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

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

#71

Post by pfdietz »

pessimizer wrote: post #54
pfdietz wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Silly? There are plenty of substances that are toxic at high dose and innocuous, or even necessary, at low dose. Examples of the latter are vitamins A and B6.

The question of responsibility is of course not what we were talking about, but rather whether the statement "PFAS were known to cause issues" was in fact true. Too often we see possibility of harm being deliberately conflated with actually causing harm. Is it too much to ask for some honesty here?

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

#72

Post by kjkjadksj »

xp84 wrote: post #65

I had a question which most of the article just barely touched on: a lot of attention goes to how much PFAS is detected in people’s blood, but I wanted to know (A) what the harms are, and (B) how strong the evidence is for each one, since afaik they aren’t and probably can’t do randomized trials where they just spray a bunch of Scotchgard in the mouths of half the test subjects. Using an AI answer as a jumping off po…

Please don’t dump ai slop here.

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

#73

Post by slowgramming »

echelon wrote: post #15

I drive through Dalton anytime I visit Chattanooga (a cool hipster city on the border of Georgia and Tennessee). The scale of manufacturing there is wild. There are so many factories. Dalton makes something like 70-80% of the carpet in the world. They've had carpet factories there since I was a kid, but they're starting to expand into lots of other industries. They've begun massively ramping up on solar panel product…

I forgot about Dalton. Used to pass it occasionally growing up if we were heading up north to visit family. I knew they were big on carpet, but I did not know they produced such high volumes of carpet there

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

#74

Post by stefan_ »

xp84 wrote: post #65

I had a question which most of the article just barely touched on: a lot of attention goes to how much PFAS is detected in people’s blood, but I wanted to know (A) what the harms are, and (B) how strong the evidence is for each one, since afaik they aren’t and probably can’t do randomized trials where they just spray a bunch of Scotchgard in the mouths of half the test subjects. Using an AI answer as a jumping off po…

It's a bit like asking about the health risks of sodium chloride

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

#75

Post by TJSomething »

joe_mamba wrote: post #50
kibwen wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We built our modern society on the principle that profit must be prioritized over morality, they're just conforming to systematic incentives. Those who sell their souls to the devil don't get to act shocked when they wind up in hell.

> Those who sell their souls to the devil don't get to act shocked when they wind up in hell. Which is everyone, since everyone has their pension invested in a giant pool made of of unethical companies that we can't fine, ban or let fail because it would destroy people's retirements who will then vote in an angry way to reverse this, or it will destroy some upstream national important industries that are very well re…

I feel like this supposes a better world where most people are educated, rational, and calm investors with the time, money, and energy to actively manage a diversified portfolio.

Or I guess you could get there by abolishing the stock market as it exists, which seems more likely.

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

#76

Post by Chris2048 »

boondongle wrote: post #67
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.

It's actually not convenient at all. Consider this: animal study to human study fail all the time. In another world, there could have been NO impact at all to human beings and PFAS could be just another random chemical the body doesn't clear but doesn't actually do anything and sits there inert. I know everyone's pissed about this but the thyroid/other connections stuff happens 10 years later as a result and these ar…

> there could have been NO impact at all

True, but if you contaminate water, and people, with chemicals not supposed to be there; I feel the burden should be on you to prove the chemicals are not harmful.

> you could use the same logic to not make any advancement ever

No you couldn't - the measures taken to prevent contamination were inadequate, they could've innovated while also following the rules. And if not, no business is owed a viable business model, certainly a random strangers heath isn't worth the price of profiting from easy-to-clean carpets.

> We just can't necessarily quantify that as easily.

Quantify what?

> can attribute once thought "inert" chemicals to problems

we (or America) have a whole system of classifying chemicals as safe for human consumption or not. Whatever was thought about PFAS, I don't believe they had been proven safe enough to dump into drinking water?

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

#77

Post by f1shy »

mystraline wrote: post #63
akudha wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is easy to be ethically and morally responsible, after one becomes rich, after one is retired. Until then, it is enough to follow the law just enough to not get fined. Actually, even that is a tall ask these days - fines are just cost of doing business. It sucks that it is this way, but society seems to have largely accepted it

Fine are the cost of doing business... FOR COMPANIES. For individuals: arrest, jail, prison, and horrifically crippling fines are normal. An individual kills 1 person, and its 15y to life. But if youre an 'insurance company' and make policies in abeyance of insurance and arbitrarily deny 30% of claims getting many killed (Luigi says hi), thats perfectly fine. Youre a business leader making lots of money. You steal $1…

> This country should be called the Corporate States of America.

Who knows a country in which is different, let me know, please, honestly.

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

#78

Post by mystraline »

f1shy wrote: post #77
mystraline wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fine are the cost of doing business... FOR COMPANIES. For individuals: arrest, jail, prison, and horrifically crippling fines are normal. An individual kills 1 person, and its 15y to life. But if youre an 'insurance company' and make policies in abeyance of insurance and arbitrarily deny 30% of claims getting many killed (Luigi says hi), thats perfectly fine. Youre a business leader making lots of money. You steal $1…

> This country should be called the Corporate States of America. Who knows a country in which is different, let me know, please, honestly.

I can call these hypocrisies to light. I do so on the off chance that we gain enough support to start reversing end-stage capitalism.

Im not going to list factoids of what rank we are or arent. Its honestly irrelevant. Im stuck here, since I have no familial claim of citizenship elsewhere.

So, yeah. I speak out here and in person, about these abuses.

Eventually, we'll do better. Takes time. Probably longer than I have alive.

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

#79

Post by deaux »

f1shy wrote: post #77
mystraline wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fine are the cost of doing business... FOR COMPANIES. For individuals: arrest, jail, prison, and horrifically crippling fines are normal. An individual kills 1 person, and its 15y to life. But if youre an 'insurance company' and make policies in abeyance of insurance and arbitrarily deny 30% of claims getting many killed (Luigi says hi), thats perfectly fine. Youre a business leader making lots of money. You steal $1…

> This country should be called the Corporate States of America. Who knows a country in which is different, let me know, please, honestly.

China is definitely different in this particular aspect. The balance of powers in "state vs corporations" is completely different from the US. And China is seeing massive benefits from this particular aspect of its country, it's closely related to their ascension vs. the decline of the US in particular.

Before people turn to Reddit-style downvoting and flagging, this isn't a vouch for China as a country on the whole. It has plenty of other problems that certain Western countries don't have. I'm simply talking about the specific topic at hand.

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

#80

Post by bdangubic »

f1shy wrote: post #77
mystraline wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fine are the cost of doing business... FOR COMPANIES. For individuals: arrest, jail, prison, and horrifically crippling fines are normal. An individual kills 1 person, and its 15y to life. But if youre an 'insurance company' and make policies in abeyance of insurance and arbitrarily deny 30% of claims getting many killed (Luigi says hi), thats perfectly fine. Youre a business leader making lots of money. You steal $1…

> This country should be called the Corporate States of America. Who knows a country in which is different, let me know, please, honestly.

China, Germany, any country in Scandinavia, Poland, Japan… it is a long list
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