3M knew its chemicals were harmful decades ago, but didn't tell the public • Hacker News Board

Re: 3M knew its chemicals were harmful decades ago, but didn't tell the public

#181

Post by jdietrich » Sun, Dec 17, 2023, 10:42 PM UTC

hh3k0 wrote: post #143

userbinator wrote: post #80

I'm going to be the controversial one here and point out that despite saying they're "harmful", they've been everywhere for all these decades that a lot of other measures of quality of life have been increasing? From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfluorooctanoic_acid#Global_... there is this interesting quote: Most industrialized nations have average PFOA blood serum levels ranging from 2 to 8 parts per billion;[57…

> despite saying they're "harmful", they've been everywhere for all these decades that a lot of other measures of quality of life have been increasing? Might be unrelated (or not), but cancer rates have been exploding the last decades. Example via Google-Fu: > Cancer cases in under-50s worldwide up nearly 80% in three decades, study finds https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/sep/05/cancer-cases...

>cancer rates have been exploding the last decades

For reasons that are really quite well-understood. PFASs are not known to be significantly carcinogenic, particularly not at the miniscule levels most people are exposed to. We willingly fill ourselves with things that are definitely very carcinogenic - processed meat, alcohol, tobacco smoke, diesel fumes, etc etc ad nauseum.

Exposure to some of these carcinogens has been static or declining in some western countries, which has led to static or declining age-adjusted cancer incidence rates. They have vastly increased in the middle-income countries that are home to most of the world's population. The life of the average Chinese or Indian person has been transformed beyond all recognition in recent decades (for better and for worse) by urbanisation and industrialisation.

There isn't some unseen and unrecognised carcinogen that is sweeping the world and wreaking havoc; the global poor are just getting rich enough to develop the kind of lifestyle-related cancers that we're accustomed to in the west, while also getting rich enough to be diagnosed rather than just getting sick and dying.

Look at the source cited by that article - the growth in cancer rates is completely dominated by rapidly-growing economies in the global south.

https://bmjoncology.bmj.com/content/2/1/e000049

Re: 3M knew its chemicals were harmful decades ago, but didn't tell the public

#182

Post by hcurtiss » Sun, Dec 17, 2023, 10:50 PM UTC

ta988 wrote: post #177

hcurtiss wrote: post #108

Purdy was improperly conflating their ability to detect the substance with "harm," and the environmental propagandists have been running with it for a long time. What "harm" precisely did he identify? The article doesn't say. Maybe a carcinogen? Maybe not? There's been a concerted effort to make PFOS/PFAS an environmental super-villain, but it's hard to substantiate when we volitionally ingest many flourinated pharma…

The fact that there is a specific atom in a product doesn't have anything to do with its dangers. Chlorine gas or Phosgene are deadly, your stomach is full of HCl. VX has phosphorus yet your body is full of it and that's part of the basis of how it handles energy and genes. There are perfectly safe compounds that contain F. The problem here is that we have report over report on the effects of those molecules, some co…

Your definition of PFAS is not a universal definition, nor is it any indication of toxicity. To alleviate your own ignorance, you might read the article I linked, and the paper behind it (linked in the article).

Re: 3M knew its chemicals were harmful decades ago, but didn't tell the public

#183

Post by Teever » Sun, Dec 17, 2023, 10:52 PM UTC

jmaygarden wrote: post #165

Teever wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about the situation with 3M now? We know that they kept this is a secret, so shareholders should either sell or be criminally liable.

That’s a very good point. At the least, the stock price should go to zero. I guess your point is that they are artificially keeping the company out of bankruptcy/receivership.

No the argument I'm making is that the shareholders are funding a criminal enterprise and therefore should face RICO charges.

Re: 3M knew its chemicals were harmful decades ago, but didn't tell the public

#184

Post by ThomPete » Sun, Dec 17, 2023, 10:53 PM UTC

peoplefromibiza wrote: post #153

ThomPete wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you live in a capitalist society not some socialist nightmare. Giving it to the government would be much much much worse.

except we live in a capitalistic nightmare, the solution proposed is textbook free market and socialism would have not created this nightmare to begin with. people on HN regularly confuse state capitalism with socialism and I can't wrap my head around on why. the two systems couldn't be more different and actually the USSR was not socialist, Stalin was not socialist, that's the biggest fabrication in modern human his…

I would suggest you read up on the history of both communism and socialism and their relationship with pollution and their environment.

In a capitalist systems at least there are incentives to get businesses to create better systems over time, that doesn't exist in any other system.

Re: 3M knew its chemicals were harmful decades ago, but didn't tell the public

#185

Post by jdietrich » Sun, Dec 17, 2023, 10:57 PM UTC

ta988 wrote: post #177

hcurtiss wrote: post #108

Purdy was improperly conflating their ability to detect the substance with "harm," and the environmental propagandists have been running with it for a long time. What "harm" precisely did he identify? The article doesn't say. Maybe a carcinogen? Maybe not? There's been a concerted effort to make PFOS/PFAS an environmental super-villain, but it's hard to substantiate when we volitionally ingest many flourinated pharma…

The fact that there is a specific atom in a product doesn't have anything to do with its dangers. Chlorine gas or Phosgene are deadly, your stomach is full of HCl. VX has phosphorus yet your body is full of it and that's part of the basis of how it handles energy and genes. There are perfectly safe compounds that contain F. The problem here is that we have report over report on the effects of those molecules, some co…

>The problem here is that we have report over report on the effects of those molecules, some coming from the companies making them.

And nearly all of those reports have little or no actual evidence of harm. Lots of people are making a lot of noise about the potential harms of PFASs, but most of it is just vague scaremongering with only the most scant basis in science.

The issue raised by the parent comment is highly pertinent. He isn't the one categorising organofluorine drugs as PFASs - it's the definitions proposed by researchers and regulators that are. Some reports about PFAS are based on a narrow definition, but many others lump together a vast and diverse range of substances that happen to have a C-F bond somewhere. It's very difficult to have an informed debate about something when there is in fact no agreed definition of what we're talking about.

Re: 3M knew its chemicals were harmful decades ago, but didn't tell the public

#186

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Dec 17, 2023, 10:57 PM UTC

hcurtiss wrote: post #182

ta988 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that there is a specific atom in a product doesn't have anything to do with its dangers. Chlorine gas or Phosgene are deadly, your stomach is full of HCl. VX has phosphorus yet your body is full of it and that's part of the basis of how it handles energy and genes. There are perfectly safe compounds that contain F. The problem here is that we have report over report on the effects of those molecules, some co…

Your definition of PFAS is not a universal definition, nor is it any indication of toxicity. To alleviate your own ignorance, you might read the article I linked, and the paper behind it (linked in the article).

[deleted]

Re: 3M knew its chemicals were harmful decades ago, but didn't tell the public

#187

Post by cassepipe » Sun, Dec 17, 2023, 11:01 PM UTC

KyleBerezin wrote: post #88

thedragonline wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spent half a decade working with climate data from institutions around the world. There are dragons in those datasets and it is really frustrating to watch denialism at large and have to deal with it personally.

I wish more people were aware of how damaging bad science is, even when it is well intentioned. Environmental studies are often littered with double counting and creative data framing. One faked study does more to convince people global warming is over blown than 100 rigorous studies showing that it isn't.

The reason people think climate change is overblown is because it challenges them to think about changing their way of life ie directly goes against their interests, not because some dataset has been poorly interpreted in a study they haven't read.

(Also because fossil fuel people kept financing fake science for decades and are actively participating in culture wars around it)

Re: 3M knew its chemicals were harmful decades ago, but didn't tell the public

#188

Post by jdietrich » Sun, Dec 17, 2023, 11:04 PM UTC

ekianjo wrote: post #144

nier wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, the death penalty contains traces of mercy and life-long incarceration does not. You take away someone’s freedom for the rest of their life instead of putting them out of their misery.

> life-long incarceration does not There is no such thing as life long incarceration. They always get out early

Maybe not in your jurisdiction...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_imprisonment_in_England_a...

Re: 3M knew its chemicals were harmful decades ago, but didn't tell the public

#189

Post by TeMPOraL » Sun, Dec 17, 2023, 11:05 PM UTC

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #180

TeMPOraL wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's ironic. Elsewhere today[0], I wrote about the problems where the correct take kind of ruins the mood of the argument, which is why the discourse keeps spinning in circles. With you spelling out the missing point, I realized this has happened to me here: of course this is a hard, systemic issue. But talking about death penalty let me conveniently forget about it for a moment, and feel like there's a simple soluti…

That was you? I wouldn't have made the observation had I not read that comment! Maybe we should make a list of topics where people frequently miss the point in this way? Like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions though this is probably not in scope for Wikipedia.

I'm up for it, though off the top of my head, I'm not sure how to make it the right size - short enough to be useful, but longer than "1) learn about feedback loops, 2) think in dynamic systems, not static ones, 3) meditate on “Meditations on Moloch”".

A different list I believe I could use is one that's listing some working mitigations to tough problems. Like, checklists are effective at this-and-this in medicine[link set 1], and this-and-that in aviation [link set 2]. "Two-in-cockpit" policies are effective at helping in this-and-that in aviation, to such-and-such degree [link set 3], etc. The motivation here is that it seems that some industries figured out ways to reduce the severity of various tough problems, and there may be an opportunity for cross-pollination, or staging those techniques into an even better mitigation.

RE the Moloch link, I'm not in the right mood to respond to the reply under that comment, nor do I have energy for this right now. I mostly disagree, but I note one point - it's true, at least for me, that realizing a problem is one of coordination at scale (and therefore likely systemic) makes me feel despair. The realization itself is a mood killer - I find myself recoiling from it, and thinking along the lines of "please let it not be a Moloch thing, please let it be something solvable, something that can be approached directly". I would love to know of a way to feel encouraged, instead of instantly demotivated, by this kind of problems.

EDIT:

Another one to your list of common point-misses: 4) what's the base rate, and 5) what's the effect size?

Prompted by 'userbinator remembering that one, and asking the important question. Paraphrasing, "if those chemicals are so very bad for us, and have been everywhere for decades, then where are the ill effects?".

It's like with dietetics and cancer scares. Consuming/not consuming red meat/coffee/artificial sweetener/whatever can give you cancer! How much of an increase? 10%? Over what base rate? 0.00001? In that case, it's affecting your lifespan less than worrying about it is.

Re: 3M knew its chemicals were harmful decades ago, but didn't tell the public

#190

Post by wahnfrieden » Sun, Dec 17, 2023, 11:05 PM UTC

gosub100 wrote: post #174

wahnfrieden wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would they take a stand against their own interests?

because their interests are, ostensibly, with their constituents.

sounds like idealism more than a material analysis