FDA rejects MDMA and allows phthalates- what an agency :(
At what point do we just come and say that the FDA is corrupt.
The study of MDMA showed benefits for PTSD: https://icer.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/PTSD_Revised-Rep...
FDA denies petition against use of phthalates in food packaging
181–190 of 197 posts
Re: FDA denies petition against use of phthalates in food packaging
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think natural==safe is a terrible heuristic for the exact reason you said. Healthy enough to procreate is a low bar, and many natural things provide a benefit in terms of procreation but detrimental to health. Almost everything in nature is a trade-off between how much it'll harm you and how much it'll help you procreate. This reminds me of how whales get the Bends from diving despite 50 million years of evolution.…
> many natural things provide a benefit in terms of procreation but detrimental to health Maybe... but many more either kill you or they don't. Lets take your whales-getting-the-bends example. That gives us a dimension: pressure. Suppose you're whale. - Let x be a randomly chosen pressure - Let y be a pressure that your parents lived through You have to spend a few minutes at x or y, which pressure do you chose? y wo…
Sure, there is a precautionary principle. Change nothing and you won't end up worse than before.
It depends on how risky you think the baseline factors are, and how risky you think the average new factor is. It also depends on how likely catastrophic risks are.
We know people don't drop dead from most things, so risk is generally at the fringe. Long lead times and low impact.
You then have to consider how many safe products you are missing out on to avoid the bad ones.
I think the the current paradigm is pretty reasonable. Screen for major known risks and then monitor and study
I think that breaks down when you compare Neolithic or pre-industrial man to now.
Re: FDA denies petition against use of phthalates in food packaging
#183Feels like this is going to become one of those things we look back on in retrospect and regret. We should be full steam ahead on identifying what effects microplastics & phthalates more broadly are having on our health & adjust accordingly. Early indications seem... not great.
> Feels like this is going to become one of those things we look back on in retrospect and regret.
The entire world would be paralyzed with fear if it were afraid to do anything that it might regret in the future.
Re: FDA denies petition against use of phthalates in food packaging
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your second paragraph is a very good argument against requiring that everything used in food packaging be shown to be safe before it can be used. Can we reasonably run such a study to prove that wax paper is safe? What about plain paper? Do we just require all food producers to use no packaging at all until these controlled longitudinal studies are completed? If we allow them to use packaging, how do we define in a p…
> Can we reasonably run such a study to prove that wax paper is safe? We don't need to. We have a "Generally Recognized as Safe" standard that is well known and widely applied. > widely used in some significant (think 5%) portion of the industry then we allow it How about we just label things so consumers know whether or not the packaging contains phthalates? That way the market can decide if they want it in their pa…
I'm not convinced labeling regulations work. Producers don't label accurately, and consumers aren't realistically in a position to make the choice being described. I live in California, where we have Prop 65 warnings on everything. The motivation there was quite similar -- people should be aware if a product or space is exposing them to substances which can cause serious harm. But I have never met a single person who refuses to enter a space with a Prop 65 warning because you basically couldn't function in society that way. When you buy a product with a Prop 65 warning, it's generally not actually feasible to know which chemical(s) (if any) prompted the warning. (Some companies may put the warning on all of their products even if only some of them actually contain such a substance.) Further, labeling for the nominal presence of some substance is not enough to make decisions -- you need to know what your actual exposure is likely to be. The system ends up being pretty useless.
Re: FDA denies petition against use of phthalates in food packaging
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh shit a few hundred molecules worth! We are surely doomed.
Why trivialize this stuff? Wondering where this impulse comes from
Because if just touching fruit is going to hurt us, surely handling it is far worse? Why aren't we seeing obvious health problems from the plant workers etc? If it was that toxic, we'd know.
Re: FDA denies petition against use of phthalates in food packaging
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your second paragraph is a very good argument against requiring that everything used in food packaging be shown to be safe before it can be used. Can we reasonably run such a study to prove that wax paper is safe? What about plain paper? Do we just require all food producers to use no packaging at all until these controlled longitudinal studies are completed? If we allow them to use packaging, how do we define in a p…
> Can we reasonably run such a study to prove that wax paper is safe? We don't need to. We have a "Generally Recognized as Safe" standard that is well known and widely applied. > widely used in some significant (think 5%) portion of the industry then we allow it How about we just label things so consumers know whether or not the packaging contains phthalates? That way the market can decide if they want it in their pa…
In addition to what others have said, note that companies already voluntarily label their products as "phthalate free", so the market is already positioned to decide.
In the absence of concrete evidence of harm from phthalates I'm not convinced mandating yet another label would do more good than harm—it would potentially just further reduce the signal that labels provide by watering it down with yet another mandatory compliance label.
Re: FDA denies petition against use of phthalates in food packaging
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can have VOC testing done to determine if yours are off-gassing. That's the real test, not the FDA. Generally speaking Luxury Vinyl Planks are the way to go if you don't want to risk off-gassing.
Why would LVP be any different?
They aren't made of PVC so they don't contain phthalates
Re: FDA denies petition against use of phthalates in food packaging
#188I was surprised to learn that some of the highest concentrations of phthalates can be found in alcoholic beverages in glass bottles (Table 3: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7460375/ ) This occurs due to the plastics used in producing the alcoholic beverages combined with ethanol (alcohol) acting as a solvent to liberate the phthalates I was equally surprised to learn that the food industry was already m…
> was surprised to learn that some of the highest concentrations of phthalates can be found in alcoholic beverages in glass bottles Well, this fun fact ruined my day. Alcohol is itself an endocrine disruptor already. I just want to be able to poison myself with wine without being poisoned from the epoxies used in storage tanks or the hoses during bottling! Anyone got a list of "clean" wineries that aren't selling con…
According to the paper, the ratio in glass bottled wines compared to soda, fruit juices, tea is small, so at least that’s something.
Re: FDA denies petition against use of phthalates in food packaging
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
For me, the standard is: if the material was used pre-industrial age, it's far more likely to be "safe". Any person could overintellectualize this point and find exceptions. But it's just common sense.
Don't try to pre-dodge by accusing anyone who replies and disagrees with you of overintellectualizing lol As a proxy for "safety", look at average life expectancy. Even excluding infant mortality, life expectancy has increased by like 20-25% since the year 1900 (for people who reached age 20). We're doing something right in the modern age, and suggesting that we revert to how things were in the 1800s is not common se…
Something made in a factory is less likely to be good for you than something made by a tree and stone tools.
The industrial age has brought many good things and many bad things. To acknowledge the bad things is not to discredit the good things. It's quite simple.
Higher life expectancy is a good thing. Infertility, cancer, and obesity are bad things.
More of each was brought by the industrial age. I'm not saying the industrial age as a whole was bad.
Again, all of this is just overintellecualizing it.
Re: FDA denies petition against use of phthalates in food packaging
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’d worry less about silicates than anything. We evolved along sandy coastlines not polyurethane or pvc.
crystalline silica is an iarc group 1 carcinogen, the highest-concern category, and occupational illnesses due to crystalline silica exposure have been well known for thousands of years
I assume you don’t cut tile with a tile saw very often without a respirator so its a non issue.