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Whistleblowers expose corruption in EPA Chemical Safety Office

theintercept.com

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Re: Whistleblowers expose corruption in EPA Chemical Safety Office

#21

Post by IfOnlyYouKnew »

voxic11 wrote: post #4
sschueller wrote: post #2

It won't be a vaccine that makes you sterile. It will be one of the chemicals that end up everywhere because of corruption at the only agency that would protect us. This is also why those people for a unregulated free market are insane. Sure the company pedaling the dangerous chemical will eventual go out of business. But how many people will die and suffer and does anyone think that the people responsible will still…

New chemicals save lives as well, they may be safer than existing alternatives or enable safer processes to be used or they may enable some new technology that saves lives (there is almost unlimited potential here, few areas of technological advancement are as wide impacting as improvements to materials). It sounds like you are advocating for the precautionary principle, but what do you think about the counterargumen…

If you allow the sale & use of new chemicals before they are proven to be safe, you don’t just run the risk of them eventually turning out to be unsafe. You also remove all incentives to actually investigate their safety.

We’ve also found most of the low-hanging fruits of material science. Can you think of a single new chemical that came out in the last decade or two that is worth the risk of something like, say, Teflon seeing widespread use and then being shown to be carcinogenic?

…and Michael Crichton’s State of Fear is his pseudoscientific turn to the dark side, a wild recounting of dozens of superficial arguments trying to proof that climate change isn’t real, years after they had been disproven.

Re: Whistleblowers expose corruption in EPA Chemical Safety Office

#22

Post by kingsloi »

briefcomment wrote: post #20
voisin wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am sorry to hear about the personal impact to your family. I think things like the air quality sensor you run are the actual solution here. In the absence of government officials doing their job properly, it is up to individuals to do it for themselves. I wonder if there would be an open source solution for water quality testing and air quality testing, and if enough could be built by citizen hackers to create a di…

I like PurpleAir's crowdsourced air quality map[1]. Their sensors are one of the few that get down to the .3 micrometer level. [1] https://www.purpleair.com/map

I agree! I love their open API, too!

I'm in the process of creating a 501c, and as part of my mission to raise awareness, I'm going to purchase 5-10 PurpleAir II and have them across Lake Michigan's entire shoreline. Or, that's part of my plan.

Ideally I'd run a more extensive sensor that tracks more than just PM, but I have a feeling pollution varies a lot in a small distance, we get lake effect weather, but what about people 5-10 miles south of me, do they have it better/worse, etc. I'd love to know those questions, and PurpleAir makes it semi affordable

Re: Whistleblowers expose corruption in EPA Chemical Safety Office

#23

Post by [deleted] »

voisin wrote: post #12
kingsloi wrote: post #3

My little girl was born with really rare heart disease and a genetic condition, a boy a few streets behind us developed a really rare cancer. - https://kingsley.sh/posts/2021/staggering-cost-of-surviving-... - https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/18/us/ben-watkins-masterchef/ind... This comes a year or so after a ArcelorMittal spilled ammonia and cyanide into Lake Michigan, and didn't sound the alarm for a few days. My wife a…

I am sorry to hear about the personal impact to your family. I think things like the air quality sensor you run are the actual solution here. In the absence of government officials doing their job properly, it is up to individuals to do it for themselves. I wonder if there would be an open source solution for water quality testing and air quality testing, and if enough could be built by citizen hackers to create a di…

[deleted]

Re: Whistleblowers expose corruption in EPA Chemical Safety Office

#25

Post by ethbr0 »

wbl wrote: post #17
voisin wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably trying to avoid libel since nothing has been proven in court.

Truth is an absolute defense to libel in the US. Furthermore because this is the sort of reporting on a matter of public concern that society benefits from the standard gets tighter: it's not enough to show something was false, you have to show the publication should have known or acted maliciously in publishing. Incredibly high bar.

Truth or (as you point out) ignorance. Which is different from the UK and a lot of other countries.

But the practical question is: can The Intercept afford a legal fight against Dow?

Re: Whistleblowers expose corruption in EPA Chemical Safety Office

#26

Post by ethbr0 »

voisin wrote: post #13
tru3_power wrote: post #7

I don’t understand what’s in it for the people pushing for these approvals. Are they getting kickbacks?

There is intense pressure to please big corporate interests. I see it in my field often. I have no idea where it comes from. I think maybe fear of the power big corporates have? Fear that their higher ups won’t protect them?

At the highest level, the revolving door and cushy "retirement jobs" in industry.

And once you have the bosses in your pocket, they exert pressure down the chain.

Middle management isn't getting the real pressure, but their bosses are breathing fire down their necks, telling them expectations.

Re: Whistleblowers expose corruption in EPA Chemical Safety Office

#28

Post by ethbr0 »

OnlineGladiator wrote: post #10
voxic11 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New chemicals save lives as well, they may be safer than existing alternatives or enable safer processes to be used or they may enable some new technology that saves lives (there is almost unlimited potential here, few areas of technological advancement are as wide impacting as improvements to materials). It sounds like you are advocating for the precautionary principle, but what do you think about the counterargumen…

I'd never heard of the precautionary principle before, but the way you explain it is just circular reasoning used to straw man it as nefarious. Arguing for validation is not arguing to ban innovation - we just need some actual accountability (and ideally transparency) included in the process. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, whereas the article points out we are straight-up falsifying documents in order to push sal…

The harm that parent alludes to is that in toxicity studies you only know it doesn't cause cancer after 30 years of exposure... after 30 years.

Those studies are incredibly expensive, and are the reason so many chemical companies merged.

Re: Whistleblowers expose corruption in EPA Chemical Safety Office

#29

Post by hanniabu »

cogman10 wrote: post #18

This is, frankly, the legacy of the Trump administration. This story of blatant corruption to favor businesses was common throughout the federal government. The Trump admin went out of it's way to both install the worst of the worst and to push out as many competent federal employees as possible. Prime examples of Trump swamp creatures include such hits as Ajit Pai, Scott Pruitt (Who likely started the policies of th…

Not sure why you're getting so heavily voted for something so blatantly obvious.

Re: Whistleblowers expose corruption in EPA Chemical Safety Office

#30

Post by kbenson »

voisin wrote: post #13
tru3_power wrote: post #7

I don’t understand what’s in it for the people pushing for these approvals. Are they getting kickbacks?

There is intense pressure to please big corporate interests. I see it in my field often. I have no idea where it comes from. I think maybe fear of the power big corporates have? Fear that their higher ups won’t protect them?

I always assumed it was the dark corollary of trickle down economics, and one of the few places it works. You throw a bunch of money at a higher up, and the pressure flows downhill. Just like something else that flows downhill that we're all aware of.

Eventually you end up with a system where there's a buffer of a few layers between the people benefitting and the people actually signing off on something, and after a while it's not explicit as much as "a feeling I got that my managers expected this to go through."

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