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But if it accumulates in the environment ?

• ben_w 5y ago
  Oxygen meets this definition, and is toxic to humans in high enough concentrations.
  • bamboozled 5y ago
    It's a different argument though, it's an organic material to start with which existent long before the industrial revolution. It's also 100% required for our survival. Fire retardants which are known to cause cancer or birth defects, I'm not so sure. Then there's the fact that Oxyten is literally everwhere, do you want those retardants to be everywhere too, in your lungs?
    • ben_w 5y ago
      > Fire retardants which are known to cause cancer or birth defects, I'm not so sure. On the other hand, they’re very good at stopping you from burning to death. Even the ones we have banned (or will ban) and replaced with others are very good at preventing a really really bad way to die. Also, quite a lot of toxic things are also organic, regardless of if you’re using that word in the chemical sense or the “it’s natural” sense.
      • zionic 5y ago
        They’re not good though. Hold an open flame or shorting electrical wire to a coated surface and it will burn just the same. Flame retardants only really give you a slight edge vs a burning cigarette on a couch. We coated our couches, clothes, carpets etc in cancerous chemicals to save a few smokers that passed out drunk
        • mensetmanusman 5y ago
          Burn isn’t binary, rate matters to give humans time to flee…
          • zionic 5y ago
            Flame retardants have no measurable impact on burn rate once the burn has started. We literally coated everything in carcinogenic chemicals for the dumbest of reasons.
        • ben_w 5y ago
          In addition to what @mensetmanusman says: They also save the families of those smokers, and people like my sister who knocked over a candle and had enough time to put it out despite not having a fire extinguisher, and people like me who forgot food on the stove one time, or people like my dad who missed when pouring burning brandy onto a Christmas puddings. If you still find this unconvincing, ask yourself why life expectancy has gone up rather than down since the invention and mandated use of fire retardants.
          • zionic 5y ago
            My argument is the net harm of coating everything in carcinogens and endocrine disruptors outweighs the fringe benefit. Flame retardants don’t eliminate fire, they give you an extremely small chance of preventing one in very specific scenarios.
  • moffkalast 5y ago
    And where on the planet do you find oxygen in such concentrations? It doesn't build up in the environment to a lethal degree, unlike most local pollutants. CO would be a better comparison, and we have actual detectors for it in houses.
    • ben_w 5y ago
      > And where on the planet do you find oxygen in such concentrations? That shouldn’t matter. My point is the standard being called for is ridiculous because it would also ban oxygen for being (1) toxic and (2) accumulating in the environment.
      • moffkalast 5y ago
        > for being (1) toxic and (2) accumulating in the environment to a harmful degree I'm sure the actual standard surely takes accumulation levels into account otherwise it wouldn't make any sense at all, as you say. Unlike in the US, EU laws aren't usually written by idiots.
    • bonzini 5y ago
      It's partial pressure not concentration. Air is toxic if you have 60 m of water above your head, but nowhere on earth do you have oxygen at 1.4 atm of partial pressure. (Oxygen toxicity is really the one thing in recreational scuba diving training where they tell you "do this and you will positively die").
  • bawolff 5y ago
    Oxygen does not accumulate in the environment in sufficient doses to be toxic. It is plausible that the other chemicals under discussion do, or at least it makes it much more difficult to have dosing discussions when its unclear at what level it accumulates in environment.
    • ben_w 5y ago
      It caused one of the major mass extinction events on earth, some life still finds it toxic, and the point I was trying and failing to make is that the definition given was insufficient because dose is important.
      • bawolff 5y ago
        Nobody disagrees that dose is important. Your point is failing to land because you are attacking a straw man and not the point the original person was making.
        • ben_w 5y ago
          Noted. I sincerely got the impression the person I was responding to was disagreeing that dose is important, given what they were responding to.