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Poison, Poison Everywhere

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Re: Poison, Poison Everywhere

#71

Post by margalabargala »

pixl97 wrote: post #25
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?

Lead in gas increased compression rations and allowed us to build higher horsepower engines. Lead is still used in avgas for this reason. Engine knock was a big problem at the time.

I wonder about lead levels in soil near gen aviation airports for this reason, and in the neighborhoods that sometimes get built on decommissioned runways.

Re: Poison, Poison Everywhere

#72

Post by gertlex »

margalabargala wrote: post #70
teddyh wrote: post #6

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

I disagree with this. There are plenty of counterexamples where an individual can have a measurably positive impact on their own life. Solar + batteries comes to mind. Also in your linked example, you brought up reading and literacy as something that would not improve collective problems, and I couldn't disagree more.

Feels like you're on a different tack here: improving your "own life" is different from solving "collective problems".

Further, setting up solar + batteries solves a non-modest individual problem, but is not by itself (i.e. reducing carbon footprint; an example mentioned in the parent's link) the solution to climate change. (yes it helps; but incentives leading to people installing solar have a much bigger impact; and the biggest incentive was maybe China building a solar panel industry, but I'm not trying to go down that tangent)

Re: Poison, Poison Everywhere

#73

Post by ludicrousdispla »

vunderba wrote: post #29
ants_everywhere wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lead had been a known poison for nearly 2000 years when it was added to gasoline. The guy who owned the patent for leaded gasoline and who promoted its use even got lead poisoning himself https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr .

That guy's entire wikipedia page is an almost surreal read. For introducing lead into gasoline and the proliferation of CFCs, he was termed a "one-man environmental disaster". His death is equally fascinating. He invented a mechanical device to help him out of bed because of his polio-related infirmity, and ended up getting strangled by it.

Maybe the mechanical device had also achieved AGI?

Re: Poison, Poison Everywhere

#74

Post by AstralStorm »

cenamus wrote: post #68
krackers wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except now I have the problem of trusting that this new supplement isn't contaminated with anything, _and_ that the "microscopic pores" resulting from this "patented process" don't turn out to have some harmful effect in the body.

I guess it would be sort of similar to activated charcoal? And that's surely well studied, and also "eaten"

You might have just filtered off all the nutrients and have yourself a dietary deficiency. Oops.

And your supplements might well be contaminated...

Re: Poison, Poison Everywhere

#75

Post by throwaway290 »

nbngeorcjhe wrote: post #45
Ferret7446 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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]

how much of total legislation is never enforced? probably at least third

It's pointless without people caring.

Re: Poison, Poison Everywhere

#76

Post by consp »

chasil wrote: post #27
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?

As I understand it, both tetra ethyl lead and ethyl alcohol are anti-knock agents. Lead was used because it was cheaper. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiknock_agent

Ethanol on its own is an anti knock agent. E85 is RON 105 for instance.

Re: Poison, Poison Everywhere

#79

Post by consp »

kragen wrote: post #63
marcosdumay wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It allowed people to use engines with better gas mileage, what is a different thing. Just adding the lead addictive to gasoline reduced your gas mileage. But it made better engines work.

It surely reduced it by a tiny amount compared to just straight octane, but ethanol reduced it by something like 10%. So using TEL instead of ethanol gave you about 10% higher gas mileage.

At worst to get equivalent octane rating you lose about 4 percent in power density. In practice you won't notice due to the slightly more efficient burning of alcohol.

Re: Poison, Poison Everywhere

#80

Post by BrenBarn »

lumost wrote: post #36
walleeee wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> legislation Perhaps more generally phrased as governance Yes, the answer is not some business plan by which some can dodge disaster in an untrustworthy market, the answer is to recognize that this planet is a spaceship i.e. materially closed, and we are massively soiling the nest, microplastic is in steak because it's literally everywhere on the surface of the earth , etc. Therefore, good ecological governance is a…

The fundamental constraint the article alludes to is the powerlessness of consumer choice. You can’t make a better choice because you don’t have any better option. When there is a better option, you lack the tools to verify that the option is truly better vs scamming you to pay more for something which either doesn’t matter or is simply a lie. Prior to free trade, you could reasonably sue the manufacturers or distrib…

A second-order issue there is the pervasive phenomenon of people wanting things cheap which results in hidden costs. When it costs more to make things safer or to test that they are safe, bad actors can succeed by not doing that and finding ways to dodge responsibility, because people just gravitate towards low prices. Part of the "governance" challenge is forcing market participants to internalize their costs.

Somewhat ironically, a countervailing strategy has emerged of charging more for something based on the claim that it's "natural", "organic", "handcrafted", etc. This strategy can also be seen in various types of "detectors" and at-home tests for things, and perhaps even things like the ConsumerLabs mentioned in another comment.

This muddies the waters even more, since even people who are willing to pay more for something that's better can't figure out how to avoid paying more for something that's just equally bad. These problems exist not just in the realm of food and health but in all product categories.

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