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The United States of Toxins

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Re: The United States of Toxins

#11

Post by mschuster91 »

rayiner wrote: post #10
mschuster91 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Millions of tonnes of any waste released into the environment, no matter how "harmless", are too much. Humanity needs to tackle its waste problem, and that soon, or we are going to drown our kids in trash. Or, given that nitrates (which aren't that toxic per se) are the 3rd position in weight are perfect food for algae, we're drowning them in algae and without fish. Not to mention that much of the stuff that gets rel…

This is a terrible idea. People have repeatedly shown they are willing to give up very little to address environmental problems. That makes it even more important that when we use limited social capital to address a problem, it's the most important problem that can be addressed.

> when we use limited social capital to address a problem

Let an actual free and fair market solve it. When externalities have to be included in pricings (be it insurance premiums for superfund cleanup, earmarked money in trusts for cleanup, or simply preventing emissions in the first place) instead of having them shouldered by society, the market will by itself weed out companies doing excessive environmental damage.

Re: The United States of Toxins

#12

Post by crx087 »

mrob wrote: post #2

Pounds weight is a terrible way to measure toxins. This report is basically meaningless, because it lumps together toxins with vastly different risks. Eg. sodium carbonate is included, which is just common washing soda. I wouldn't eat it but the risk is easily manageable. Compare with, eg. dimethylmercury, which is scary even at parts per billion concentration. An actually useful measurement would take into account b…

If someone could make a version of this report that weighted toxicants for TD50 per km², it would be interesting to see the data plotted against epidemiology rates in the same areas.

Re: The United States of Toxins

#13

Post by lend000 »

mrob wrote: post #2

Pounds weight is a terrible way to measure toxins. This report is basically meaningless, because it lumps together toxins with vastly different risks. Eg. sodium carbonate is included, which is just common washing soda. I wouldn't eat it but the risk is easily manageable. Compare with, eg. dimethylmercury, which is scary even at parts per billion concentration. An actually useful measurement would take into account b…

"Fatal units" might be more useful.

Re: The United States of Toxins

#14

Post by yequalsx »

rayiner wrote: post #10
mschuster91 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Millions of tonnes of any waste released into the environment, no matter how "harmless", are too much. Humanity needs to tackle its waste problem, and that soon, or we are going to drown our kids in trash. Or, given that nitrates (which aren't that toxic per se) are the 3rd position in weight are perfect food for algae, we're drowning them in algae and without fish. Not to mention that much of the stuff that gets rel…

This is a terrible idea. People have repeatedly shown they are willing to give up very little to address environmental problems. That makes it even more important that when we use limited social capital to address a problem, it's the most important problem that can be addressed.

I see the logic in what you are saying but I wonder if it would just lead to a situation where every problem just becomes, "not severe enough to warrant attention". I've sort of seen this with opposition to environmental regulations being opposed on the grounds that it "costs too much money".

Re: The United States of Toxins

#15

Post by kbutler »

mschuster91 wrote: post #7
mrob wrote: post #2

Pounds weight is a terrible way to measure toxins. This report is basically meaningless, because it lumps together toxins with vastly different risks. Eg. sodium carbonate is included, which is just common washing soda. I wouldn't eat it but the risk is easily manageable. Compare with, eg. dimethylmercury, which is scary even at parts per billion concentration. An actually useful measurement would take into account b…

> Pounds weight is a terrible way to measure toxins. But it is one thing: undeniably objective. The alternative would include a "rating" system which the industry can use to say "yeah we emit x hundred tons per year of chemical y but it is next to harmless, better go after company z and their waste"... leading to inevitable chains of lawsuits dragged over years. For what its worth for many industrial processes there…

It's worse than meaningless because it distracts from more damaging issues because "Wow! Heavy!"

If I have 10kg of mercury and I dump it in a river, that measures 10kg of toxic waste.

But if I have pile of 10 million kg of rock that contains 1kg of mercury, it's reported as a million times worse for 1 tenth the toxin.

Re: The United States of Toxins

#16

Post by giardini »

This is misleading. Huge amounts of nitrates are injected into the Midwest's soil, so much so that children cannot drink the groundwater and must be given bottled water. Yet the chart shows Nebraska and Kansas as having low levels of toxins released into the environment.

Many other toxins must have been omitted from this study.

Re: The United States of Toxins

#18

Post by JonasJSchreiber »

They listed cities by square mile, why don't they do the same for states. It's a glaring omission. When we hear that Alaska has released the most toxins of any state and Rhode Island has released the least, it's reasonable to conclude that's because of the area of the two states.

Re: The United States of Toxins

#19

Post by scotty79 »

> Three of the top 5 cities -- Humboldt, Lander, and Eureka -- are in Nevada. All are known to contain multiple, active gold mines that collectively release hundreds of millions of pounds of toxins.

Here's interesting tidbit for arguing with people who say bitcoin is killing the planet.

Re: The United States of Toxins

#20

Post by colordrops »

evanpw wrote: post #8
mschuster91 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pounds weight is a terrible way to measure toxins. But it is one thing: undeniably objective. The alternative would include a "rating" system which the industry can use to say "yeah we emit x hundred tons per year of chemical y but it is next to harmless, better go after company z and their waste"... leading to inevitable chains of lawsuits dragged over years. For what its worth for many industrial processes there…

This is the same as measuring developer productivity by counting lines of code: perfectly objective, but worse than useless.

But if you are implying that productivity is analoguous to toxicity, then in this case no statement was made on toxicity. It was left out, so it's like just counting lines of code without associating it with productivity. So maybe it's less useful on the surface, but it's also more accurate raw data that others could remix into their own solutions and conclusions.
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