America's carpet capital: an empire and its toxic legacy • Hacker News Board

Re: America's carpet capital: an empire and its toxic legacy

#51

Post by pfdietz » Sat, May 09, 2026, 2:30 PM UTC

SapporoChris wrote: post #40

pfdietz wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> PFAS were known to cause issues for a long time Has this actually been confirmed, or is this just the precautionary principle in action?

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10237242/ Our review of industry documents shows that companies knew PFAS was “highly toxic when inhaled and moderately toxic when ingested” by 1970, forty years before the public health community.

I don't see any mention there of the dosage at which these toxic effects occur. That would be necessary to determine if the amount found in the environment is a concern or not.

Re: America's carpet capital: an empire and its toxic legacy

#52

Post by JKCalhoun » Sat, May 09, 2026, 2:35 PM UTC

joe_mamba wrote: post #47

JKCalhoun wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see a contradiction. Whether I intend to work a factory job or not I can still decide that unemployment in the U.S., especially unemployment of blue-collar workers, would be better served by local industry than allowing for homelessness or a dependency on welfare. Never mind that there might also be national security issues addressed by local manufacture. The opposite, expecting everyone in the country to asp…

>The opposite, expecting everyone in the country to aspire to white-collar professions, is to me much more clearly an elitist (or at least irrational) position to have. This, when you have everyone go to college and then they'll be shocked to be unemployed or work for peanuts since there's an oversupply of college grads and not much demand. Here in Austria people working in construction cam earn way better than SW en…

It's not even an issue of job scarcity.

I have worked enough blue-collar jobs to know that there exist people for whom technical work is a non-starter. Not that they are somehow dim and incapable of learning engineering, but "work" that is not done through labor, that does not show in a tangible way a day's effort… is anathema to them.

Re: America's carpet capital: an empire and its toxic legacy

#53

Post by joe_mamba » Sat, May 09, 2026, 2:39 PM UTC

JKCalhoun wrote: post #52

joe_mamba wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The opposite, expecting everyone in the country to aspire to white-collar professions, is to me much more clearly an elitist (or at least irrational) position to have. This, when you have everyone go to college and then they'll be shocked to be unemployed or work for peanuts since there's an oversupply of college grads and not much demand. Here in Austria people working in construction cam earn way better than SW en…

It's not even an issue of job scarcity. I have worked enough blue-collar jobs to know that there exist people for whom technical work is a non-starter. Not that they are somehow dim and incapable of learning engineering, but "work" that is not done through labor, that does not show in a tangible way a day's effort… is anathema to them.

>It's not even an issue of job scarcity.

Still it's supply and demand issue. The west has had 20-30 years of grooming the youth that going to college is the right path to middle class lifestyle and blue collar jobs are for losers who are too stupid to study. You can't be shocked when the supply demand reverses. South Park even had an episode mocking this, with plumbers being the new tech bros, and tech bros being unemployed.

> but "work" that is not done through labor, that does not show in a tangible way a day's effort… is anathema to them

Same applies within white collar jobs too. Some engineers want to work in hardware, firmware, mechanical jobs, because the output is tangible, instead of pushing JSONs to the cloud, even if that's not more complicated than the other.

Re: America's carpet capital: an empire and its toxic legacy

#54

Post by pessimizer » Sat, May 09, 2026, 2:55 PM UTC

pfdietz wrote: post #51

SapporoChris wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10237242/ Our review of industry documents shows that companies knew PFAS was “highly toxic when inhaled and moderately toxic when ingested” by 1970, forty years before the public health community.

I don't see any mention there of the dosage at which these toxic effects occur. That would be necessary to determine if the amount found in the environment is a concern or not.

That's silly. The fact that it is toxic makes it a concern, and the fact that it is a concern means that if you're selling it you should find out yourself about the specifics.

It's like saying that you're not responsible for stealing a wallet because you didn't know exactly how much was in it.

Re: America's carpet capital: an empire and its toxic legacy

#55

Post by alphabeta3r56 » Sat, May 09, 2026, 2:57 PM UTC

b40d-48b2-979e wrote: post #14

It's so convenient that all these people waited until retirement to speak out, but they also said they weren't doing anything wrong? Zero morals by anyone in this story.

> “That’s not a logo,” fumed Shaw, CEO of the world’s largest carpet company, one attendee later recalled. “That’s a target.”

Do people really speak like that?

Re: America's carpet capital: an empire and its toxic legacy

#56

Post by dmbche » Sat, May 09, 2026, 2:58 PM UTC

pfdietz wrote: post #51

SapporoChris wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10237242/ Our review of industry documents shows that companies knew PFAS was “highly toxic when inhaled and moderately toxic when ingested” by 1970, forty years before the public health community.

I don't see any mention there of the dosage at which these toxic effects occur. That would be necessary to determine if the amount found in the environment is a concern or not.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/org/science/article/pii/S20462...

See table 1

>The toxicity of PFAS to humans has been linked to several health-related issues such as breast cancer,80 infertility,81 vitamin D deficiency,82 increased cholesterol,83 diabetes,84 altered metabolism,85 thyroid toxicity,86 atherosclerosis,87 osteoporosis,88 and cardiovascular diseases.61 Individually, various PFAS and their associated health-related issues are summarised in Table 1.

Re: America's carpet capital: an empire and its toxic legacy

#57

Post by pessimizer » Sat, May 09, 2026, 3:01 PM UTC

derriz wrote: post #9

markovs_gun wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stuff has to be made somewhere. This argument is essentially predicated on the idea that it's okay for some places to be polluted and for some people to have to deal with it but not for other places and people. What you're really saying is "When people talk about how they want manufacturing back, they conveniently forget the pollution impacts people who live here instead of China and India, where it's totally okay."…

When people extol the virtues of manufacturing, I’m always reminded of the poll where 80% of Americans say that the country would benefit from a bigger manufacturing base but only 25% are interested in actually working in manufacturing. This isn’t an American thing btw - I’ve had arguments with brits and others who argue passionately that the country has been destroyed by the relative decline in manufacturing but whe…

> I’m always reminded of the poll where 80% of Americans say that the country would benefit from a bigger manufacturing base but only 25% are interested in actually working in manufacturing.

This is a silly statistic that manipulative people drag out to imply the answer that they want. If you asked people who work in factories right at this second, 75% of them would say that they didn't want to work in a factory. If you ask people who work any job, and ask if they would rather not be working, 75% would say yes.

It kind of goes with the weird idea that illegal immigrants actually love to clean toilets and work in fields for slave wages.

> when I ask “so you’d prefer to work in a factory?”

...to your upper-middle class friends who make six figures.

Re: America's carpet capital: an empire and its toxic legacy

#58

Post by seanmcdirmid » Sat, May 09, 2026, 3:06 PM UTC

pessimizer wrote: post #57

derriz wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When people extol the virtues of manufacturing, I’m always reminded of the poll where 80% of Americans say that the country would benefit from a bigger manufacturing base but only 25% are interested in actually working in manufacturing. This isn’t an American thing btw - I’ve had arguments with brits and others who argue passionately that the country has been destroyed by the relative decline in manufacturing but whe…

> I’m always reminded of the poll where 80% of Americans say that the country would benefit from a bigger manufacturing base but only 25% are interested in actually working in manufacturing. This is a silly statistic that manipulative people drag out to imply the answer that they want. If you asked people who work in factories right at this second, 75% of them would say that they didn't want to work in a factory. If…

If you have more factory jobs the workforce has to come from either immigrants or the cushy white collar or service jobs that Americans mostly work today right? Because our unemployment rate isn’t low enough that we can just take people who aren’t working and get them working in factories.

Japan has had to heavily import workers to keep its factories and service jobs staffed, and the Japanese hate immigration more than MAGA does. The other solution is automation, which is how China plans to deal with its demographic cliff, I guess we could import factory robots from China.

Re: America's carpet capital: an empire and its toxic legacy

#59

Post by yojo » Sat, May 09, 2026, 3:25 PM UTC

JKCalhoun wrote: post #23

c0balt wrote: post #4

I feel for the people living there and being affected by the pollution. The long term effects of chemical pollution are ugly. But the CEO in the intro just seems like an odd choice. PFAS were known to cause issues for a long time, if you continued to use them for years then it is in your back too. Being "surprised" this might eventually affect your own product line just seems naive. You might have trusted 3M but just…

"I feel for the people living there and being affected by the pollution." Isn't it all of us with carpets in our homes that are affected? (Albeit to a lesser degree—but also we are at the least partners in this if our buying carpets are destroying these other people's communities.)

You should probably be more worried about the flame retardants in the rebond carpet pad. Better these days, but older installed stuff had non-trivial PPM.

Re: America's carpet capital: an empire and its toxic legacy

#60

Post by [deleted] » Sat, May 09, 2026, 3:27 PM UTC

therealpygon wrote: post #31

throwup238 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When complaining about poor regulations you chose a cookie popup as an example. You couldn’t think of anything less trivial? If that’s what your mind reaches for when you think of “poor regulations” you’ll have to forgive me for assuming you have nothing of substance to add to the discussion.

Your substance has been “I don’t know what I’m talking about, so you must not know what you are”. Impressive. I’d suggest reading more and assuming less.

[deleted]