EPA is allowing asbestos back into manufacturing • Hacker News Board

Re: EPA is allowing asbestos back into manufacturing

#271

Post by dbatten » Tue, Aug 07, 2018, 5:47 PM UTC

HillaryBriss wrote: post #184

swebs wrote: post #110

>EPA is now allowing asbestos back into manufacturing Wow, misleading headline of the decade. Asbestos was never completely banned from manufacturing in the United States, only for certain items. https://www.epa.gov/asbestos/us-federal-bans-asbestos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asbestos_and_the_law_(United_S...

yes. that's right. it was the proliferation of costly lawsuits in recent decades which diminished the use of asbestos in the US. companies are still trying to resolve all of these lawsuits. what kind of incentives would need to be in place for a company to willingly put that lawsuit target on its own back?

I've heard people argue that a much more effective way to do environmental regulation would be to basically not regulate and instead increase liability standards for environmental/health damage.

Right now, in many cases, if a factory is dumping toxic sludge into a river and they're within EPA limits, there's nothing anybody can do to stop it.

If you allowed farmers downstream to come after them for damaging crops (or whatever), or allowed class action suits against coal-burning power companies for cancer and such, imagine what that might do to incentive structures.

I'm not sure I buy it, but the asbestos case makes me wonder.

Re: EPA is allowing asbestos back into manufacturing

#272

Post by vkou » Tue, Aug 07, 2018, 5:50 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #264

vkou wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can't believe that a government stacked with people whose stated missions are to destroy the only formalized, enforceable bodies of standards and accountability in this nation so that only "the market" can judge them would be trying their best to make things work. It'd be like locusts helping farmers choose better pesticides. What put those people into government? Yes, it was the voters, but how did people repr…

> What put those people into government? There's a fairly large criminal investigation with numerous charges already filed about that...

Please.

The Scary, Scary Russians spending $100,000 on Facebook ads and having a couple of meetings with people in the Trump campaign is illegal, but not the reason for why 48% of the country voted for that clown, or why he even made the ballot, or why Hillary Clinton made the ballot, or why Congress isn't doing a damned thing to reign in this[1] insanity.

There's a much simpler explanation - the system, by design, serves the oligrachs. And if they can make half a dollar selling you asbestos, by god, they will find a way to sell you asbestos.

[1] By which, I mean, an administration that is, quite literally, poisoning us.

Re: EPA is allowing asbestos back into manufacturing

#273

Post by orthecreedence » Tue, Aug 07, 2018, 5:53 PM UTC

koolba wrote: post #75

diminoten wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You trace it back though; we voted for the people who did the gerrymandering, and we voted for the electoral college (our ancestors did, anyway).

I say it's a feature, not a bug. Reducing everything to a popular vote is just a feel good way of describing mob rule. The electoral college and equal Senate representation acts as a tempering force on said mob.

A few years ago I might have agreed with you.

The fact that the electoral college allowed a person with absolutely no political experience who's primary accomplishments were several failed businesses and some TV spotlights to be president of the United States is an absolute fucking glowing failure.

Donald Trump IS the person the electoral college was put in place to stop.

They did not do their job. The electoral college needs to be abolished, and while we're at it, we really need some form of ranked-choice voting for president. FPTP is a pathetic voting system, and while you can argue about which alternative is the best one until you're blue in the face, I have never seen an argument that favors FPTP when the main metric is fair representation.

Re: EPA is allowing asbestos back into manufacturing

#274

Post by at-fates-hands » Tue, Aug 07, 2018, 5:56 PM UTC

WhompingWindows wrote: post #96

at-fates-hands wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually this is the result of a two party system, not some nefarious political conspiracy. The electoral college is the way we elect presidents for a reason. If we went by population, a huge chunk of the country's vote wouldn't matter and the Democrats would win every election. I'm pretty sure that's exactly the opposite of what the founders of the country envisioned. If you're not happy about what's going on, get y…

A huge chunk of the population's vote already doesn't matter. Any state with a wide margin of victory for either party effectively neutralizes the power of an individuals' vote. For presidential elections specifically, I live in a very blue state. No matter what my vote, it will not change the outcome even if we ground-hog-day repeated the election 1 million times. Whereas, in a state like Ohio or Pennsylvania or Mic…

> Any state with a wide margin of victory for either party effectively neutralizes the power of an individuals' vote. For presidential elections specifically, I live in a very blue state. No matter what my vote.

The presidential election is less important than your local elections. I live in a very blue state as well and nearly every year, our state supports the Democratic candidate. However, the majority of the local and state governments have had equal representation over the years, including electing several independent candidates. THOSE elections have far more impact on my day-to-day life then who's president for a few years.

If you want to make a difference you can. If you feel like your vote doesn't count, then I would refer you to the time when Jesse Ventura ran as an independent candidate in Minnesota. The Republican candidate in one of the debates said, "If you vote for Jesse Ventura, then you're wasting your vote" You know who won the Governor's race that year? The guy who was told if you voted for him, your vote didn't matter.

Re: EPA is allowing asbestos back into manufacturing

#275

Post by methehack » Tue, Aug 07, 2018, 6:05 PM UTC

xienze wrote: post #108

methehack wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're going to express an opinion, particularly one contrary to widely held beliefs/truths, you need to provide evidence/reasons. That's called "discourse."

See my other reply.

I looked at your other replies. You consistently reassert your initial claim without evidence. When presented with evidence, you re-assert your claims, again without evidence.

You even go so far as blaming others as being intolerant when they challenge you with evidence.

All of this makes you seem like a bad actor to me -- someone either utterly obtuse or willfully trying to undermine everyone else's very ability to have a meaningful conversation.

Re: EPA is allowing asbestos back into manufacturing

#276

Post by dsfyu404ed » Tue, Aug 07, 2018, 6:07 PM UTC

blattimwind wrote: post #238

lb1lf wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...a former employer (based in the EU, exports perhaps 2/3 of production outside the EU) took a major financial hit when it was found that a valve sourced from a cheaper supplier than the ones originally used contained an (undeclared) asbestos gasket. Cost of replacement gasket? Less than $1/system. Cost of getting to gasket? ~$70-80k/system. We had deployed a few hundred. On the upside, after this incident, noone in…

"same same" is the enemy of quality in any supply chain.

And the friend of your customer's wallet.

Trade-offs are everywhere.

Re: EPA is allowing asbestos back into manufacturing

#277

Post by makomk » Tue, Aug 07, 2018, 6:08 PM UTC

k1ns wrote: post #98

I believe I've found the SNUR in question [0] and it seems to state that the EPA will consider uses of asbestos in construction: > Any Other Building Materials (other than cement): Examples include insulation, plasters, mastics, textured paints (e.g., simulates stucco), and block filler paints (e.g., for coating masonry). It looks like they're wanting to open a pathway of discussion between potential manufacturers/im…

I'm pretty sure that's the right rule. What you're missing is that previously those weren't considered new uses of asbestos at all in the US because it had been used for those purposes prior to 1989. As I understand it, without this proposed rule it would in fact be perfectly legal for US companies to just go right ahead and use asbestos in those building materials without any kind of EPA pre-approval. Requiring them to seek out the EPA's approval first is actually tightening the rules. (There are only five pre-1989 uses of asbestos which were banned, and this isn't one of them.) The main reason no-one uses asbestos for this is probably that it's a liability and PR disaster zone.

See in particular section III, which explains this all reasonably clearly.

Re: EPA is allowing asbestos back into manufacturing

#278

Post by refurb » Tue, Aug 07, 2018, 6:09 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #207

The reaction on here is disappointing. Asbestos isn't nuclear waste: it causes harm in well understood ways, and the dangers of its use can be mitigated. A case-by-case analysis of new asbestos products is absolutely a reasonable approach. The EPA is charged with regulating rationally. Costs must be weighed against benefits. That balancing process is itself something that saves lives-- e.g. there are people who are d…

Considering HN probably has a high percentage of well educated people on it, you can clearly see why politics is such a mess. People react emotionally to these things, rather than examine the facts.

Re: EPA is allowing asbestos back into manufacturing

#279

Post by mirimir » Tue, Aug 07, 2018, 6:10 PM UTC

vkou wrote: post #272

dragonwriter wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What put those people into government? There's a fairly large criminal investigation with numerous charges already filed about that...

Please. The Scary, Scary Russians spending $100,000 on Facebook ads and having a couple of meetings with people in the Trump campaign is illegal, but not the reason for why 48% of the country voted for that clown, or why he even made the ballot, or why Hillary Clinton made the ballot, or why Congress isn't doing a damned thing to reign in this[1] insanity. There's a much simpler explanation - the system, by design, s…

Yeah, I gotta agree. Many nations are just kleptocracies. That is, owned and controlled by criminal oligarchs. The US, China and Russia, for sure. Each peddles its own style of bullshit to maintain popular support. But fundamentally they're all kleptocracies.

Re: EPA is allowing asbestos back into manufacturing

#280

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Aug 07, 2018, 6:13 PM UTC

omegaworks wrote: post #270

rayiner wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The unhinged emotional reaction to asbestos in this thread is a good example of why lobbying is important. There is a cost-benefit analysis to be done for products containing asbestos, just like for any other product. Lobbyists present that analysis to the regulator. The alternative is regulation by knee jerk reaction, which undermines to point of regulatory agencies.

This would be fine if the dollar-cost value of usage of these toxic materials actually represented the health and wellbeing of a population. Putting a dollar value on health has never been a simple proposition. In many of these cases, these costs are externalized; they are borne by (healthcare, communal, familial) systems outside the industry where the asbestos is used. Only where a link can be definitively traced ba…

[deleted]