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The Teflon Toxin

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Re: The Teflon Toxin

#111

Post by rhino369 »

suprgeek wrote: post #17

Take the number of vehicles in the field, (A), and multiply it by the probable rate of failure, (B), then multiply the result by the average out-of- court settlement, (C). A times B times C equals X...If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one. What applies to the Car Industry (via Dialogue from Fight Club) applies to the Chemical Industry in Spades. DuPont Knew (or strongly suspected) that C8 & (Teflon)…

The crazier thing is that for negligence torts (cars would be products liability, which is different), that's exactly how the law works.

It's called the "Hand Formula" and you are only liable for negligence when PL > B, where P is the probability of loss, L is the gravity of loss, and B is the cost of avoiding the risk.

In practice though, it can be hard to argue that sort of thing. It's a little academic.

Re: The Teflon Toxin

#112

Post by nickles »

knowaveragejoe wrote: post #80
13years wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free markets when supported by strong property rights can have strong protections to prevent harm or pollution. Non free markets, although regulated, don't necessarily perform better and can even perform worse in this regard. The FDA is a great example of an agency which often can be seen to work harder to protect the industry than the individual. For example, look up the story of Vioxx. A drug which killed 50k peopl…

> Free markets when supported by strong property rights can have strong protections to prevent harm or pollution. Can someone explain how this is supposed to work? I don't mean to sound rude/biased but this sounds like one of those cases where the theory is sound but when it meets with reality we get unpredictable(and sometimes disastrous) results.

In Economics, the Coase Theorem[1] predicts close to this outcome, although it speaks to efficient outcomes and not necessarily harm reducing outcomes. When strong property rights exist (and it is feasible for all parties to negotiate), then parties may reach an efficient allocation of resources regardless of how the resources were initially allocated.

To use a typical example, imagine a train track runs through a farmer's land and sparks from the train sets the farmer's wheat on fire, causing monetary harm. If the train company owns the tracks, then the farmer should be willing to pay to put spark guards along the tracks to protect his crop. Alternatively, if the farmer owns the tracks, the train company should be willing to pay for the damage to the crop to ensure that it can continue to operate.

In practice, there may be costs associated with negotiations (e.g. lawyers), it may be infeasible to negotiate between all parties (e.g. if there are many farmers affected), or property rights are not sufficiently strong for one party to bar another from producing negative externalities, all of which can lead to failures of the theorem.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coase_theorem

Re: The Teflon Toxin

#113

Post by dreamdu5t »

rayiner wrote: post #104
knowaveragejoe wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Free markets when supported by strong property rights can have strong protections to prevent harm or pollution. Can someone explain how this is supposed to work? I don't mean to sound rude/biased but this sounds like one of those cases where the theory is sound but when it meets with reality we get unpredictable(and sometimes disastrous) results.

People who have no money are supposed to sue DuPont and pony up the money to pay lawyers and experts to prove that DuPont's emissions were harmful and caused their injuries. Then if they lose, because that's hard to prove, they're supposed to pay DuPont's legal fees and costs.

Lawyers put the money up for a cut of profits. If legal claims could be sold then someone else could buy the claim itself and class action wouldn't be the only recourse for the poor.

Re: The Teflon Toxin

#114

Post by hobs »

reedlaw wrote: post #105
smoyer wrote: post #56

What struck me most about this article is how much rationalization occurred. I'm amazed that a (presumably licensed) doctor can in one breath say they have a moral responsibility to safeguard the public, their workers and the environment, then in the next breath describe why the results of their own study didn't apply. But looking inward, I wonder if our industry doesn't do the same thing in many cases - what about:…

The most serious is ignoring the effects of sitting all day. Employers tout their big monitors and new laptops but I've never seen one advertise treadmill workstations. Another rationalization is that longer work hours are somehow mutually beneficial but I find the opposite to be true.

>but I've never seen one advertise treadmill workstations. Look again. Anecdotally, I have actually seen them advertise this, and my company decided to get two. I see people using it all the time, but I have yet to see anyone do in depth work requiring interaction with the machine, mostly just reading and researching.

Re: The Teflon Toxin

#115

Post by anentropic »

gioele wrote: post #76
lumberjack wrote: post #36

And the settlement reached was around 0.0086 DuPont's yearly revenue to be provided for education, water treatment facilities and medical expenses of the class action members. Is that really going to deter them from doing it again? Where is the real penalty? http://www.hpcbd.com/Personal-Injury/DuPont-C8/C8-Class-Acti...

> And the settlement reached was around 0.0086 DuPont's yearly revenue to be provided for education, water treatment facilities and medical expenses of the class action members. > Is that really going to deter them from doing it again? Where is the real penalty? Stefano Quintarelli, an Italian ISP-owner-turned-ITC-journalist has the nice habit of converting those "huge" fines ("millions of euros!") into equivalent fi…

this is great, I'd like to see this in every news article!

Re: The Teflon Toxin

#116

Post by anentropic »

nickles wrote: post #112
knowaveragejoe wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Free markets when supported by strong property rights can have strong protections to prevent harm or pollution. Can someone explain how this is supposed to work? I don't mean to sound rude/biased but this sounds like one of those cases where the theory is sound but when it meets with reality we get unpredictable(and sometimes disastrous) results.

In Economics, the Coase Theorem[1] predicts close to this outcome, although it speaks to efficient outcomes and not necessarily harm reducing outcomes. When strong property rights exist (and it is feasible for all parties to negotiate), then parties may reach an efficient allocation of resources regardless of how the resources were initially allocated. To use a typical example, imagine a train track runs through a fa…

so... the farmer gets screwed?

Re: The Teflon Toxin

#117

Post by esaym »

pyre wrote: post #62
sanoli wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you keep them seasoned? I tried a couple of times, but couldn't get it right. Could you give me some tips?

http://sherylcanter.com/wordpress/2010/01/a-science-based-te...

Yes this is a good read. After reading that last year I bought a griswold #8 from ebay for $50. Stripped it with lye oven cleaner over a few days, and then seasoned it like above. I stopped 'washing' the pan with soap as I found chiseling any stuck on stuff with a metal spatula, followed by using "The Ringer" under hot water to be quickest and easiest. After that, I dry with a paper towel and spray with Pam (read somewhere that the oil in pam (canola?) was a good 'drying' oil). It is also good to bake stuff in the pan, pizza, pies, cornbread,ect. The extra heat will also help re-season. I have been super impressed by the pan after a year.

Re: The Teflon Toxin

#118

Post by esaym »

robbiep wrote: post #83
torrent-of-ions wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just use it. I only use saturated fats in mine (mostly lard and butter) and I use metal utensiles which helps to keep it smooth. I avoid vegetable oils because I find that they go sticky (they're also not as good for you to cook with as animal fat).

Why do metal utensils not scratch it?

Iron is a harder metal than 'steel'.

Re: The Teflon Toxin

#119

Post by esaym »

morsch wrote: post #40
bradgessler wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buy a chainmail cleaner: http://www.amazon.com/The-Ringer-Cleaner-Stainless-Chainmail... For $18 it will change your cast iron life. The idea is that after you cook, you scrub all the stuff that gets stuck to the bottom with the chainmail and some water, then wipe it off with a paper towel. You'll never have to use soap again.

Is this that much different from a brillo pad (aka metal sponge)? That's what I use on my steel and iron cookware. They're like 2 EUR for a 4-pack; each sponge lasts for a very long time.

I was (am) new to CI, I bought the ringer because it seemed like steel wool would scratch the season off (vs 'the ringer'), but then again, I never tried steel wool, so don't know.

Re: The Teflon Toxin

#120

Post by rayiner »

dreamdu5t wrote: post #113
rayiner wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who have no money are supposed to sue DuPont and pony up the money to pay lawyers and experts to prove that DuPont's emissions were harmful and caused their injuries. Then if they lose, because that's hard to prove, they're supposed to pay DuPont's legal fees and costs.

Lawyers put the money up for a cut of profits. If legal claims could be sold then someone else could buy the claim itself and class action wouldn't be the only recourse for the poor.

Lawyers who work on pure contingency settle cases for pennies on the dollar because they can't afford the risk of going to trial. Especially in toxic tort cases, where the experts are expensive and the burden of proof is much higher than what science can easily satisfy (more likely than not, the injury would not have happened but for the defendant's conduct).

Legal claims can be and are sold to entities that aggregate them and bring the lawsuits themselves. That's probably better than the class action system but still leaves victims getting a fraction of their damages and perpetrators paying for only a fraction of the costs.

Another libertarian-ish solution to toxic torts, which I've never seen espoused, is to simply recognize that pollution is a form of violence and make it illegal. Then, people who want to pollute could transact with the potentially affected parties to pay them to shift onto them to bear the risk of harm from pollution.

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