Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Can anyone do particle induced gamma ray emission (PIGE) spectroscopy test at home? Women's underwear story.

Neal - 19-1-2023 at 23:31

That was how it was used to detect chemicals in women's underwear.

https://www.fox32chicago.com/news/thinx-period-underwear-law...

violet sin - 20-1-2023 at 09:30

So, in the article it said ... " after a Florida resident's independent testing "confirmed the existence of these harmful chemicals." "

Did this person initiate a test at a facility, by lab tecs, or in their back yard by their own hand?

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&...

I didn't see any 2022 testing here in the PDF just third party testing by a lab in 2020 for sierra club.

Neal - 20-1-2023 at 15:30

Quote: Originally posted by violet sin  
So, in the article it said ... " after a Florida resident's independent testing "confirmed the existence of these harmful chemicals." "

Did this person initiate a test at a facility, by lab tecs, or in their back yard by their own hand?

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&...

I didn't see any 2022 testing here in the PDF just third party testing by a lab in 2020 for sierra club.

I clicked on the links listed in the articles, she sent them to a physics professor named Peaslee that already worked with this stuff. Here's the results.

The crotch in my underwear had 3,264 parts per million (ppm), and the one for teens had 2,053 ppm, according to Peaslee’s particle induced gamma ray emission (PIGE) spectroscopy test.

clearly_not_atara - 20-1-2023 at 15:45

If your goal is to detect fluorine atoms in the underwear, my first thought is that a 19F NMR study would be equally applicable and possibly much simpler. Also, Thinx admitted the presence of silver upfront, so element detection must not have been the crucial evidence for the filing in the case of Ag nanoparticles.

Honestly, I'm a little dubious of the claim that silver nanoparticles represent a meaningful risk in women's underwear. Thinx appears to have lied in its claims that the silver is non-migratory -- a headshot for a fraud case -- but silver is a very non-selective toxin, meaning that legitimate medical concerns about affecting the "balance" of microbes would not be so easily substantiated. The sole medical evidence for harmful effects of silver on the vagina submitted in the filing considered direct administration of silver into the vagina, where it exerts toxic effects on the mucosal lining, but this is not related to the balance of flora, and would certainly be dose-dependent.

With that said, the concern that silver affects the marine environment via laundry effluent seems more substantial. It's well-known that marine organisms are highly sensitive to small concentrations of reactive metals, and while silver is not normally a reactive metal, it can become so in the presence of suitable chelating agents, which may include peptides.