How Dangerous Is Your Couch? • Hacker News Board

Re: How Dangerous Is Your Couch?

#91

Post by Retric » Sat, Sep 08, 2012, 10:30 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #77

rdl wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 re…

You can't backtrack a specific cancer to a specific source. Skin cancer and lung cancer have famous "causes" but there statistical in nature with some people getting skin cancer despite minimal exposure to sunlight. Expose a billion people to low doses of a well known carcinogen and you expect a statistical increase in cancers, but there only estimates and it's impossible to track down specific people affected.

Re: How Dangerous Is Your Couch?

#92

Post by learc83 » Sat, Sep 08, 2012, 10:33 PM UTC

_delirium wrote: post #50

nostromo wrote: post #31

Looking at mattresses without flame-retardent led me to this provider: http://www.whitelotus.net/green-cotton-rx/ Turns out you'll need a doctor's prescription to even order a plain cotton mattress. Yet another perfectly reasonable regulation from our friends in the California Legislature! :) My least-favorite CA regulation has to do with eye-glasses. I lost my only pair and went in to get a replacement on a Saturday…

Are there any states that don't have a requirement of a current prescription to purchase glasses? I've had the same issue in Texas [1], which usually considers itself small-government. [1] cf. http://www.tob.state.tx.us/tobrx.htm

I've ordered glasses from the internet here in Georgia maybe a dozen times without them requiring verification of prescription.

Contacts do require one though.

Don't know if the company is just skirting regulation or if it doesn't exist, however.

Re: How Dangerous Is Your Couch?

#93

Post by tptacek » Sat, Sep 08, 2012, 10:35 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #91

tptacek wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 re…

You can't backtrack a specific cancer to a specific source. Skin cancer and lung cancer have famous "causes" but there statistical in nature with some people getting skin cancer despite minimal exposure to sunlight. Expose a billion people to low doses of a well known carcinogen and you expect a statistical increase in cancers, but there only estimates and it's impossible to track down specific people affected.

Is there statistical evidence of any sort correlating an increase in the specific kinds of cancer attributed to chlorinated tris to the phase-in of flameproofing in upholstered furniture?

The chronic carcinogenicity data for chlorinated tris is specific.

Re: How Dangerous Is Your Couch?

#94

Post by hncommenter13 » Sat, Sep 08, 2012, 10:37 PM UTC

Tichy wrote: post #40

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article specifically mentioned this case. The chemicals they put in the foam would have absolutely no benefit if your apartment was burning because the neighbor's started. Furthermore, there is little evidence that the chemicals will prevent your sleeping smoker from burning the place down. Droithomme's comment[1] very much applies. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4493813

I think the argument is that if your neighbor's couch catches fire, there is a risk of the fire spreading to your apartment.

I've seen a number of fire videos as part of a training class. It is astonishing how fast a couch + room full of furnishings will burn: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ult6Biaf7oM. From ignition to flashover/fully-involved in 2-3 minutes. In a major urban area like SF, 5-10 minutes is a good response time for the first units on scene, not to mention the time to coordinate a fire attack, ventilate and flow water.

I don't know whether the claims in the article are well-supported or not (or what type of treatment the couch in the video had, as the videos are from the late 80s/early 90s), but I think most people don't realize just how dangerous a working fire in a single room full of ordinary furnishings can be.

Re: How Dangerous Is Your Couch?

#95

Post by pmorici » Sat, Sep 08, 2012, 10:38 PM UTC

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 think the thing that is reflexively offensive about this whole thing is that the government has taken a risk that is reasonably easy for a responsible adult to avoid (setting their couch on fire) and implemented a measure that is harmful and difficult or almost impossible to avoid. It's as if we are all made to pay for the morons who can't resist playing with matches in their couch.

Re: How Dangerous Is Your Couch?

#96

Post by sp332 » Sat, Sep 08, 2012, 10:40 PM UTC

tsotha wrote: post #70

lignuist wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Statistics don't count in medicine if you are the one who gets the disease.

They don't count if you die in a fire, either. The reality is with this kind of thing we're really off into rounding errors. To the extent you can affect your odds of getting cancer, the extent to which you do the things your mother told you to do (don't smoke, don't drink, eat your vegetables, and don't get too fat) swamps your cancer risk from environmental sources.

Just don't eat broccoli. Broccoli contains mutagens. http://www.biomedsearch.com/nih/Genotoxicity-studies-organic...

Re: How Dangerous Is Your Couch?

#97

Post by tptacek » Sat, Sep 08, 2012, 10:40 PM UTC

pmorici wrote: post #95

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 think the thing that is reflexively offensive about this whole thing is that the government has taken a risk that is reasonably easy for a responsible adult to avoid (setting their couch on fire) and implemented a measure that is harmful and difficult or almost impossible to avoid. It's as if we are all made to pay for the morons who can't resist playing with matches in their couch.

It is not particularly easy to avoid setting your couch on fire. The problem with flaming couches is not just those cases where the couch is the primary contributor to the fire; it's also the cases where couches rapidly accelerate the intensity of a smaller fire, like from an electrical malfunction.

Re: How Dangerous Is Your Couch?

#98

Post by dkarl » Sat, Sep 08, 2012, 10:43 PM UTC

001sky wrote: post #90

dkarl wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 peopl…

When it comes to people who aren't as well educated or who aren't members of the reality-based community, Please. This is america. We don't need to talk down to people like this. 200/84000 = 0.24%. EPA doesn't have a clue about 99.76% of the registered chemicals for sale? Experts? It doesn't take a rocket scientis or a member of the tea party to figure out something is odd-ball with that? It would seem more political…

I didn't mean to rag on conservatives, though I guess my wording made it sound that way. I just mean people who aren't susceptible to argument with numbers and facts, the kind of argument you would be comfortable making, the kind of argument scientists are good at making.

It would seem more politically feasible to say, here is some tax money. Lets test this stuff.

You're suggesting the most politically appealing pitch would be science and government spending (on something that doesn't create working-class jobs.) I'm not an expert on politics, but luckily we do have an expert opinion to compare that to. The million dollar industry lobbyists thought the most effective appeal would be a scare campaign in newspapers and a venal doctor talking about imaginary suffering babies. They won. I think I'll trust them.

Because it looks like the original CA regs. requiring these chemicals was also written to "protect" the public? who's protecting the people from the protectors?

Whenever we let science affect policy, policy is open to revision, just like science is. We got seat belts right, we got a lot of emissions and pollution laws right, but we're never going to get everything right. It will always be a process of revise, revise, revise as we learn more about the science.

Re: How Dangerous Is Your Couch?

#99

Post by Tichy » Sat, Sep 08, 2012, 10:45 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #84

Tichy wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So in summary, no content? See, that was easier to see from your TL;DR than from the long comment.

To ask for a "tl;dr", receive it, and then assail the author of the condensed summary for lacking details is an especially clever kind of troll.

I did not mean to assail? The original comment was lengthy and I did not understand what the overall message was (is the author of the article a fraud? Or not?). So I asked for a TL;DR which seems to be "maybe there is a problem or maybe there isn't", which for me condenses to zero content. How is that assailing?

Perhaps my tone came across as snarky because the person providing the TL;DR actually "assailed" me for asking for a TL;DR. Sorry about that.

Re: How Dangerous Is Your Couch?

#100

Post by pmorici » Sat, Sep 08, 2012, 10:56 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #97

pmorici wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the thing that is reflexively offensive about this whole thing is that the government has taken a risk that is reasonably easy for a responsible adult to avoid (setting their couch on fire) and implemented a measure that is harmful and difficult or almost impossible to avoid. It's as if we are all made to pay for the morons who can't resist playing with matches in their couch.

It is not particularly easy to avoid setting your couch on fire. The problem with flaming couches is not just those cases where the couch is the primary contributor to the fire; it's also the cases where couches rapidly accelerate the intensity of a smaller fire, like from an electrical malfunction.

The regulation says, "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." so if a fire has already started and it is bigger than a small flame then this regulation isn't meant to help with that. In fact if you look around you can find http://laurasrules.org/2012/04/15/sofa-saga-part-3-interview... people talking about studies that show that in a actual fire these chemicals only slow down the burn rate by a couple seconds.