what is preventing the phone company from telling TVManufacturer the rough location of the SIM, especially after that SIM is found to have used too much data?
Then use some commercially available ad database to figure out that the person typically near this location with these last four digits is 15155.
That's just a guess, but there is enough fingerprinting that they will know with pretty high certainty it is you. Whether all this is admissible in civil court, idk.
> What law is preventing Best Buy from telling TVManufacturer
No law: reality and PCI standards prevent this. And of course, the manufacturer could get a subpoena after enough process. This also assumes the TV was purchased with a credit card and not cash.
> And once the SIM connects near your house
> what is preventing the phone company from telling
Again: reality and the fact that corporations aren't cooperative. A rough location doesn't help identify someone in any urban environment. Corporations are not the FBI or FCC on a fox hunt.
Can you cite a single case where this has happened on behalf of a corporation? These are public record, of course.
Anecdotally, you may want to avoid Best Buy either way. There's a chance the TV box contains just rocks, no TV, and that they refuse to refund your purchase.
In our market we see lots of the use of the word Montessori for marketing value only, when it practice it often means something like: "we have a bunch of wooden toys and a certain aesthetic in our classroom." I've heard these referred to as "Monte-sorta."
I live in an area with PFAS contaminated ground water (which I now aggressively filter.) To me giving blood just kind of makes sense, if there is a class of things that can enter your blood and never leave, and does not replicate on its own, why not perform a regular "oil change" and hopefully help some people at the same time. Some study has been done:
The study specifically does not look at the effect on recipients, though the donation centers do not disallow such donations. My presumption is that the donation is a net positive all around. If study comes to show the contrary, I'll certainly revise my approach.
“I’ll do something which might be beneficial or harmful to me (I don’t know) and if given evidence of harm (likely never) I’ll stop doing it.” Ok…have fun I guess.
The person you responded to didn't say anything about harm to themselves. They said there's nothing stopping them from donating even though they're aware of the PFAS contamination in their area.
And from what I understand, PFA contamination has no bearing on whether or not you can donate.
The post implied that doing a “blood oil change” was potentially a good thing. My point is, we don’t know either way, because a study hasn’t looked at that question for health outcomes. It could be doing more harm than good, the parent commenter doesn’t know.
The study doesn't show that donation is a good thing. Showing a miniscule reduction in blood markers is not the relevant variable - what you'd actually care about is: do I liver a longer or better life because of this intervention? There simply isn't any evidence that a tiny reduction in PFAS from blood donation results in any improvement in any clinical outcomes. Because we don't know either way, it's also possible that there would be harms from this - as blood donation is not entirely risk free, exposing people to syncope while driving after giving blood, skin complications like infections, or other rare issues we don't even know about.
I recently requested this test from my doctor. The lab technician asked if I had requested it or my doctor, and gave a very judgmental "that's what I thought" type response. Ends up I was 95%-tile and put on an aggressive statin therapy, from a risk profile that otherwise didn't determine statin use. The test was easy and (relatively speaking) inexpensive. It helped me in risk stratification in a determinative way.
> If you want safe and really high quality medical care you should absolutely have a personal physician you have a personal relationship with, who understands your lifestyle, your risk factors for side effects, and your medical needs deeply. How many Americans have that? Maybe a few dozen?
A bit of a tangent: I have this here in the US, through a model called Direct Primary Care. I pay $50/mo for a single provider, unlimited visits / communication, and highly discounted labs. She makes house calls on occasion. This doctor is working solely in my interest, and has little concern of insurance, except to help me navigate that system should I need a specialist, prior authorization, etc.
I do worry that it's sustainable, but I think there must by a way to scale up this practice of the general practitioner working in the interest of the patient.
My previous doctor was part of a large health system, who also happens to be directly associated with the large regional insurance provider whom my employer supplied to me without another choice. Every 8 minute visit centered around insurance and billing, with my health seeming to be a distant second. It seemed every visit had to end in some kind of prescription or referral, arrived at quickly and without much discussion. It quickly became clear they were not working in my interest, and I sought other options, eventually landing on the Direct Primary Care model. Now I have full 1 hour visits, and someone who seeks to understand what is happening for me completely, not through the lens of a payer.
> I pay $50/mo for a single provider, unlimited visits / communication, and highly discounted labs. She makes house calls on occasion. This doctor is working solely in my interest, and has little concern of insurance, except to help me navigate that system should I need a specialist, prior authorization, etc.
Someone's presumably paying her more than $50/hr, which will burn through your monthly fees pretty quickly. Where's the money coming from?
It works the same way that health insurance works -- most people don't need all that much care, and when time-consuming care is needed, it is often pushed to the specialists rather than the generalist. Your $50/mo payment might not seem like much, but if all you're doing is a bi-monthly checkin with them over the phone, you're really paying more like $100/visit for a 15-30 minute visit.
A lot of these 'concierge medicine' services are set up to deal with mostly people who don't need all that much medical care, beyond relatively brisk access to the doctor in a few rare circumstances. Since they also don't really do much in terms of specialty care, they tend to have fewer Px who need extensive personal care.
It is totally feasible and not uncommon for a family doctor to have 2000+ patients. Young healthy people can go years without interacting with the medical system, and when they do it's often some thing that barely involves their doc. I mean their doc doesn't know them personally then, but they have no problems worth surfacing clearly so why do they need to? The limiting factor really is the quantity of seniors and people with complex chronic conditions that you take on.
You're not going to be seeing every patient every month. Many you might only be seeing a few times a year; They will have a quick phone chat every few months to make sure their prescriptions are up to date, maybe order a blood panel or two to stay on top of things. They're not coming in every week for an hour-long deeply-personalized appointment. As long as the practice limits itself to a reasonable number of patients, they should be plenty solvent.
We're talking about basic preventative care here. Your doctor doesn't need and probably doesn't want to be your friend for these sorts of things. There doesn't need to be a deep personal relationship there if it's not necessary.
(But also, $50/mo is a very low price. I've seen plenty of such services that are in the $500+/mo range. It's still way cheaper than health insurance would cost out of pocket, but it's not 'cheap' either.)
420 young, healthy patients probably see the doctor 2x a year at most. That's less than 20 visits a week for the doctor. And as soon as you become unhealthy you are passed along to a specialist or dropped.
You're paying for the bedside manner, not the medicine.
I’m 39 and I see my doctor once a year, at most. This year I had a urinary thing. Last year and the year before that I had a rash. The year before that I didn’t go. For all of my twenties I went three times. She still remembers me just fine, asking how is my CrossFit doing.
I see my wife’s doctor more often than my own because he is also our newborn son’s doctor.
They both have thousands of patients. The waiting rooms mostly have elderly, parents with their newborns and obese people.
How could this possibly work out for her financially? To make 120k a year, she would have to be doing this with.. 200 patients; and I think the average GP makes a bit more than that in the US. That doesn't like a good bargain on her end.
I do not think I have ever spent more than an hour per visit actually in the room with my GP. I have an annual checkup. For a while there my GP was world class and also a blood relative.
200 patients at one hour per is a bit more than a month of 9-5s.
If I visited my GP once per 1.5 months I’d be paying a fuckload more than $50/mo in copayments alone, in addition to my incredible premiums.
Healthcare becomes pretty affordable when you’re not paying for actuaries and other scammers.
I guess I see this as somewhat different. These people are proactively choosing to maintain a relationship with a physician for an elective $50/month. I think the type of patient who wants a type of this relationship is the type who is going to solicit more than a single appointment per year; otherwise, why not just use what the current system gives us?
I could see something like this being useful for me; I'm constantly nagging my physician for different drugs I am triaging for a condition I'm dealing with. But, in that case, I wouldn't be the ideal patient for the physician. I wish this kind of thing could work, but I'm not sure how I see it working in practice, unless you move up market and charge more.
I've anecdotally done some research and in SoCal a true concierge medicine for what I would be looking for with a brick-and-mortar location and imaging on-site is ~$5000/yr.
Curious what that fee covers beyond having direct access to the physician (and even there, beyond just consultations). If you needed imaging work or even procedures or surgeries - would that be extra fees?
Can't speak to the parent posters' experience, but for me, it covers a lot of imaging, routine bloodwork, cheap Rx for a lot of basic medicines (think blood pressure medications, diabetes meds.) I can get a full basic blood panel (CBC, CMP, LDH, ALT, TPT..etc) done for a few bucks instead of paying several hundred, that alone has saved me a good chunk of change over the years.
One of the huge benefits for me has been that I have much simpler access to specialists. They are somehow able to punch through a lot of the scheduling bullshit for me, so when I do need to see a specialist, I am not waiting for weeks or months; Sometimes I've been able to get appointments at a specialist through them within a few days instead of the few weeks it would have been had I tried doing the same myself.
That included lab work, talking to the front desk people, the nurse who took the blood, the GP, the drivers, the janitors, the record-keepers, the lab techs, and the calibration work on equipment and who knows who else.
I recently got a physical exam, including ultra sound, two urine samples, and bloodwork, at a private doctor in Austria and it cost 150€. You Americans are crazy.
I'm not sure how a physical would be more than 15 minutes of work. Lab techs? Standard blood tests are all automated, the most complicated part is putting the stickers on the vials. Yes, someone needs to calibrate the machine, but the machine processes 1000s of samples per day. I just checked, the price for a standard blood panel at a local lab is 14€. It's really not a complicated procedure.
Drivers? Janitors? What the hell are you paying those guys to justify a $1000 bill? And you really don't need to hire a driver to get a box of samples to the lab at the end of the day.
Supposedly in the Salzburg airport in Austria, there's an information counter for people who have learned that they are in fact in Austria, not Australia...
Americans can order their own lab tests for pretty cheap as well. In regards to pricing, the overhead for billing is about 1/3rd of the price, though not relevant in the poster's situation. It is part of why some prices here are so inflated though.
If a patient goes to see their doctor at a major hospital, part of that bill goes to pay for uninsured patients in the ER. Hospitals in the US by law have to treat everyone who come to the emergency room, which results in a lot of losses for hospitals that they have to make up for by charging higher prices on other services.
> And you really don't need to hire a driver to get a box of samples to the lab at the end of the day.
Smaller doctor's offices do their labs offsite, in the US just a couple of companies do the majority of blood work, as part of the contract with the lab, a driver comes by and picks up samples. In the great name of outsourcing, I imagine this driver works for a separate company as well, so now there is 2x outsourcing overhead, once for the lab, and again for the transport company. For doctor's offices that cannot justify their own lab, this makes some sense.
FWIW in my city at least, the majority of doctors are affiliated with large hospitals. They either work in a large hospital, in a satellite campus, or have an affiliate relationship (which from what I can tell just means medical records are automatically transferred over).
I go to a "smaller" office, it is a 3 story campus that is the satellite office of a huge hospital nearby. They do some of their own lab work and outsource other stuff. The hospital network is publicly owned and accordingly much nicer to deal with than many of the horror stories I hear online and from friends. (also the prices are reasonable and they always give me a price sheet up front of what everything will cost, which isn't always the case for some doctors...)
> I just checked, the price for a standard blood panel at a local lab is 14€. It's really not a complicated procedure.
Is that a 100% unsubsidized price?
In the US, cash price for a Comprehensive metabolic panel (CMP) is just $50. The same labs that the hospitals outsource to actually offer direct to consumer tests at really reasonable rates.
I just checked my hospitals cash rates:
A yearly checkup for an existing patient is $48.
Lab work is $48 (a $2 discount!)
Urine tests are another $20.
So in summary, OP got ripped off by their doctor's office.
Studies have shown that patient satisfaction scores are highly correlated with whether the doctor writes a prescription. When patients leave with a prescription then they feel like they got their money's worth, regardless of whether they really need it.
And even if it didn’t treat something now, it can treat things later
For example, a lot of asymptomatic STDs get accidentally cured by people taking antibiotics for unrelated reasons. Less paternalistic countries let people buy very significant drugs over the counter.
Being able to rule out that a simple infection is viral instead of bacterial is a huge boon. Doctors who want to cry about risk of superbugs (while eating McDonald’s during their break) can shove their opinion alongside side their antibiotic doused meat slurry straight down their pie hole.
Every nice pain killer I get I keep for emergencies. You never know when you’ll actually hurt yourself and be very happy to have some extra Vicodin.
Paternialism in medicine has been destructive for the human race and it has led to a lot of very very negative outcomes.
Im sorry that has been your experience. I am too on a patient of a doctor who belongs to a "large health system/insurance system provided by my employer with no choice". I have never once discussed billing. Every visit, while short 10-15 minutes, is focused on my health and if I asked questions, can extend to 30+ or more... really depends on my questions. I have never needed an hour with a GP, maybe a specialist.
I should clarify: the billing talk would come out when talking about options. “Let’s try X because insurance will need to see that we tried it before we try Y.” I don’t blame the provider. Navigating insurance still comes up with my direct primary care doc, but it’s not most of the visit. The real value I see is a willingness to take the whole picture into account (not just symptom -> med/specialist) and teach me about how things work and why. I have some complexity in my history for which this helps a lot.
Regarding the patient load discussion elsewhere, our entire family uses this doctor, we’re in for $200/mo but if we added up the interaction time even with me (a more complicated customer) it’s maybe 5 hours a year + some text communications with the MA / prescription wrangling. Their model seems to be all about effective scaling, I hope it is worth it for them, because my experience is vastly improved.
My previous homeowner was also a vibe maintainer! The difference that I see in this is that the LLM is reasonably at 'expert' level for many of these things. If I sit down with Stevie Wonder and ask him to help me write a song, the resulting song is probably going to be pretty good. Stevie also knows by experience lots of things to avoid, and is intuitively going to help me avoid them unless I instruct him specifically to make a poor choice.
I think there are likely opportunities too to have models or system prompts that cater or adapt to the experience level of the person it's working with. "As you interact with the user, determine their relative level of knowledge and experience. If they seem to be relatively inexperienced with software development, be much more aggressive in helping to warn them about and avoid common pitfalls, bad architectural decisions, and security issues."
I suspect it's probably going to enable a lot of poor quality stuff, but it also may to some degree raise the floor of what's being produced at the same time.
I think the difference between electrical work and software work is with electrical a lot of those standards don’t really change from year to year outside of some code updates. Wiring a wall socket or moving a socket around has been pretty much solved for decades. maybe a different kind of outlet that is a little more safe or some exception about sockets near a sink.
Versus software I were there’s hundreds of different outlets hundreds of different wires tens of different storage mechanisms. Now if the LLM is even slightly unsure, it will hallucinate leading to a mess when things go wrong that the user doesn’t know how to fix
Then an actual expert will have to come in and try to understand what went wrong, which adds additional time than if it was just built right the first time
It's going to lower the floor, because lots of stuff that would otherwise not get produced will be made, and it will be hard to see how incompetent the people behind it are at first glance because the UI could be decent. Imagine putting your valuable information into one of these garbage apps only to find out that the app wasn't even written by a programmer! If it goes just a little farther, and the AI deploys it for you too, how many disclosure and data retention laws are going to be broken by it? You'd have to be awfully desperate to want to use one of these 100% AI monstrosities created by an amateur.
Is it "artisanal" if almost every application still has to be made by humans? I think that nobody will want to run amateur AI software projects from strangers, unless it can be done in a sandbox. Even a well-meaning "creator" could have malicious garbage injected into their product by AI.
I find tools where I am manually shepherding the context into an LLM to work much better than Copilot at current. If I think thru the problem enough to articulate it and give the model a clear explanation, and choose the surrounding pieces of context (the same stuff I would open up and look at as a dev) I can be pretty sure the code generated (even larger outputs) will work and do what I wanted, and be stylistically good. I am still adding a lot in this scenario, but it's heavier on the analysis and requirements side, and less on the code creation side.
If what I give it is too open ended, doesn't have enough info, etc, I'll still get a low quality output. Though I find I can steer it by asking it to ask clarifying questions. Asking it to build unit tests can help a lot too in bolstering, a few iterations getting the unit tests created and passing can really push the quality up.
I think for me, I'm still learning how to make these tools operate effectively. But even only a few months in, it has removed most all the annoying work and lets me concentrate on the stuff that I like. At this point, I'll often give it some context, tell it what to make and it spits out something relatively close. I look it over, call out like 10 things, each time it says "you're right to question..." and we do an iteration. After we're thru that, I tell it to write a comprehensive set of unit tests, it does that, most of them fail, it fixes them, and them we usually have something pretty solid. Once we have that base pattern, I can have it pattern and extend variants after the first solid bit of code. "Using this pattern for style and approach, make one that does XYZ instead."
But what I really appreciate is, I don't have to do the plug and chug stuff. Those patterns are well defined, I'm more than happy to let the LLM do that and concentrate on steering whether it's making a wise conceptual or architectural choice. It really seems to act like a higher abstraction layer. But I think how the engineer uses the tool matters too.
I live in a city that was a hot zone for this type of contamination in the drinking water due to industrial waste from leather processing buried in the 60’s (shoe scraps treated with scotchgard.) We now have GAC filtering at the municipal supply level that is quite effective and not that expensive. The large beds of carbon last quite a while if I recall correctly. Despite regular testing, everyone I know RO filters their water regardless. For me, it’s because I have no idea what new previously “unknown” contamination will be next discovered, and would rather get out as much as is reasonable.
When the information began to surface I found it interesting the letters on public record going back to the 60’s with people warning that allowing this kind of dumping was a bad idea. Of course being the primary employer to the entire city, the economics won at the time. Since, the cost of cleanup and lawsuits to that company have been massive.
RO is cheap enough for middle class or above (order of magnitude is ~ what you might spend on uniforms and excursions for a kid in a state primary school). Assuming a self install. So it is a good option if you can afford it. Maybe RO becoming part of the standard set of things you buy (washing machine, vacuum cleaner etc.) is the way. You have to keep up to date with filter changes though.
RO typically needs a post filter. Hopefully that doesn’t add any bad chemicals. But you need it as pure water is desperate to bind, so you can either bind it to something you choose, or bind it to whatever pipe work / tanks are beyond the filter. Also you might want a higher ph.
Maybe some disruption to make a nice looking, compact and cheap and zero install RO unit would be good and some subsidy for people without the means to buy one who live in risk areas. Plus subsidy for maintenance.
If the design is like a printer where you pull out and push in new cartridges and have warning lights it will make maintenance easy.
A recent study (made it to HN) used a novel sensor to count microplastics in bottled water. The numbers were 10x higher than expected, but the real surprise was that 50% were shed from the plant filtration system.
I’m guessing RO is similarly bad (the membrane is made from one of the plastics in question).
I have been buying 5gal water jugs from a local Seattle company until recently, with the articles on all the microplastics shedding from the bottles into the water inside.
I did buy no-plastics Aarke glass/steel carbon filter pitcher for my drinking water.
It's hard to find water filtration without plastic involved, hopefully
other options will come to the market, but their offering is pretty good so far.
>It's hard to find water filtration without plastic involved, hopefully other options will come to the market, but their offering is pretty good so far.
What about distillation as a filtration method?
Are the micro/nano plastics filtered by distillation?
Interesting what method of filtration the chip factories use, as they need 100% pure water for the cpu making process.
Its not that interesting. Distillation works but its not healthy to consume. You could distill the water without plastics involved but then you need to add back minerals before drinking.
Debunked urban legend. Likely retcon from various mythology involving the chemistry lab's "deionized water" bottle which every chemistry teacher has to make up convincing reasons for the class not to drink from.
Maybe my thinking has been wrong. I always thought you would need to supplement for some of the minerals you might be getting from the water. I could be totally wrong here then, will need to do more reading.
Any water you drink is already very much hypotonic relative to your bodily fluids. Your minerals mostly come from your food, not your water.
I’m no expert on biology (I’m a chemist), but I drank quite a bit of DI water in grad school because the tap water was so gross.
Also, heavy water (D2O) tastes sweet. And it also won’t kill you when consumed, contrary to urban legend (at least not in quantities you can reasonably afford).
Deuterium oxide will kill you only after deuterium replaces a significant portion of all your body's hydrogen atoms, like maybe 50+%. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyK6kPi8k78
Yes, and as another poster pointed out my thinking that the importance of those minerals might be incorrect. I always thought you needed to supplement on top of distilled water.
For RO, a lot of the systems include a mineral cartridge.
It’s for taste. Distilled water tastes like crap. I don’t know the science behind it, but “good” water (eg coming from hetch hetchy) tastes amazing in comparison.
Debunked urban legend. Likely retcon from various mythology involving the chemistry lab's "deionized water" bottle which every chemistry teacher has to make up convincing reasons for the class not to drink from.
Exercising in hot weather requires drinking electrolyte water to avoid hyponatremia. Drinking large amounts of soft or distilled water (around 6 liters) can lead to death.
Water is hardly the worst of it. Most people I know microwave food in plastic on a regular basis, and have been doing so for decades.
If you wonder about the crazy rise in colon cancer, I'd say doing that plus keeping a cellphone next to your ass 16 hours a day would definitely be more than enough in an animal model.
Cell phones use a variety of wavelengths to communicate, topping out in the gigahertz range for things like Wifi. It's impossible for light in that range cannot to cause cancer. It's literally less possible for it to cause cancer than visible light. (Which is in the terahertz range)
I think you’re underestimating the myriad biological pathways which can all contribute to cancer, and also the unusual chemistry that can be induced when you tickle molecules at the right vibrational modes. There’s a whole body of literature describing so-called “microwave chemistry”, and these methods can greatly accelerate certain reactions – far more than simple heating with the same amount of energy can do.
With that said, I still put my cellphone in the front pocket every day, for most of the day.
IDK about the cell phone radiation but given the trickle/torrent of bad indicators about our biology and plastic, my rule is no plastic near food, at least at home where I can control it. Definitely no freezing, heating, or microwaving plastic near food. Feels like one of the many accepted facets of space-age modern life that is too convenient to examine closely for most people, and I think it retrospect it will be viewed somewhat as we view lead in paint and fuel, asbestos in buildings, smoking in public, etc.
One thing I am sad about where I'm exposed to a lot of plastic but have little choice is that I wear a dental guard at night. This probably more than makes up for all the plastic food contamination I avoid in other ways. But after shattering three teeth from grinding in my sleep (waking up to a loud crack and an exposed nerve), I've decided it's the lesser of two evils.
Funny you say that because I have an appointment with my orthodontist this week to discuss whether or not I can have a permanent retainer so I can stop wearing the plastic one they gave me. If the answer is no, I’ll just forgo the retainer and deal with crooked teeth. I don’t want to sleep with plastic in my mouth every night.
We use a distiller now that is all stainless into a glass carafe. It has a small paper/charcoal filter that sits in a porcelain housing just before it drips. What is left over is gross. Not what it looks like, that is just minerals. But it smells like things I shouldn't be smelling. I'd like to build a glass only solar still to save all that power, and to avoid the high temps that I suspect are causing some reactions that release VOCs. Not all of which might be getting caught by the charcoal.
It's become impossible to find a coffee maker where water doesn't come into contact with plastic. There used to be a pretty decent one: Gourmia GCM4900. It had some subtle design flaws, and only lasted 5 years. (If I can buy another one, I probably can somewhat mitigate that and make it last longer)
There's a silicon gasket, and they offer a stainless steel plunger upgrade. There is some plastic in the portafilter that coffee will touch (unless you run in bottomless mode).
The bigger problem with most espresso makers (but not the model I linked) is that they use brass for the heating block / boiler and that leaches lead into the water.
This matters less in coffee shops (where they use up the water in the boiler in a few hours or maybe a day), but a lot more at home (where you might only refill the boiler once a week or even once a month).
What do you use for freezing food if not plastic containers? Heating and microwaving, okay, I can work around the plastic containers/plates, but the freezer I have no idea how I'd do that. Especially that the freezer's casing is still plastic
Glass containers work fine and come in the same shapes as plastic containers do. They are heavier and take a little more space due to being thicker, but it's a small difference.
They do have plastic lids most often, but the lid doesn't have to touch food.
Yup, the IKEA one’s are more than good enough. And they’re borosilicate so you can even use them in the oven.
The plastic issue is also why I think people doing sous-vide are insane. You’re vacuum sealing meat into plastic and then giving it a nice long leeching in hot water. Sometimes with acidic foodstuffs!
However RO is not water efficient, in the sense that only a fraction of water run over the RO membrane system is filtered, and otherwise inbound water goes on into the drain. You can hear this happening, and it's documented by GE, for example, as how the systems work. That makes me wonder if there are other systems with the characteristic that a higher % of ingested water ends up filtered as well as RO can.
A permeate pump can typically reduce water waste in reverse osmosis systems by up to 80%. In general, permeate pumps can achieve a waste water reduction of around 50% to 80%. This means that for every gallon of purified water produced, only around 20% to 50% is wasted as reject water. This is achieved by utilizing the energy from the brine flow to enhance the pressure applied to the feed water, leading to increased permeate production and reduced reject water volume. Typically, these pumps range from $50 to $200 and they do not use electricity.
The elevated pressure allows for more effective filtration and higher water recovery rates. By boosting the pressure, permeate pumps facilitate a greater volume of water passing through the semi-permeable membrane, resulting in increased production of purified water (permeate) and reduced reject water (brine). The heightened pressure helps overcome osmotic pressure and allows for a more thorough extraction of purified water from the feed stream.
The domestic RO systems put pressure on the clean water output and don't have recovery systems for brine pressure? What? My only experience with RO systems are on sailboats, where a brine pressure recovery system is the only way to get the power down, and the water trickles into the tank under low pressure from where it is pumped out.
The linked system above just sends the unfiltered tap water down the drain. I have had two iterations of the GE system and it says so in the manual, for instance. I am not sure about other brands and their systems.
They don't boost the feed pressure, just isolate the output permeate line from the back pressure of the storage tank. Instead of the membrane output pushing against the increasing pressure of tank as it fills (decreasing output) it produces into a void in pump body which the pump periodically pushes into the tank from spring mechanism wound by the output waste water.
They work pretty well to reduce waste but do add complexity to what is already a somewhat complicated device under the sink. They will also create bad TDS creep if used without an auto-shutoff valve installed in the RO.
It seems like it would be mostly irrelevant that it’s not efficient?
What percentage of residential water goes to drinking water? I think of all water use in aggregate, in many places it’s already 90% is agriculture and 10% residential. And of residential you probably waste more water in a single toilet flush than you drink in an entire day.
Premiere H2O has a system that dumped the water into the hot water line, similar to a hot water loop, but in reverse. There’s a lot of caveats with that arrangement (doesn’t really work with a tankless water heater, for example).
When you say brine is that in seawater desalination RO or are you using that to include non-seawater RO reject water?
You could definitely use it as gray water but if you are filtering for contaminants, that water would have a higher concentration and if you were pushing it out as gray water, would those areas of the yard have higher levels potentially of contaminants?
Yeah my dad has an RO system at their house but it goes to a special tap next to the main one that is used only for drinking water, due to the waste associated. Maybe it isn’t needed for hand washing, showers, etc as long as there are good standards at the water distribution facility.
Thats how I use it. In theory the waste could be used for irrigation or mixed into shower water but that requires more plumbing to deal with an external cost (in areas where water is limited).
Well, if you live somewhere with a municipal water supply, the water just gets recycled anyway. I suppose if you’re on septic it’s still going right back into the ground it came from.
Drinking water is probably such a small percent of overall water use that wasting even a multiple of it doesn’t amount to much anyway.
So filter away! I’ll worry about my r/o waste when people stop diverting rivers to grow almonds in the desert and not a second before.
A big issue is returning it to the ground doesn't mean it reenters the aquafer you might be drawing from if you're on a well system. It happens all over the place and especially in California, the aquafers aren't replenished well by ground water (and the extreme pumping causes the aquafer to compress permanently losing water capacity).
But again that’s entirely because of agricultural and industrial use. There’s plenty of water for homes, there’s not plenty of water for homes and mass farming in a desert.
This is the exact line of thought the people who use the water want to encourage. They want you to worry about your water use so you don’t worry about theirs.
I think the point is that we should not as a general rule recommend people do RO for their entire house. Toilets, showers, and washing machines don’t need RO water and if a lot of people did a whole home RO system we would start to see waste add up.
We live in a water supply area with water one order of magnitude harder than anywhere else in our county.
I'm putting an RO unit in our kitchen to serve drinking and dishwasher needs. Our dishwasher needs descaling after a couple of months of normal use. Other uses (shower, toilets) aren't impacted by our super-hard water, so no RO for the whole house, mainly because of the water waste you note.
Oh. Sure. That will always be so cumbersome we don't have to worry about it. That would be a huge RO system. They don't have a lot of throughput so you'd need a big storage tank or a very large set of filters and a pump I'd think. I'm not at all concerned whole home RO will every be common.
Maybe RO becoming part of the standard set of things you buy (washing machine, vacuum cleaner etc.) is the way.
It just seems really sad that society is moving away from "let's fix it for everyone" toward just giving up and saying "the only solution is everyone for themselves." Like, surely it would be much more efficient and cost-effective to improve water filtration at the municipal level rather than expecting everyone to buy and maintain their own individual filtration systems....
It might be more efficient (and effective) for the filtering to happen closest to where the water is drank. If it happens at the treatment plant, then you end up filtering lots of water that is used to water lawns, shower, etc. Only a small percentage is used for drinking.
Agree, you also need chlorine in the water to treat the distribution system of pipes to your home. So you need to filter chlorine at point of use anyways.
I think this stems from the fact that the government takes years to do anything and mostly caters to special interests. If we could get them to actually take action on things then this kind of thing wouldn't be necessary but I feel like, more often than not, we're all left waiting on them to decide how to best make sure their industry/corporate friends aren't harmed before they decide to do what's best for the public.
Like the article says, Joe Biden is doing something about this, catering to all Americans. It's hard for me to see how you're offering a negative spin in light of this story. If you like this, vote in more people with the similar policies. Call your reps and potential reps and tell them you like this and you want to see more of this. Donate to their campaigns if you have the cash. This is how you give positive feedback. Don't vote for people who run on policies about deregulation.
This is the kind of annoying "more cynical than thou" comment which sounds insightful and meant to grasp at upvotes, but is really a self-fulfilling defeatist prophecy that leads us to a place nobody wants to be. We can and should expect better, but we also have to work for it instead of shrugging and giving up.
This is the kinf of annoying "holier than thou" comment which sounds insightful, but which is utterly divorced from the reality of our crumbling and dysfunctional government.
Just look at how Flint, MI was handled. It took years of nationwide outrage for the government to even admit that there was a problem.
Facts are that the US government is (now) intentionally and explicitly designed to remove all power from the people and give it to lobbyists and special interest groups. All levels of government explicitly ignore majority decisions and do whatever the fuck they want. Even votes barely matter when districts are gerrymandered so hard that all elections are predetermined. When that's not enough, we just go straight for bald faced voter suppression.
Things are not sunshine and roses. The US government is actively working against you.
Yes. If other readers are passionate about this, too, take note that a lot of issues like this, including water quality, are a policy choice. We should remember the politicians who are working to improve infrastructure that benefits us (in this case Joe Biden's administration) in the voting booth. We should not reward politicians who would have us fend for ourselves vs entities that already have every advantage.
Comparing to those things actually makes it sound quite expensive while also being a very vague amount. The point would be a lot better if it had a number.
Check out Waterdrop. The cartridges do just pop out and in, and it’s not zero install but it is very easy. If you can install a faucet you can install that.
I got over 99% reduction according to a cheap TDS meter at my condo in Phoenix with the 2 filter one. I can replace cartridges in seconds. I love that thing.
Zero install would probably suck as you’d have to fill tanks frequently (it rejects a good amount of water) and it would take up counter space but they do make em.
Honestly in most places you can buy the stuff for 25 cents a gallon from a machine, which is what I would do if I did not feel like installing
the unit I have has no storage tank. The water comes out a tube that needs to fill something. We have a regular daily pitcher that gets filled several times through the day. I also fill up larger storage emergency water camping tanks. I guess those are made out of some kind of plastic.
I heard some RO filters could pass microplastics. I think it would be cool to see if any of that pics up in a microscope. What size particles are people zeroing in on exactly?
Zero install to me means “a renter can use it”. It could hijack your faucet outlet with a valve but allow your faucet to work anyway. This would require usually no tools or at worse a screwdriver to tighten a clip.
Well, the only real change that’s not easily reversible one might make when installing most of these units is if you don’t already have a hole to mount the faucet in. A renter definitely shouldn’t drill a hole in a countertop and most r/o units would require one. Any house built in the last few decades would probably have a built in dish soap dispenser you could pop out, but if not, no luck.
Other than that just basic hand tools are involved. I would have no problem installing one in a rental but I’m also comfortable with plumbing. It’s definitely a job that seems a lot more intimidating than it is.
Not really sure why the informative sibling reply to my question is dead (and thus can't be replied to), but I wonder if that hole is what the air switch for my garbage disposal is mounted in...
RO doesn't really solve for filtering the water naturally inside of crops or meat. If you have a huge increase in groundwater pollution in a country, if your food supply isn't also in a closed system where only filtered water comes in, then you've only reduced your contaminant consumption not eliminated it.
I feel like safe, clean water is the job of the municipal system that we pay so much for. Even the poors should have the same cleanliness as the middle class, but that's rather beside the point.
> For me, it’s because I have no idea what new previously “unknown” contamination will be next discovered, and would rather get out as much as is reasonable.
This really resonates with where my thinking has gone. While I always try to be guided by science, my default these days is much closer to "assume it isn't safe" than "assume it is". I've got multiple chronic medical conditions that me both more susceptible to getting to sick, and more likely to have complications/have a slow recovery if I do. So for instance, I keep (medical grade) gloves at home and wear them when using any sort of cleaning chemicals. My skin is fragile anyway, and almost any sort of solvent (that isn't water) is at least somewhat bad for you, either short or long term.
Not surprsing. I'll also mask (N95, yeah something with a carbon filter would be even better) for the heavy stuff and always go fragrance-free if possible, which is something the article mentions.
There are smog masks from Asia where it's almost needed to be outside in many major metro areas; they use a cloth carrier with a laminated inlay of N95-like particle and activated carbon VOC filtering.
“RO” in this context, for anyone who doesn’t care about being known in a relatively obscure Internet forum as someone that knows water filtration jargon, presumably stands for “Reverse Osmosis”
I switched to a home water still, which I greatly prefer. No risk of additional microplastics from plastic filters.
The home distilled water tastes so good, much better than store bought that often sits in plastic jugs for weeks.
I do not add any additional minerals, the amount of magnesium, iron, and sodium in drinking water is only like ~5-10% of a person's daily requirement, and I get plenty of those from vegetables.
I tried one (maybe a terrible one? https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09TP8RZRT/), but the connectivity was flaky and I couldn't find a good place to mount it in my Odyssey. (Ideas and product suggestions welcome! It's not bugging me enough to replace the head unit.)
I destroyed them and threw them in a dumpster like that Ron Swanson gif.
All to say, little cellular modems and a small data plan are likely getting cheap enough it's worth being extra diligent about the devices we let into our homes. Probably not yet to the point of that being the case on a tv, but I could certainly see it getting to that point soon enough.