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Leaded gas was a known poison the day it was invented (2016)

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Re: Leaded gas was a known poison the day it was invented (2016)

#281

Post by amateurICEguy »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #93
sonthonax wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Refined oils aren't that poisonous. You could probably drink a gulp of pure octane and suffer no more than alcohol like effects and an upset stomach.

Lol no you will throw up everything in your stomach violently until it is completely empty and go to ER mostly likely. Then the doctor will have you stick around for a few hours and make sure you are okay and let you sleep off the headache. Ask me how I know (I was stupid and 10 and trying to siphon gas for my mini motorcycle for the first time, DM for me more for more details).

How many years ago was this? I ask because "gasoline" isn't really a thing in chemistry. It's a mixture that will run cars. You could have drank a cup of just about anything.

A cup of octane wouldn't be the worse thing you could swallow. Given a choice, I'll drink a cup of octane before a teaspoon of TEL (OP appears to favor cooking units)

Re: Leaded gas was a known poison the day it was invented (2016)

#282

Post by mguerville »

toofy wrote: post #278
cwp wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I put more of the blame on the influencers because they are the ones making editorial decisions. Sure the platforms are optimizing for engagement too, but it's all content-agnostic. The influencers choose their words carefully, and they choose harmful words because it makes them more money.

Both are absolutely to blame. Both the social media companies and the content creators. Both are choosing to ignore the damage which is a direct result of their actions and they both ignore long term damage in the name of an immediate profit return. There no reason we have to choose one or the other when both are clearly willing to destroy.

I agree, and they both refuse to change (moderate the platforms, make good faith efforts to reduce or disclose bias, etc.) because money trumps ethics.

I’m not sure what solutions exist though, I’m in favor of regulatory action but it’s often just moving the goalposts as there are always loopholes to be found.

Re: Leaded gas was a known poison the day it was invented (2016)

#283

Post by ashtonkem »

paulkrush wrote: post #91

I guess we live on the shoulders of nastiness and things get better. So TEL was part of our boot sequence. What nastiness are we subjecting ourselves to today? BTW: The guy that invented TEL also invented CFCs! See Thomas Midgley Jr: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr . This guy who invents awesome working chemicals that are tragically bad for people on a worldwide scale manages to exit life dues to his…

Easy; micro plastics.

Re: Leaded gas was a known poison the day it was invented (2016)

#284

Post by ashtonkem »

jgtrosh wrote: post #239
smnrchrds wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Midgley's legacy has been scarred by the negative environmental impact of leaded gasoline and Freon. Environmental historian J. R. McNeill opined that Midgley "had more impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in Earth's history", and Bill Bryson remarked that Midgley possessed "an instinct for the regrettable that was almost uncanny".

And yet, it is also considered that he has benefited more than harmed; simply by helping provide countless people with refrigeration.

That only works if we presume that the only way we could have discovered refrigeration was via CFCs, which seems improbable to me. My chest freezer uses propane as a refrigerant; why couldn’t we have just jumped straight to that?

Re: Leaded gas was a known poison the day it was invented (2016)

#285

Post by brigandish »

bamboozled wrote: post #267
young_unixer wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What nastiness are we subjecting ourselves to today? We should be ashamed at the number of people that die everyday in car "accidents". Specially pedestrians and cyclists. If you looked at our reaction to Covid, you'd think we value human life very much, but when you look at how our streets works, you realize we actually don't. The problem is even worse in poor countries.

Not to mention getting hit or run over by a car is a pretty brutal, this is from experience.

Even a tiny hit that causes no obvious injury is a shock to the system, I say that as a cyclist who's been hit a few times in that way.

Re: Leaded gas was a known poison the day it was invented (2016)

#286

Post by zarzavat »

Misdicorl wrote: post #265
afavour wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What nastiness are we subjecting ourselves to today? Maybe an overwrought comparison but I genuinely do feel like we’ll look back on this age of social media and disinformation in the same way we did leaded gas. The people making money knew exactly how dangerous it was and the problems it caused but they did everything in their power to cover it up in the name of profit. Originally it felt like a social annoyance a…

I disagree. The future doesn't have less social media, it has more. We won't look back with contempt, but amusement much as we do today at early cgi and tabloid efforts. I don't love the idea with the current iteration, but every mass media invention has the exact same trope play out as we're seeing with social media. 1) first adopters and skeptics 2) major use 3) exploitation of those users 4) combo of regulation an…

It depends what you mean by "social media". Facebook already feels very dated and Instagram is getting that way.

People will get bored of it all, I know I have. Right now my platform of choice is Discord. It might technically be social media but it's way less toxic as it encourages people to build relationships rather than shouting at each other.

Re: Leaded gas was a known poison the day it was invented (2016)

#287

Post by mhh__ »

Symmetry wrote: post #3

I've got a sneaking suspicion we ought to go through everything else Thomas MIdgley Jr. invented and ban it, just to be sure. Leaded gas, CFCs, and the contraption he killed himself with is a worrying pattern. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr .

Didn't CFCs save a lot of people's lives back in the days of badly designed fridges? He couldn't have known about the atmosphere

Re: Leaded gas was a known poison the day it was invented (2016)

#288

Post by stephen_g »

lovecg wrote: post #201
nofinator wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sugar is an excellent example. In fact, the sugar industry has been behind the effort to deflect blame to fat for the last 50 years. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/13/493739074...

It’s kind of hard to discern from the article, so is fat good and was unfairly blamed? Or fat and sugar are both bad, but they emphasized the fat part?

I think the biggest takeaway from all the research I did is that not all fats are equal. Monounsaturated fats seem to be generally just good. Omega-3, also, seems good, and Omega-6 less so, but part of that could actually be more about the ratios of omega-6 to -3, which can be 15:1 in the Western diet but people have better health outcomes when they bring omega-6 consumption down and increase omega-3 to get the ratio closer to 4:1 to 1:1.

Saturated fats are still debated - some studies did show replacing saturated fats with vegetable fats did reduce cardiovascular disease etc., but then that might be more that there are some protective effects to the vegetable fats and adding them in rather than replacing might have had a similar effect…

Then there are about a million confounding variables. Doing a decent amount of exercise is a big one, because it’s harder to control for than the other common health detriment - smoking, but things like whether your dairy is grass-fed (as it is here in Australia and much of Europe) vs. grain fed apparently makes a big difference (grass fed apparently has a lot more things like CLA, omega-3 fatty acids and Vitamin K2, the benefits of which seem to potentially more than cancel out any problem from the saturated fat).

One other big problem is that a lot of “low fat” products tend to have more sugar added to make up for it.

Too much sugar is bad, yes, and it’s pretty alarming how seemingly little you need to be over that threshold. Literally a single can of coke is almost the entirety of the sugar one should be consuming in a whole day! Fruit juice is also pretty bad unfortunately - basically just as bad as soft drink (I love soft drinks, apple juice, sweet ice tea, it’s been a challenge to cut most of it out!).

Re: Leaded gas was a known poison the day it was invented (2016)

#289

Post by [deleted] »

kongin wrote: post #266
afavour wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What nastiness are we subjecting ourselves to today? Maybe an overwrought comparison but I genuinely do feel like we’ll look back on this age of social media and disinformation in the same way we did leaded gas. The people making money knew exactly how dangerous it was and the problems it caused but they did everything in their power to cover it up in the name of profit. Originally it felt like a social annoyance a…

>Originally it felt like a social annoyance and not much else but in this era of vaccine denialism, election fraud conspiracy theories, even body image issues from touched up photos, there’s little doubt in my mind that society is suffering and that the problem will likely get worse before it gets better. I'd go the exact opposite way and say that in this age of free information the self serving lies of the old cente…

[deleted]

Re: Leaded gas was a known poison the day it was invented (2016)

#290

Post by tempestn »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #272
dehrmann wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> though I have never had it tested. Unless neighbors had theirs tested, there's no reason to assume there are issues with your well's water quality or that fracking caused them. Testing it if you plan on using it again is reasonable, though.

What has higher probability of causing contaminated groundwater than nearby fracking?

It's not known that the groundwater is contaminated in this case.
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