Where Do All the Fluoros Go?
Do you geek out on XC ski waxing? Have you ever thought why all the fuss surrounding the ban of fluoros (fluorinated ski waxes)? Or perhaps you've never considered the environmental and health impacts of fluoros? Is topic of environmentally friendlier waxes new to you?
If you said yes to any of these questions, or if you simply enjoy engaging summer reads, check out this article from Fasterskier.com.
Few teasers:
“The evolution of ski wax to purer and purer forms of fluorocarbons saw ski waxes become some of the most concentrated per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, PFAs or PFOAs, in the world. When research a decade ago began revealing that PFAs could be linked to immune suppression and act as carcinogens, their wide-spread use in industrial uses—from firefighting foams to waterproofed textiles—came into question.”
“What resulted from those conversations was a first-of-its-kind study that sought to measure the impact that using fluoros at a single ski race had on the environment. Carlson, Colby skier Skylar Tupper, and Colby Ski Team Head Coach Tracey Cote cooperated in creating the study that was published in Chemosphere in 2020. Conducted at the Colby Carnival NCAA race in January 2020, their study put quantifiable evidence behind long-standing conjecture around how effective fluoros were in making skis go fast, how durable the waxes were, and where all that wax was going once it went into the snow.”
“So, props to Skylar, after she raced, she changed out of her race suit and went right back out to take snow samples. We took samples right at the start, sampled at different points on the lapped course, so 100m, 1 k into the course, and 3.9 k (which is a hill on the course), and then collected snow that wasn’t on course to hopefully act as a negative control ((how much fluoro was detected there could be measured against the detection on course). We also sample water in the actual supplies at Quarry Road, which is a shallow groundwater well, and then run-off to Messalonskee Stream, which sits at the bottom of the ridge that Quarry Road is built into.”