71–80 of 237 posts
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You have to prove that the benefits is worth the potential harm. Vaccines are known to be harmful to very few persons, yet we vaccine because the benefits outweigh the very small potential of harm.
No, especially with vaccines in the US (and some other places) science doesn’t have to meet that burden because they are indemnified for product liability by the government by law.
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I'm a bit confused here. These are recognized as being harmful. It's written all over the msds for these. What is the real change that is going to occur? I remember dealing with these substances in tiny quantities in the lab, and they were treated as carefully as cholorosifonic super acids. A lot of care goes into their disposal or recycle. One problem is making methods that can detect waste streams at under ppt leve…
> A lot of care goes into their disposal or recycle. Are you aware of the usage of PFAS in textiles, food packaging, and waterproof-treated goods? I'm a little confused what you mean by care goes into their disposal. PFAS treatments on textiles for example are disposed of by pouring down a washing machine drain into municipal sewers and from there into natural waterways. Because of the "forever", small amounts add up…
Let's not get too relaxed here. There's gigantic masses of plastic all over the world that would like to say that anything mass produced and cumulative "WILL become 'not-small' amounts".
Good step, but companies will find untested alternatives. “9 out of 12,000”
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No we overcomplicate it with overly complex regulations. It’s pretty simple, don’t dump chemicals in water or on land period. Assuming chemicals are totally fine until proven otherwise is backwards as hell and clearly corrupt.
> It’s pretty simple, don’t dump chemicals in water or on land period. Everything is chemicals. You just described 2/3 of all industrial activity and proposed we should stop them. Are you willing to take the consequences which follow from that proposal? (And somehow forgot the 1/3 “dump chemicals in air”)
In this case it's about PFAS, a subgroup of organofluorine compounds. There's only 5 known organofluorine compounds produced by organisms.
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I'm a bit confused here. These are recognized as being harmful. It's written all over the msds for these. What is the real change that is going to occur? I remember dealing with these substances in tiny quantities in the lab, and they were treated as carefully as cholorosifonic super acids. A lot of care goes into their disposal or recycle. One problem is making methods that can detect waste streams at under ppt leve…
> A lot of care goes into their disposal or recycle. Are you aware of the usage of PFAS in textiles, food packaging, and waterproof-treated goods? I'm a little confused what you mean by care goes into their disposal. PFAS treatments on textiles for example are disposed of by pouring down a washing machine drain into municipal sewers and from there into natural waterways. Because of the "forever", small amounts add up…
The EPA appears toothless and ineffective.
And why do you say that?
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My understanding is that in a lot of countries, the perspective is backwards from what we have in the US. We have, "prove it's harmful." They have "prove it's safe". You can still progress technologically without being reckless.
There are a ton of contaminants in our drinking water that the EPA recommends you remove and we know they are harmful but they are not mandated to do so. Get yourself a water filter because they're not going to filter it for you.
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> Everything is chemicals. This is a thought terminating cliche and pedantically destroys the conversation.
What is the difference between lye (dangerous), sand (not dangerous unless it suffocates things or gets crushed and inhaled), water (can cause flooding or drowning, otherwise harmless), and sodium bicarbonate (quite basic, generally harmless), and hydrazine (mutagenic, highly toxic, highly flammable)? All of these have hazards in specific circumstances, and huge benefits in others. All are chemicals. All are well kno…
The MSDSes will elaborate on this and you probably know that.
This thread chain has gotten impressively disingenuous very fast. We aren't arguing the colloquial definition of chemicals which if we're not being pedantic, we know brings up ideas of substances damaging to other substances or life itself.
Which is fairly obviously the line that you're giving a good traditional "but where would we POSSIBLY STOP?!" gambit that comes out of paid lobbyist's mouths more often than hello or goodbye.
The line to be crossed is obviously at least a few blocks up the way from "what is the difference between water and hydrazine though".
And also, anything cumulative becomes "too hazardous" within years. But by then profits are made, and war chests are filled to keep the spice flowing.
The world got by for thousands of years sustainably without a lot of these "huge benefits" and I'm willing to take a hit or two within my lifetime to ensure there's still lifetimes at all down the road.
What are the benefits these chemicals have provided, and do the benefits outweigh the negative effects? Are these chemicals dangerous in the forms that they're found in the environment, e.g. there are unlikely to be many pools of acid. Are they chemically bonded to something that reduces bio-interactivity? I don't agree with the approach "you can't do anything new until you prove it's safe". I also am very skeptical…
They have a lot of properties that can be useful in materials - hydrophobicity, lipophobicity, chemical resistance, low friction, etc.
They are certainly used in some niches (like medical devices, protective clothing, advanced manufacturing) that people would agree are Important, but a significant percentage of production goes into, and a significant amount of contamination comes out of, stuff like stain-proofing couches and making food packaging grease resistant. I’m under the impression that a lot of environmental contamination likely also comes from their use in firefighting foams - a useful application to be sure, but there are some things it’s not a great idea to spray straight into the environment.
> Are they chemically bonded to something that reduces bio-interactivity?
A huge part of the story of PFAS is that they are quite resistant to (permanent) chemical bonding, which has often lead to them being thought of as “inert” in a sense that is conflated with safety. But this sense of inertness is a bit of a red herring when it comes to biology (plenty of things interact with receptors without covalently bonding) and meanwhile makes them highly persistent both within organisms and in the environment.
“PFAS” as a literal chemical category feels pretty broad. The ones best established to be harmful are fluorosurfactants like the whole list explicitly targeted here. But broadness is also kind of the point because there are tons of chemicals in use that are likely to have similar accumulative properties that have never really been studied for health effects, and which can’t really be assumed to be harmless if the others aren’t.
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No we overcomplicate it with overly complex regulations. It’s pretty simple, don’t dump chemicals in water or on land period. Assuming chemicals are totally fine until proven otherwise is backwards as hell and clearly corrupt.
Do you know what the word "chemical" means? We do need to be a bit more specific than that, or we're not gonna get anywhere. Also, once we've specified which chemicals shouldn't be dumped, I'd like to include the atmosphere in the list of places where one shouldn't dump them. Seems to be a very popular place to dump really harmful stuff, we should stop that.
This intentional nitpicking of the colloquial usage of the word chemicals is a favorite of both, disingenuous conversationalists who like to take a chance to feel correct rather than participate earnestly, and lobbyists.
At least one of them gets paid for it though.