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3M to end 'forever chemicals' output

reuters.com

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Re: 3M to end 'forever chemicals' output

#41

Post by SOLAR_FIELDS »

themitigating wrote: post #21
missedthecue wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PFAS are used because there isn't a better alternative. A globally coordinated reduction in production only increases the price of products for consumers.

Better solution ? Let's take one example. Teflon coated cookware. As an alternative there are cooking sprays, butter, oils, or stiring the contents of the pan more frequently. In this case it's not a nessacity but a convenience. Why don't we start by restricting the use of PFAS to those products in which there are no alternatives and are a nessacity.

Ceramic cookware is also PFA free, and while it isn’t 100% as good as Teflon for nonstick purposes, it’s about 95% as good for roughly the same price.

It’s not all that much convenience you give up anyway. My home is PFA free for cookware (indoors, at least) simply by virtue of owning birds because PFA is toxic to birds. I have to use the pressure cooker and air fryer outside but the ceramic pans I use indoors do just fine and aren’t too much harder to clean vs Teflon pans.

I think the only noticeable pain where my ceramic pans clearly lose to Teflon is eggs - eggs want to cling to basically anything and Teflon is just really good at not having things cling to it. Otherwise it’s almost always just as easy to clean the ceramic pans as it is to clean the Teflon ones.

Re: 3M to end 'forever chemicals' output

#43

Post by ToJans »

In Belgium there is a huge issue with pfas caused by 3M [1], having contaminated things like drinking water etc, so it's not even safe to eat vegetables from your garden or eggs from your chickens.

It's a massacre TBH, mostly exposing the head-in-the-sand, umbrella using fingerpointing mentality of Belgian politics. I can imagine 3M has sites like these all over the world, so I would assume this only scratches the surface...

Edit: typos, it's early in the morning here ...

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2022-3m-pfas-toxic-foreve...

Re: 3M to end 'forever chemicals' output

#44

Post by lukas099 »

wkat4242 wrote: post #26
Centigonal wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...which is a good thing! we should stop taking $20 teflon pans, nonstick fast food containers, and $40 raincoats with negative externalities for granted. We did fine without PFAS, we'll be okay with expensive PFAS (where externalities are internalized and built into the cost) too.

Does paying for the pollution really help fix the problem? Will the government use that money to filter rivers for PFAS? I think a lot of this need also comes from other supposedly environmental choices. My work banned plastic cups and now has paper cups with PFAS which are more toxic. I think the plastic ones were the better choice if recycled properly. And raincoats were really really horrible before Gore-Tex.

If things cost more, people generally buy less of them.

Re: 3M to end 'forever chemicals' output

#45

Post by geysersam »

wkat4242 wrote: post #26
Centigonal wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...which is a good thing! we should stop taking $20 teflon pans, nonstick fast food containers, and $40 raincoats with negative externalities for granted. We did fine without PFAS, we'll be okay with expensive PFAS (where externalities are internalized and built into the cost) too.

Does paying for the pollution really help fix the problem? Will the government use that money to filter rivers for PFAS? I think a lot of this need also comes from other supposedly environmental choices. My work banned plastic cups and now has paper cups with PFAS which are more toxic. I think the plastic ones were the better choice if recycled properly. And raincoats were really really horrible before Gore-Tex.

Paying for pollution makes the customer consider the full cost of the product, reducing demand to cases when the benefits of using the chemical are actually bigger than the external costs.

It's not about using the money to solve the problems. It's about making the economy more efficient.

Re: 3M to end 'forever chemicals' output

#46

Post by runnerup »

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.

I always thought that if our universe is actually a simulation, it's one of countless simulations trying to determine a solution to the Tragedy of the Commons.

I suspect it's one of the hardest problems to solve in any universe.

Re: 3M to end 'forever chemicals' output

#47

Post by fastball »

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.

It's a difficult balance to strike though. Forcing companies to consider all possible externalities is very difficult / expensive to get right. And if you don't get it exactly right, you very quickly increase your surface area for issues like regulatory capture, etc.

Just another in the long list of coordination problems where it is hard to arrive at the pareto-optimal solution given human selfishness and our lack of omniscience.

Re: 3M to end 'forever chemicals' output

#48

Post by runnerup »

themitigating wrote: post #24
missedthecue wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like in 10 years we will be reading panicky articles asking why the important production of PFAS and other synthetic organofluorines was offshored to an increasingly belligerent China.

Products can be banned in countries so even if China creates them they can't sell them outside China. I don't get your argument, it's like "someone is going to do bad things therefore it's ok for me"?

And china can put them on products and send them to the USA anyways and mis-label them because almost nothing that is imported is actually checked for toxic chemicals/paints/etc.

Re: 3M to end 'forever chemicals' output

#49

Post by Centigonal »

wkat4242 wrote: post #26
Centigonal wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...which is a good thing! we should stop taking $20 teflon pans, nonstick fast food containers, and $40 raincoats with negative externalities for granted. We did fine without PFAS, we'll be okay with expensive PFAS (where externalities are internalized and built into the cost) too.

Does paying for the pollution really help fix the problem? Will the government use that money to filter rivers for PFAS? I think a lot of this need also comes from other supposedly environmental choices. My work banned plastic cups and now has paper cups with PFAS which are more toxic. I think the plastic ones were the better choice if recycled properly. And raincoats were really really horrible before Gore-Tex.

Price elasticity is real: if PFAS is more expensive, people will buy (and businesses will produce) fewer PFAS-derived products. Raising the price is especially nice because it causes price-elastic use cases (think PFAS coated paper cups) to drop out, while price-inelastic use cases (think teflon joint implants) are not made illegal, just more expensive. If the government earmarks PFAS tax revenue for remediation, that'd be awesome, but that's just a side benefit - the price increase is the main benefit.

I do thing greenwashing and environmental whack-a-mole is a real problem (heck, we see it in the PFAS space with GenX replacing PFOA). I don't see that as a valid reason to do nothing.

Re: 3M to end 'forever chemicals' output

#50

Post by runnerup »

RyanShook wrote: post #27

There are nine thousand known PFAS. They are essential to many products and processes. Many don't have a clear alternative. Other countries will continue to produce them. But 3M is going to ban them all without any discernment. Am I missing something?

3M isn't banning them, they're discontinuing production. Other companies can pick up the slack still.
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