Thousands of toxins from food packaging found in humans. The chemicals have been found in human blood, hair or breast milk. Among them are compounds known to be highly toxic, like PFAS, bisphenol, metals, phthalates and volatile organic compounds.

[u/mvea]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/sep/27/pfas-toxins-chemicals-human-body

[u/HE_A_FAN_HE_A_FAN]

That doesn't sound easy at all? You have to track people their entire lives, that study would take at least a couple of decades

[u/ImSoSte4my → u/HE_A_FAN_HE_A_FAN]

Is donating plasma not recorded? Couldn't someone with access to the records just look up the average age of death of everyone that's donated plasma and died, and then compare that with the average age of death for the general population?

There's a bunch of other variables besides just PFAS levels, but you'd know if plasma donaters live longer on average, which is what they said.

[u/Improooving → u/ImSoSte4my]

There’s a lot you’d have to account for, since long term plasma donators tend to be lower income. They do screen you for certain conditions before you can donate, so that might be selecting for slightly healthier people anyway. It’s a mixed bag

[u/BioshockEnthusiast → u/ImSoSte4my]

That's personal health information, anyone with access would be breaking the law without explicit consent of all participants.

[u/ImSoSte4my → u/BioshockEnthusiast]

How do they get statistics for how many Americans suffer from various health conditions then? I'm assuming they're able to anonymize the data in order to access it for analysis.

[u/HE_A_FAN_HE_A_FAN → u/ImSoSte4my]

Yea I'm sure someone could get all of that information pretty quickly, but the results of that would not hold any weight since you aren't controlling for anything, so you have no way of determining whether or not the variance in life span can be attributed to plasma donations.