this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2025
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When it comes to PFAS contamination, people have been having decent results by simply donating blood often. Getting it out of the system via blood does help to reduce overall levels in your body.
I love how we've come back around to bloodletting
Donating plasma works even better. They extract a larger volume of fluids per session, twice a week instead of once every 8 weeks.
Don't worry about the recipient: If you are donating plasma regularly, your PFAS levels will be well below average.
A woman having a child is the biggest reduction. Make of that what you will. I sure hope the placenta, and not the baby, is getting the remainder. But I am guessing both.
Huh, I thought that they only filtered your blood when donating plasma, hence the PFAS could simply be returned to you. But I have to admit that I'm far from an expert on this matter.
Either way, we kinda have returned to bloodletting being a reasonable medical approach.
They centrifuge your blood and return the RBCs, but the PFAS hangs out in the plasma. Mostly. If there was much in the red blood cells, the liver would be removing it and you'd be pooping it out.
Here's a source for anyone interested. I just tested my well water where I'm at and it's 10x over the legal EPA limit :( . Might be testing my blood next and heading to the plasma donation center!
TIL. Thank you!
Wait, you can donate plasma two times in one week where you are? That feels kinda insane.
In Australia it's 12 weeks for whole blood and 2 weeks for plasma. Or 4 weeks for switching from whole blood to plasma.
It’s so much worse than you realize. All blood and plasma must be obtained by “donation” for obvious ethical reasons, but American prisoners get incentives for participation/punishment for non-participation. Private American medical companies make billions of dollars in profit every year selling blood on the international market, but the prisoners don’t see a dime of it. The sellers are so unscrupulous that they have been caught knowingly selling tainted prisoner blood, and continuing to do so after being caught.
The events you're talking about occurred from the 1970's to 1983. They haven't done prison blood drives or accepted plasma from prisoners in over 40 years.
If you've spent more than 72 hours incarcerated, you are ineligible to donate blood products for 12 months.
Not OP, but I was unaware of that. That must have caused most all the AIDS that was caught through transfusions.
Yep! US allows plasma donation up to two times per week, with at least 48 hours between donations.
Can't donate plasma or blood for 8 weeks after donating whole blood, or 16 weeks after donating packed RBCs.
Packed RBCs are basically the reverse of plasma donation. Instead of returning the RBCs and keeping the plasma, they take two units of RBCs and return the plasma.
wait are you guys serious? I know about microplastics and pfas in us but is it a fact donating helps to get rid of some?
For PFAS, yes, definitely. They've done studies on this, some are linked elsewhere in the thread. PFAS in the bloodstream is removed through either whole blood or plasma donation.
For microplastics, I can't say with absolute certainty, as I don't know the concentration of microplastics in the blood, or if replacement blood/plasma contains microplastics. But, the mechanism is the same: extract polluted fluids; allow body to replace with non-polluted fluids. Concentration of pollution falls.
I am so disappointed in my kidneys for not getting rid of this stuff for me.