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As a non-american, this is so strange. Doesn't the US have pollution laws that say you cannot pollute near where people live? That seems to me like a very funda

As a non-american, this is so strange. Doesn't the US have pollution laws that say you cannot pollute near where people live? That seems to me like a very fundamental responsibility of the state.

hanniabu 11y ago
There are pollution laws, but unfortunately companies receive only relatively minimal fines. So depending on the substance and quantity 'accidentally' leaked, it may actually be a cost saving for the company. And granted, in sure a lot of pollution actually is accidental, but even there the reasons are likely due to the company cutting costs which led to an accident. For instance, let's say there's a bake that had a high likelihood of soon failing. When you take into consideration the cost of a replacement valve, service to replace it, and down time of processes that depend on this valve and compare it to the amount you'd get fined for a spill if the valve fails, many companies will take the risk of the valve failing because the fines just aren't high enough. The other thing is that there's almost never any jail time for those that were involved in the decision making process to take that risk. Case in point, BP oil spill, nobody has served jail time even though there were numerous reports that people were aware of the risks of continuing to operate without replacing the valve that failed.
- mc32 11y ago
  Also sometimes very poor counties, think Alabama, Kentucky, Wa Va, will attract companies who need to dispose of pollutants but at a price, in order to extract revenue for an otherwise unproductive, resource-poor county. That's to say, they provide landfill space at a relatively low price. It's unfortunate, but it happens.[1] [1]http://www.alternet.org/books/how-corporations-dump-their-toxic-sludge-areas-filled-poor-people http://www.alternet.org/books/how-corporations-dump-their-to...
JohnTHaller 11y ago
The fines are low. The regulations are not well enforced. The organizations that are supposed to enforce the regulations keep having their funding cut. And certain political groups are trying to strip the regulations and the funding further.
- lobster_johnson 11y ago
  This recent article [1] is a great example of all four facts. DuPont knew for half a century that their chemical, PFOA, was poisonous to people and to drinking water, yet kept exposing their own workers and dumping it in places where it killed livestock, leeched into the soil and contaminated water supplies. DuPont is still fighting regulations, and fighting thousands of personal injury lawsuits in court, one by one. It settled with the EPA for $16.5m — essentially nothing. The EPA's role is to regulate, but it is basically powerless to do so. Meanwhile, PFOA and related fluorochemicals are now apparently present in the bloodstream of almost all animals and people on Earth — including everyone on HN — as well as much of our drinking water. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/10/magazine/the-lawyer-who-became-duponts-worst-nightmare.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/10/magazine/the-lawyer-who-be...
  - JohnTHaller 11y ago
    It won't matter how many facts you quote here, you'll still be downvoted for stating it for some reason. There are quite a few paid downvoters on reddit that engage in this sort of behavior. Based on what I've seen on HN, the same applies here.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
mc32 11y ago
Sometimes what happens is an old industry dies out or matures, say heavy manufacturing, the dumping happened long before there were strict anti-pollution regulations, but the area is otherwise nice and in an central or attractive location, so housing gets built. Then people learn heavy metals and other chemicals which leached into the soil are unhealthy. Some times people know about it and a superfund gets declared, other times it was forgotten and people find out many years later. New developments in Mountain View[1], for example, sit on top of superfund sites. Some of which cannot be alleviated but rather "managed". Hunter's point in Sf is another example. That was a navy shipyard with lots of lead heavy metals and other things from WWII war effort --but people eventually built out housing there. [1]http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/19/google-mountain-view-toxic-waste http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/19/google-...
JohnTHaller 11y ago
I'd wager you're being downvoted by the paid downvoters that exist on reddit and other sites that now seem to be on HN for asking things like that. It's a valid question and there are valid downvoted responses below.
dalke 11y ago
Your posting history suggests to me that you know the answer already. At the very least, you have a much more intimate knowledge of US laws and politics than your question, which is posed as a complete outsider, implies. For example, you post about political "ponerology (study of evil in politics)" ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10548272 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10548272 ), and bring up economics often. You also have a non-trivial knowledge of US political history, as with this comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10404379 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10404379 : > That's false, because the Democratic party today encapsulates both the old Republican and the old Democratic party. Hillary Clinton is essentially an Eisenhower Republican (if you place her into any European country she's in their conservative party), and Warren/Sanders are the left wing group. > The republican party of today is essentially a business lobby masquerading as a party. Place it into any European country, and it will be a far right extremist group. Did you learn American political history from going to school at Dartmouth? I think it's odd you didn't learn about any of the pollution laws during that time. You also have pretty firm ideas on the topic already, based on your comments at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10142290 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10142290: > The US is a dystopia, no surprises there. What a shame that all humans are anymore are an outpost of corporate greed. and at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10440304 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10440304 : > The more I think about it, the more I believe that the United States is the worst place to live if you are poor. > There are places that are poorer, hell I'm from a third world country. But I've never seen anyone in the third world show utter contempt for the poor. No one keeps reminding the poor that it's their fault. We call them "unfortunate", Americans call them "losers". (I'll note that two people, one with experience from India - where you are from - and Bangladesh, and the other with experience from Islamabad, disagree.) I see you are familiar with being downvoted, such as like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10411502 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10411502 where you propose "We should engage in a culling of humans." Then again, perhaps I am simply part of the "political-myopia of tech culture" that you bemoaned about at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10516056 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10516056 .
- littletimmy 11y ago
  Well, no. I do not know anything about US laws. I do know stuff about US politics and history, however. I also know stuff about British history, but not British laws. What's the point of this long list you've compiled?
maxerickson 11y ago
The paper is linked in the article: http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/11/1/015004 http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/11/1/015... They apparently analyzed population density near their outliers, but they don't discuss it. My general sense is that polluting industry will be located in areas with very low population density (these areas tend to be poorer than high density areas). To be clear, that's just speculation. They also don't discuss the actual expected impact of the toxic outliers. The data they used to determine the outliers is government data about environmental release of toxic chemicals; there is at least the possibility that the releases are within sensible regulatory limits and don't pose a great deal of risk to the people nearby. Note all the people commenting in this story that pollution of the Flint river is not a significant contributor to the problem in Flint, it's the pipes and the failure to adjust the PH of the water (here's the VTech professor that did a lot of the advocacy blaming the lack of corrosion control: http://flintwaterstudy.org/2015/09/commentary-mdeq-mistakes-deception-flint-water-crisis/ http://flintwaterstudy.org/2015/09/commentary-mdeq-mistakes-... ).

As a non-american, this is so strange. Doesn't the US have pollution laws that say you cannot pollute near where people live? That seems to me like a very fundamental responsibility of the state.

hanniabu 11y ago

There are pollution laws, but unfortunately companies receive only relatively minimal fines. So depending on the substance and quantity 'accidentally' leaked, it may actually be a cost saving for the company. And granted, in sure a lot of pollution actually is accidental, but even there the reasons are likely due to the company cutting costs which led to an accident. For instance, let's say there's a bake that had a high likelihood of soon failing. When you take into consideration the cost of a replacement valve, service to replace it, and down time of processes that depend on this valve and compare it to the amount you'd get fined for a spill if the valve fails, many companies will take the risk of the valve failing because the fines just aren't high enough. The other thing is that there's almost never any jail time for those that were involved in the decision making process to take that risk. Case in point, BP oil spill, nobody has served jail time even though there were numerous reports that people were aware of the risks of continuing to operate without replacing the valve that failed.

mc32 11y ago
Also sometimes very poor counties, think Alabama, Kentucky, Wa Va, will attract companies who need to dispose of pollutants but at a price, in order to extract revenue for an otherwise unproductive, resource-poor county. That's to say, they provide landfill space at a relatively low price. It's unfortunate, but it happens.[1] [1]http://www.alternet.org/books/how-corporations-dump-their-toxic-sludge-areas-filled-poor-people http://www.alternet.org/books/how-corporations-dump-their-to...

JohnTHaller 11y ago

The fines are low. The regulations are not well enforced. The organizations that are supposed to enforce the regulations keep having their funding cut. And certain political groups are trying to strip the regulations and the funding further.

lobster_johnson 11y ago
This recent article [1] is a great example of all four facts. DuPont knew for half a century that their chemical, PFOA, was poisonous to people and to drinking water, yet kept exposing their own workers and dumping it in places where it killed livestock, leeched into the soil and contaminated water supplies. DuPont is still fighting regulations, and fighting thousands of personal injury lawsuits in court, one by one. It settled with the EPA for $16.5m — essentially nothing. The EPA's role is to regulate, but it is basically powerless to do so. Meanwhile, PFOA and related fluorochemicals are now apparently present in the bloodstream of almost all animals and people on Earth — including everyone on HN — as well as much of our drinking water. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/10/magazine/the-lawyer-who-became-duponts-worst-nightmare.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/10/magazine/the-lawyer-who-be...
- JohnTHaller 11y ago
  It won't matter how many facts you quote here, you'll still be downvoted for stating it for some reason. There are quite a few paid downvoters on reddit that engage in this sort of behavior. Based on what I've seen on HN, the same applies here.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

mc32 11y ago

Sometimes what happens is an old industry dies out or matures, say heavy manufacturing, the dumping happened long before there were strict anti-pollution regulations, but the area is otherwise nice and in an central or attractive location, so housing gets built. Then people learn heavy metals and other chemicals which leached into the soil are unhealthy. Some times people know about it and a superfund gets declared, other times it was forgotten and people find out many years later. New developments in Mountain View[1], for example, sit on top of superfund sites. Some of which cannot be alleviated but rather "managed". Hunter's point in Sf is another example. That was a navy shipyard with lots of lead heavy metals and other things from WWII war effort --but people eventually built out housing there. [1]http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/19/google-mountain-view-toxic-waste http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/19/google-...

JohnTHaller 11y ago

I'd wager you're being downvoted by the paid downvoters that exist on reddit and other sites that now seem to be on HN for asking things like that. It's a valid question and there are valid downvoted responses below.

dalke 11y ago

Your posting history suggests to me that you know the answer already. At the very least, you have a much more intimate knowledge of US laws and politics than your question, which is posed as a complete outsider, implies. For example, you post about political "ponerology (study of evil in politics)" ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10548272 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10548272 ), and bring up economics often. You also have a non-trivial knowledge of US political history, as with this comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10404379 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10404379 : > That's false, because the Democratic party today encapsulates both the old Republican and the old Democratic party. Hillary Clinton is essentially an Eisenhower Republican (if you place her into any European country she's in their conservative party), and Warren/Sanders are the left wing group. > The republican party of today is essentially a business lobby masquerading as a party. Place it into any European country, and it will be a far right extremist group. Did you learn American political history from going to school at Dartmouth? I think it's odd you didn't learn about any of the pollution laws during that time. You also have pretty firm ideas on the topic already, based on your comments at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10142290 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10142290: > The US is a dystopia, no surprises there. What a shame that all humans are anymore are an outpost of corporate greed. and at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10440304 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10440304 : > The more I think about it, the more I believe that the United States is the worst place to live if you are poor. > There are places that are poorer, hell I'm from a third world country. But I've never seen anyone in the third world show utter contempt for the poor. No one keeps reminding the poor that it's their fault. We call them "unfortunate", Americans call them "losers". (I'll note that two people, one with experience from India - where you are from - and Bangladesh, and the other with experience from Islamabad, disagree.) I see you are familiar with being downvoted, such as like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10411502 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10411502 where you propose "We should engage in a culling of humans." Then again, perhaps I am simply part of the "political-myopia of tech culture" that you bemoaned about at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10516056 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10516056 .

littletimmy 11y ago
Well, no. I do not know anything about US laws. I do know stuff about US politics and history, however. I also know stuff about British history, but not British laws. What's the point of this long list you've compiled?

maxerickson 11y ago

The paper is linked in the article: http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/11/1/015004 http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/11/1/015... They apparently analyzed population density near their outliers, but they don't discuss it. My general sense is that polluting industry will be located in areas with very low population density (these areas tend to be poorer than high density areas). To be clear, that's just speculation. They also don't discuss the actual expected impact of the toxic outliers. The data they used to determine the outliers is government data about environmental release of toxic chemicals; there is at least the possibility that the releases are within sensible regulatory limits and don't pose a great deal of risk to the people nearby. Note all the people commenting in this story that pollution of the Flint river is not a significant contributor to the problem in Flint, it's the pipes and the failure to adjust the PH of the water (here's the VTech professor that did a lot of the advocacy blaming the lack of corrosion control: http://flintwaterstudy.org/2015/09/commentary-mdeq-mistakes-deception-flint-water-crisis/ http://flintwaterstudy.org/2015/09/commentary-mdeq-mistakes-... ).