Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Poison, Poison Everywhere

loeber.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 211 posts

Re: Poison, Poison Everywhere

#41

Post by kragen »

ants_everywhere wrote: post #26
davnicwil wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's incredibly surprising to me that lead was added to gasoline specifically at all. I'd always assumed it was some expensive-to-remove byproduct of manufacture or something, so they left it in to save costs despite the risks. Why did this happen?

according to the article > Oil companies and automobile manufacturers (especially General Motors, which owned the patent jointly filed by Kettering and Midgley) promoted the TEL additive as an inexpensive alternative superior to ethanol or ethanol-blended fuels, on which they could make very little profit. Functionally, as others have commented, it is there to reduce knocking. But lead was used instead of ethanol (ak…

It also gave better gas mileage.

Re: Poison, Poison Everywhere

#42

Post by kragen »

OgsyedIE wrote: post #28

Equally as large and interesting is the industry of targeting and subverting consumer watchdog groups. Wirecutter's infiltration and takeover is a fascinating example.

I was appalled to see that apparently Which? has a website funded by affiliate marketing links.

Re: Poison, Poison Everywhere

#44

Post by kragen »

freddie_mercury wrote: post #31
lr4444lr wrote: post #3

This is precisely why I happily pay for an annual subscription to ConsumerLab[0]. It's largely just for supplements and a few functional foods, but with a tiny staff they are doing more work to help the public on the unregulated medicine market than the entire FDA, IMHO. [0] https://www.consumerlab.com/

Congress are the ones who define what the FDA does. Blame them and the 1994 Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act. Congress could easily tell the FDA to do something different.

Blaming people for a problem only helps if you have the power to take away their ability to cause the problem. In this case, the most effective way to keep Congress from causing you health problems by giving you misinformation about supplements would seem to be to get your information from a source that Congress doesn't control, such as ConsumerLab. Hopefully it's a better source than the FDA rather than a worse one; but, if not, maybe you can switch to a better one, or start one yourself.

Re: Poison, Poison Everywhere

#45

Post by nbngeorcjhe »

Ferret7446 wrote: post #37
teddyh wrote: post #6

Empowering individuals to solve collective problems rarely work. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31178680 > The appropriate solution is legislation.

That's not a solution. There is no practical solution for this, and has not been for the millennia on human history; it's only been in the recent decades where we've been able the hallucinate about knowing about toxins in our daily lives. Legislation is just paper, you have no enforcement mechanism beyond what you already have currently: suing companies on a case by case basis.

[flagged]

Re: Poison, Poison Everywhere

#46

Post by noduerme »

Amazon is so completely irresponsible for their marketplace that recently, shopping for a glass oral thermometer (because the digital ones suck) I stumbled on reviews with photos showing products that had no mercury inside and actual blobs of mercury stuck to the tip that goes in your mouth. These were still for sale.

I feel like even 10 years ago, online marketplaces would have taken measures to prevent stuff like this.

From that perspective, all of these services that rate products still place all the onus on the individual consumer. What would be really "luxury" in the modern context would be an online marketplace that vetted every product and whose primary product was trust, as opoosed to logistics and convenience. I'd much rather pay $150/yr for a service that vetted its products and took a week to deliver them, than to have a bunch of worthless or dangerous junk delivered the next day.

Re: Poison, Poison Everywhere

#47

Post by hammock »

noduerme wrote: post #46

Amazon is so completely irresponsible for their marketplace that recently, shopping for a glass oral thermometer (because the digital ones suck) I stumbled on reviews with photos showing products that had no mercury inside and actual blobs of mercury stuck to the tip that goes in your mouth. These were still for sale. I feel like even 10 years ago, online marketplaces would have taken measures to prevent stuff like t…

Why are they even selling mercury thermometers for oral use when an alcohol one (the red liquid) does fine

Re: Poison, Poison Everywhere

#48

Post by Arainach »

>Only a business with this as its core competency is capable of the breadth and depth required for this Herculean task.

It doesn't have to be a business, and it absolutely should not be. Preventing poisoning of people, animals, and the environment is something capitalism has proven utterly incapable of, and in fact (literally) violently opposed to.

This is the kind of thing that needs to be done at the government level. The goal is societal benefit, not profit.

Re: Poison, Poison Everywhere

#49

Post by jonstewart »

DennisP wrote: post #17
jonstewart wrote: post #12

[flagged]

Suggesting a connection to Nazi ideology just because someone wants to help people avoid toxins seems a bit over the top to me.

Oh, I am not at all implying or insinuating this article is connected to populism, nationalism, etc., or advocating for them, nor mean to impugn the author through association. Lead is bad. PFAS and microplastics are bad. Glyphosate maybe is bad. I identify as a mild/moderate environmentalist (while also a mild/moderate yimby; I don’t see a necessary contradiction).

But to be more explicit, I think there’s an undercurrent of Blood and Soil at work in the USA today, it’s seen a little bit explicitly in MAHA, and I’m worried, a lot, about the future political implications, where the real damage we’ve done to the environment becomes an excuse for… more bad things.

Re: Poison, Poison Everywhere

#50

Post by noduerme »

hammock wrote: post #47
noduerme wrote: post #46

Amazon is so completely irresponsible for their marketplace that recently, shopping for a glass oral thermometer (because the digital ones suck) I stumbled on reviews with photos showing products that had no mercury inside and actual blobs of mercury stuck to the tip that goes in your mouth. These were still for sale. I feel like even 10 years ago, online marketplaces would have taken measures to prevent stuff like t…

Why are they even selling mercury thermometers for oral use when an alcohol one (the red liquid) does fine

I wondered that as well, but they are. I've started to think there's an organized effort by a government with a lot of state-owned enterprises to actually dispose of toxic waste by shipping it to gullible American consumers. Not that it isn't also poisoning people there.
Post reply on HN