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3M to end 'forever chemicals' output

reuters.com

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Re: 3M to end 'forever chemicals' output

#281

Post by iamacyborg »

Reason077 wrote: post #204
iamacyborg wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still think about how good Vancouver tap water is compared to the stuff we get in London.

London tap water varies a lot in different parts of London. When I used to live in North-West London it was very hard (ie: full of minerals) so you'd constantly be cleaning the limescale gunk out of your shower, off your taps, etc. And I also remember it smelling noticeably "chlorinated" at times. Now I live in East London (E14) and it seems much softer - we get a bit of limescale but nothing like it was at my old pl…

Yeah I’ve never thought London water was bad, but Vancouver water tasted amazing.

Re: 3M to end 'forever chemicals' output

#282

Post by starkd »

Corp.'s make good money by engineering replacements. For established profits, revenue increases are only marginal improvements. If they can get governments to go a long with a mandate to replace something with an alternative, the profit increases are much greater. It's like a substitute for coming up with a new product. Not saying it's not beneficial, but I've seen this corporate grift too many times. They did this in the late 1980s with the need to replace CFC's with HCFC's to protect the hole in the ozone layer. Then they discovered HCFC emitted thousands of times more carbon. The cycle just keeps repeating. Again, I'm not saying these aren't necessary, but there's little in the way of cost/benefit analysis. Harmful effects are in some sense inevitable, but they should be weighed relative to the benefits added.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refrigerant#Phasing_out_of_CFC...

Re: 3M to end 'forever chemicals' output

#283

Post by olau »

cj wrote: post #252
elevaet wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's in the range of 10x the CO2 an average human will produce in their lifetime. If you could find a way to get 20 people to cut their emissions in half, or 200 people to reduce it by 5%, or 1000 people by 1%, you could balance out your CO2 ledger :) Or, if you still work in the industry and can find a way to make the shipping routes more efficient, or prevent future mistakes like that, you could make it into the…

(Controversial comment warning) one way to save more than your lifetime’s worth of CO2 is to not have children. By not having children, you’re not just saving the CO2 output of the child itself, but the entire lineage that could have resulted from that single child. Obviously this advice is not good advice for anyone who wants to have children :)

It's also not great advice for humanity. Better to have a CO2 high future than no future at all.

Re: 3M to end 'forever chemicals' output

#284

Post by amluto »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #189
smilekzs wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, there's always a metallic residual taste in my water whenever I use a stainless steel bottle. Got tired and returned to using normal mugs.

Stainless steel starts with a metallic taste, but after first week of use it is usually gone. Also there is titanium and aluminium. Or just get a reusable plastic one, perfect can be an enemy of good. Individual use of plastic is not relevant, as long as it goes to landfil and not ends up in the ocean througg recycling fraud. In UK most plastic ends up sent to poland, where it's burnt or sent onwards to Turkey where…

I once did a fair amount of experimentation and found titanium to impart a much stronger metallic taste than stainless steel.

Aluminum is not an amazing food contact surface — it’s quite reactive. I would not use an uncoated aluminum bottle for anything other than plain water.

Re: 3M to end 'forever chemicals' output

#285

Post by TrickyRick »

woodruffw wrote: post #273
cj wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Controversial comment warning) one way to save more than your lifetime’s worth of CO2 is to not have children. By not having children, you’re not just saving the CO2 output of the child itself, but the entire lineage that could have resulted from that single child. Obviously this advice is not good advice for anyone who wants to have children :)

I don’t necessarily disagree with you per se, but I do think these “EV-lite” type analyses are too broad: environmentally conscious people may be more likely to have children who are environmentally conscious, work on climate engineering, &c. That’s not to say that we should encourage them specifically to have children either; just that children represent potential in a way that the number of bunker-fuel cargo ships…

Even the most environmentally conscious person in an industrialized nation will emit massive amounts of CO2 in their lifetime, provided of course that nobody invents a "quick fix" for CO2 emissions in their lifetime. Of course in theory the child could be that person to invent that quick fix, but the expected value is still that the child will contribute to a lot of CO2 emissions.

Re: 3M to end 'forever chemicals' output

#286

Post by hammock »

itsoktocry wrote: post #221
DoreenMichele wrote: post #36

3M has been facing a raft of litigation that has prompted the move Generally speaking, toxic substances are only "cheap" due to externalizing many of the costs involved, like increased healthcare costs and lost productivity. If you do a thorough analysis of the costs of using such chemicals, they aren't cheap at all. Maybe someday humans will get that.

> Maybe someday humans will get that. We do get it. Sometimes the costs aren't known in advance, and you can't include every potential future issue in the cost/benefit calculus. Isn't that literally what the article is pointing at? Shareholders put pressure on the company to stop this, and they are. Sounds like a success story.

>Sometimes the costs aren't known in advance

3M knew for decades about the dangers of exposure to PFAS chemicals but didn’t inform the public.

During the 1970s and ’80s, it conducted studies on its US workers that showed PFAS building up in the bloodstream.

In 1977 the company determined PFOS was “more toxic than anticipated” in a study of rats and monkeys; in 1978 a monkey study had to be stopped after all the animals died within the first few days because the PFOS doses were too high.

In 1980, minutes from an internal 3M meeting said workers at the factory in Antwerp were told the chemicals had been found in human blood, but the company decided not to tell the government

Re: 3M to end 'forever chemicals' output

#287

Post by rocqua »

adrian_b wrote: post #233
Jolter wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you one product or process where it’s indispensable? I’m not being argumentative, just curious, as I’m not a chemist. I know it’s already being replaced in ski waxes and I’m pretty sure they have alternatives for firefighting foams?

In a typical consumer home, there are very few, if any, uses where fluoropolymers are indispensable. On the other hand, for most kinds of chemical manufacturing and of chemical analyses fluoropolymers are truly indispensable. Before the invention of the fluoropolymers, some of the chemical reactions that are done now in vessels made of fluoropolymers could not be done at all, while the others were done in platinum ve…

> None of the industrial uses of fluoropolymers can cause significant pollution. However using them in things like kitchenware, or worse, in packaging, makes no sense.

I presume it is possible for these industrial uses to cause significant pollution, but you mean that it is not difficult to prevent pollution from these processes because they happen in controlled locations?

Contrasting that against PFAS in kitchenware, packaging, or rain-coats where pollution is incredibly difficult to prevent because low-level leakage occurs everywhere?

I believe a lot of PFAS contamination comes from the production process itself. Especially looking at the 3M plant in Belgium. To what degree can the production process be made contamination free?

Re: 3M to end 'forever chemicals' output

#288

Post by culopatin »

elevaet wrote: post #222
dmd wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About 20 years ago, I made a mistake at work which I later calculated put an extra 8500 metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. (It had to do with the delay/routing of a cargo ship.) There is literally nothing I could possibly do that could come even close to making up for that...

That's in the range of 10x the CO2 an average human will produce in their lifetime. If you could find a way to get 20 people to cut their emissions in half, or 200 people to reduce it by 5%, or 1000 people by 1%, you could balance out your CO2 ledger :) Or, if you still work in the industry and can find a way to make the shipping routes more efficient, or prevent future mistakes like that, you could make it into the…

So avoiding the birth of 10 humans makes up for it? Doesn’t sound like that much.

Re: 3M to end 'forever chemicals' output

#289

Post by roflyear »

SoftTalker wrote: post #100
wjnc wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dehydration is more of a risk to you than the environmental risks you marginally save on others. Still I applaud the effort since the economists view is too restricted. Get a stainless steel container and hydrate for a lifetime.

Stainless steel containers are often lined with plastic, since people don't like the metallic taste that the steel imparts.

Reusable plastic is fine....

Re: 3M to end 'forever chemicals' output

#290

Post by zip1234 »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #248
feet wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glass is an option

Glass is heavy and causes transportation tires to generate more micro plastics on the highway and has a higher co2 emission burden.

That's a good point. Need to stop subsidizing over the road trucking and build more rail. Much more efficient.
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