How Dangerous Is Your Couch? • Hacker News Board

Re: How Dangerous Is Your Couch?

#71

Post by _delirium » Sat, Sep 08, 2012, 9:40 PM UTC

igrekel wrote: post #67

DanBC wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Fire is dangerous, and we know it kills a bunch of people. Fire retardants may be dangerous, they may harm a bunch of people, but we're not sure how many, nor how they are harmed. Research is sometimes conducted poorly, or good research is interpreted poorly by reporters. We need to balance risk and cost. People dying in fires is bad. People getting a bunch of diseases is also bad. We need to find out which i…

Having worked in the insurance industry, I can tell you there are less and less fires. The main cause are that there are less people who smoke and that old electrical wiring are replaced by the newer standards.

In urban areas, at the level of units or buildings, aren't improved regulations leading to better fire containment, and/or improved firefighting response and techniques, likely to be contributors as well? There are still apartment fires in Manhattan and Chicago, but they seem much more contained than in the past, with whole-building and especially multi-block conflagrations now quite rare.

Re: How Dangerous Is Your Couch?

#72

Post by 001sky » Sat, Sep 08, 2012, 9:45 PM UTC

_delirium wrote: post #61

srl wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The next sentence: That’s because industrial chemicals are presumed safe unless proved otherwise, under the 1976 federal Toxic Substances Control Act. In other words, the EPA isn't _allowed_ to investigate products unless evidence that they are unsafe is brought before it. Makers get the benefit of the doubt.

There's some more detail here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_Substances_Control_Act_of... The situation is somewhat better with chemicals introduced after 1976. Any chemical that was in use prior to 1976 is grandfathered in, due to worries from industry that passage of the Act could suddenly call into question many chemicals then in use. Therefore anything that was already in use at the time is presumed safe and…

Some of the older ones, like the PBDEs, have been the subject of thousands of studies and have since been taken off the market (although many of us still have them in our furniture).

--From the NYT article. There is alot of failure avoidance, it seems.

Edit: And also from the Wiki. you site:

The report further acknowledges that trade secrets are preventing effective testing. Sometimes the EPA does not even know what chemical the TSCA application refers to, and cannot report any problems because "health and safety data are of limited value if the chemical the data pertain to is unknown."[6]

This is going on with Fracking chemicals, at the moment.

Re: How Dangerous Is Your Couch?

#73

Post by dkarl » Sat, Sep 08, 2012, 9:47 PM UTC

newbie12 wrote: post #44

srl wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The next sentence: That’s because industrial chemicals are presumed safe unless proved otherwise, under the 1976 federal Toxic Substances Control Act. In other words, the EPA isn't _allowed_ to investigate products unless evidence that they are unsafe is brought before it. Makers get the benefit of the doubt.

The environmental movement in America is worthless. They spent all of their time on lifestyle issues like battery cars, recycling, and global warming (issues that also line the pockets of their large donors) when there are real, profound issues like this. Even if the EPA can't act, how come only one crazy lady is working on building the case?

I wouldn't blame the movement itself. There's always a buzz around lifestyle issues because there's continual evolution. Every day millions of individuals make millions of choices, so every day the culture is changing in little ways. There's a certain portion of the population that is an easy target for the kind of education and advocacy that scientists are good at. Politics is a lot harder. It's harder to make people care, and the target audience is much more diverse. When it comes to people who aren't as well educated or who aren't members of the reality-based community, you need an entirely different message. You have to go toe-to-toe with industries that pay millions of dollars to lobbyists and trot out doctors who say you're trying to kill kids. And even if you try hard and do a good job, it's still boring stuff that's a lot harder to turn into a story than lifestyle issues. Would this article exist without a glamorous protagonist and the harm-to-children angle?

Re: How Dangerous Is Your Couch?

#74

Post by ericdykstra » Sat, Sep 08, 2012, 9:49 PM UTC

Another example of government creating arbitrary policies that just waste time and money, and probably kill us.

Since 1975, an obscure California agency called the Bureau of Home Furnishings and Thermal Insulation has mandated that the foam inside upholstered furniture be able to withstand exposure to a small flame, like a candle or cigarette lighter, for 12 seconds without igniting.

Who decided on 12 seconds? Why the inside of furniture rather than the outside? Who does this benefit? Why is there even a Bureau of Home Furnishings and Thermal Insulation? Why do government agencies like the EPA exist when they can't say anything about the safety of chemicals that are in couches in probably in upwards of 95% of homes in America?

It wouldn't surprise me if a flame retardant manufacturer was behind the law to begin with, which is even more disgusting.

Re: How Dangerous Is Your Couch?

#75

Post by tptacek » Sat, Sep 08, 2012, 9:53 PM UTC

Chemtura Firemaster 550 is "just starting to be analyzed"? It was introduced in '05-'06, and here's its 2006 MSDS:

http://www.busbrp.org/cireeh/uploads/Main/FM550msds.pdf

Re: How Dangerous Is Your Couch?

#76

Post by _delirium » Sat, Sep 08, 2012, 9:58 PM UTC

001sky wrote: post #72

_delirium wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's some more detail here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_Substances_Control_Act_of... The situation is somewhat better with chemicals introduced after 1976. Any chemical that was in use prior to 1976 is grandfathered in, due to worries from industry that passage of the Act could suddenly call into question many chemicals then in use. Therefore anything that was already in use at the time is presumed safe and…

Some of the older ones, like the PBDEs, have been the subject of thousands of studies and have since been taken off the market (although many of us still have them in our furniture). --From the NYT article. There is alot of failure avoidance, it seems. Edit: And also from the Wiki. you site: The report further acknowledges that trade secrets are preventing effective testing. Sometimes the EPA does not even know what…

The latter part is a major thing that really should be fixed, I agree. In many of these cases, it seems fairly clear that the invocation of trade secrets is pretextual (the goal is not actually to protect a valuable secret from competitors), and the real motive is preventing third-party investigations into chemical safety.

Re: How Dangerous Is Your Couch?

#77

Post by tptacek » Sat, Sep 08, 2012, 9:59 PM UTC

rdl wrote: post #62

tokenadult wrote: post #49

Another top-level comment wrote: between this and the article about brain parasites in california, HN is scaring the crap out of me And I guess that's why my all-time favorite external link to share here on Hacker News is "Warning Signs in Experimental Design and Interpretation" http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html by Peter Norvig, Google's director of research. To resolve the issue of the safety trade-offs of no…

I assume flame retardants are mainly only needed for couches of smokers (I've never randomly put a flame onto my couch for fun to see if it would burn), so even if fire retardants save 100 people from fires they caused through voluntary negligence while subjecting 1 additional person to cancer or other illness due to chemicals, I'm not sure if it's a fair trade. Saving firefighters might be a reasonable argument, tho…

Do we know that anyone has contracted cancer as a result of flame retardants used in furniture? I re-read the article looking for clear evidence, and what I saw on close read was weasel-wording: when direct health effects are being talked about, the subject of the sentence becomes "flame retardants" rather than a specific chemical; when lax investigations become a topic, it's the EPA's laxity (the EPA isn't solely responsible for evaluating chemicals).

The closest the author comes to accusing a specific flame retarded is chlorinated trisphosphates. You can go to the EPA and look up the safety record of these chemicals; long story short, you can give rats reproductive and kidney cancer if you feed them chlorinated tris every day for 2 years.

Re: How Dangerous Is Your Couch?

#78

Post by greenyoda » Sat, Sep 08, 2012, 9:59 PM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #66

lignuist wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of the ban on regular light bulbs in the EU. People are basically forced now to install so called energy saving lamps, which contain and emit highly toxic mercury and phenol. Most people even don't know about the risks and would let their children sleep in a room with a broken lamp.

> emit highly toxic mercury Do you have a source for energy efficient CFLs "emitting mercury"?

They certainly emit mercury when they're broken, and the instructions for cleaning up broken CFLs call for several hours of ventilation, which implies that the mercury vapor escapes into the atmosphere. (See, for example, the cleanup instructions at the bottom of this page: http://www.epa.state.il.us/mercury/compact-fluorescent.html)

I'd guess that a large percentage of people who buy CFLs are totally unaware of how to deal with these hazards (or are even unaware that the bulbs contain poisonous material).

Also, the rise in the use of CFLs means that more people will be exposed to mercury while mining it and while assembling the lamps (probably in places like China, where occupational health laws are fairly lax).

Re: How Dangerous Is Your Couch?

#79

Post by dfc » Sat, Sep 08, 2012, 10:01 PM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #66

lignuist wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of the ban on regular light bulbs in the EU. People are basically forced now to install so called energy saving lamps, which contain and emit highly toxic mercury and phenol. Most people even don't know about the risks and would let their children sleep in a room with a broken lamp.

> emit highly toxic mercury Do you have a source for energy efficient CFLs "emitting mercury"?

DanBC, take a look at the packaging for any CFL. They describe in great detail the procedure for cleaning up a broken bulb.

Re: How Dangerous Is Your Couch?

#80

Post by DanBC » Sat, Sep 08, 2012, 10:07 PM UTC

huhtenberg wrote: post #17

Reminds me of the situation around one of theories that tries to explain SIDS - Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. If you had a kid, you know what it is - a newborn dying in his sleep for no apparent reason. You put a healthy baby to sleep in his bed only to find him dead in the morning. Fun stuff. There are no exact explanation for the syndrome, but there are preventive measures (such as always let newborn fall asleep on…

Unfortunately sometimes smart people believe dumb things, and Dr. Sprott is one of these people.

When you read the reasons why his "research" has been ignored you hear things like "vested interest", "cover up", and "politics".

Dr. T.J Sprott has a book, and several products for sale.

His "statistic" is bogus; the NZ authorities stopped recommending mattress wrapping in the 90s; he has no idea if babies slept or died on wrapped mattresses; yet he claims it as fact.

His paper was awful. That's why people didn't listen to him - he has weird ideas, he can't write them up, other research has tested his ideas and found them wanting.

He claims that decreases in SIDS are because of his mattress wrapping programme. He cannot explain why SIDS is dropping in countries that don't practice mattress wrapping. He cannot explain why SIDS was dropping in NZ before antimoney was addedd to mattresses.

Don't forget that he's not a medical doctor. He is a chemist.

People like Sprott are evil. They come up with some plausible sounding theory, and then they try to publish. No scientific journal wants it, so he self publishes, and publicizes. This creates fear and uncertainty in parents. And so children are at greater risk of death, because parents don't follow current best practice (which is still not perfect but at least is evidence based) and decide to try the advice of a wingnut.