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How Dangerous Is Your Couch?

nytimes.com

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Re: How Dangerous Is Your Couch?

#61

Post by _delirium »

srl wrote: post #22
001sky wrote: post #5

Of the 84,000 industrial chemicals registered for use in the United States, only about 200 have been evaluated for human safety by the Environmental Protection Agency --Wait, what? What is the EPA doing, then for 42 years? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Environmental_Pro...

The next sentence: That’s because industrial chemicals are presumed safe unless proved otherwise, under the 1976 federal Toxic Substances Control Act. In other words, the EPA isn't _allowed_ to investigate products unless evidence that they are unsafe is brought before it. Makers get the benefit of the doubt.

There's some more detail here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_Substances_Control_Act_of...

The situation is somewhat better with chemicals introduced after 1976. Any chemical that was in use prior to 1976 is grandfathered in, due to worries from industry that passage of the Act could suddenly call into question many chemicals then in use. Therefore anything that was already in use at the time is presumed safe and not investigated, unless significant evidence first piles up. The chemicals being described in this story (e.g. the PBDEs) are pre-1976, and hence not investigated.

Re: How Dangerous Is Your Couch?

#62

Post by rdl »

tokenadult wrote: post #49

Another top-level comment wrote: between this and the article about brain parasites in california, HN is scaring the crap out of me And I guess that's why my all-time favorite external link to share here on Hacker News is "Warning Signs in Experimental Design and Interpretation" http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html by Peter Norvig, Google's director of research. To resolve the issue of the safety trade-offs of no…

I assume flame retardants are mainly only needed for couches of smokers (I've never randomly put a flame onto my couch for fun to see if it would burn), so even if fire retardants save 100 people from fires they caused through voluntary negligence while subjecting 1 additional person to cancer or other illness due to chemicals, I'm not sure if it's a fair trade. Saving firefighters might be a reasonable argument, though.

Re: How Dangerous Is Your Couch?

#63

Post by DanBC »

Tichy wrote: post #57
tokenadult wrote: post #49

Another top-level comment wrote: between this and the article about brain parasites in california, HN is scaring the crap out of me And I guess that's why my all-time favorite external link to share here on Hacker News is "Warning Signs in Experimental Design and Interpretation" http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html by Peter Norvig, Google's director of research. To resolve the issue of the safety trade-offs of no…

Could you provide a TL;DR of your expose? Thanks!

Really?

Fire is dangerous, and we know it kills a bunch of people.

Fire retardants may be dangerous, they may harm a bunch of people, but we're not sure how many, nor how they are harmed. Research is sometimes conducted poorly, or good research is interpreted poorly by reporters.

We need to balance risk and cost. People dying in fires is bad. People getting a bunch of diseases is also bad. We need to find out which is more likely.

Re: How Dangerous Is Your Couch?

#64

Post by logn »

davidw wrote: post #43
guelo wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"So I spent about a week with headaches because some ophthalmology trade group lobbied (bribed) the legislature to get profit-enhancing regulations in place." FTFY

The thing I hate about articles like this is that the path to snarky redditisms is very, very direct. I'm not disagreeing with your message, I'm disagreeing with the delivery.

I'm getting tired of hearing all of this HN bashing and complaining lately.

Re: How Dangerous Is Your Couch?

#65

Post by rdl »

WalterBright wrote: post #60

The single best way to protect your home against fire, by far, is to have a fire sprinkler system installed. Unfortunately, this can only be done when the house is built. So if you are planning on building a house, specify a sprinkler system. It'll be the best money you ever spent.

Why can't you retrofit fire suppressing foam in the kitchen, like one does in a commercial kitchen range hood? I've seen this done on kitchen remodels. There are residential range hoods (Viking, Wolf, ...) which have a wall-mounted button or a pull which 1) kills the fuel source and 2) smothers the range area with fire suppression (class BC or K) to put out the fire and prevent re-ignition. Totally ruins your food AND needs to be cleaned off promptly since it's corrosive.

Kitchens are by far the most likely source of domestic fires.

Re: How Dangerous Is Your Couch?

#66

Post by DanBC »

lignuist wrote: post #54
greenyoda wrote: post #18

The irony of the whole thing is that the flame retardants don't even make furniture any less flammable: "The problem, [the fire expert] argues, is that the standard is based on applying a small flame to a bare piece of foam - a situation unlikely to happen in real life. ... In real life, before the flame gets to the foam, it has to ignite the fabric. Once the fabric catches fire, it becomes a sheet of flame that can…

This reminds me of the ban on regular light bulbs in the EU. People are basically forced now to install so called energy saving lamps, which contain and emit highly toxic mercury and phenol. Most people even don't know about the risks and would let their children sleep in a room with a broken lamp.

> emit highly toxic mercury

Do you have a source for energy efficient CFLs "emitting mercury"?

Re: How Dangerous Is Your Couch?

#67

Post by igrekel »

DanBC wrote: post #63
Tichy wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you provide a TL;DR of your expose? Thanks!

Really? Fire is dangerous, and we know it kills a bunch of people. Fire retardants may be dangerous, they may harm a bunch of people, but we're not sure how many, nor how they are harmed. Research is sometimes conducted poorly, or good research is interpreted poorly by reporters. We need to balance risk and cost. People dying in fires is bad. People getting a bunch of diseases is also bad. We need to find out which i…

Having worked in the insurance industry, I can tell you there are less and less fires. The main cause are that there are less people who smoke and that old electrical wiring are replaced by the newer standards.

Re: How Dangerous Is Your Couch?

#68

Post by _delirium »

rdl wrote: post #65
WalterBright wrote: post #60

The single best way to protect your home against fire, by far, is to have a fire sprinkler system installed. Unfortunately, this can only be done when the house is built. So if you are planning on building a house, specify a sprinkler system. It'll be the best money you ever spent.

Why can't you retrofit fire suppressing foam in the kitchen, like one does in a commercial kitchen range hood? I've seen this done on kitchen remodels. There are residential range hoods (Viking, Wolf, ...) which have a wall-mounted button or a pull which 1) kills the fuel source and 2) smothers the range area with fire suppression (class BC or K) to put out the fire and prevent re-ignition. Totally ruins your food AN…

> Kitchens are by far the most likely source of domestic fires.

Interesting; I would've guessed it'd be in closer running with other causes, but it looks like they constitute around 55% of total residential fires. According to some U.S. statistics from 2010 [1], the leading causes of residential fires are cooking, with 166k fires, followed by heating at 47k fires, electrical and "other unintentional" at ~25k each, and open flame and "intentional" at just under 20k each.

[1] http://www.usfa.fema.gov/downloads/pdf/statistics/res_bldg_f...

Re: How Dangerous Is Your Couch?

#69

Post by lignuist »

DanBC wrote: post #66
lignuist wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of the ban on regular light bulbs in the EU. People are basically forced now to install so called energy saving lamps, which contain and emit highly toxic mercury and phenol. Most people even don't know about the risks and would let their children sleep in a room with a broken lamp.

> emit highly toxic mercury Do you have a source for energy efficient CFLs "emitting mercury"?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8n_FIOqi5DU&sns=em German documentary. At 09:10 the guy detects emissions.

Re: How Dangerous Is Your Couch?

#70

Post by tsotha »

lignuist wrote: post #56
tokenadult wrote: post #49

Another top-level comment wrote: between this and the article about brain parasites in california, HN is scaring the crap out of me And I guess that's why my all-time favorite external link to share here on Hacker News is "Warning Signs in Experimental Design and Interpretation" http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html by Peter Norvig, Google's director of research. To resolve the issue of the safety trade-offs of no…

Statistics don't count in medicine if you are the one who gets the disease.

They don't count if you die in a fire, either.

The reality is with this kind of thing we're really off into rounding errors. To the extent you can affect your odds of getting cancer, the extent to which you do the things your mother told you to do (don't smoke, don't drink, eat your vegetables, and don't get too fat) swamps your cancer risk from environmental sources.

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