3 ms·

precautionary principle is the answer. industry must have the burden to prove something is safe before using it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_p

precautionary principle is the answer. industry must have the burden to prove something is safe before using it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle

master_crab 4y ago
It’s very difficult (if not impossible) to prove chemicals are safe. All regulatory bodies can really do is prove that something is not safe.
- southerntofu 4y ago
  > It’s very difficult (if not impossible) to prove chemicals are safe. Yes, but it's certainly possible to rule out entire classes of harms by asking the right questions before putting a product on the market. Maybe 100% safe is impossible but 99% is still a pretty low bar/standard when it comes to health/pollution risks. The problem is in the current situation, corporations push toxic products on everyone that they either know to be toxic or really don't want to find out. Then we wait for people to get sick and die, then finally after it becomes a too big scandal for corporate PR and government regulators to pretend they didn't see, they start to maybe study the problem and issue guidelines. This timeline is so broken and we see the same thing in the medical world where substances we'd known to be harmful for years/decades kept on being marketed and prescribed to unknowing patients. I personally have no faith in governments (who created or benefited from these abuses), but if you're a believer in regulations, the bare minimum they can do is publish 100% of toxicity claims/studies without any delay from submission (public inbox). This could help in that whistleblowers are often coming forward with such claims (such as the EDF nuclear whistleblower lately) but it's hard for them to find a platform, and for the public to get informed.
  - fuzzfactor 4y ago
    >corporations push toxic products on everyone One aspect we have, is defense materials being mass-produced for potentially large-scale warfare, then really raking in the bucks when a consumer application can be found. That way everybody wants some, not just soldiers. And if it's consumable, so much better since that calls for continuous mass-production. And where's it all going to end up? What part of the environment? Well, that's diferent for different materials. Sometimes a material itself is highly disruptive, other times it's the vast quantities that end up being mass-produced. Even then the risk of an unforseen toxic outcome has always been underestimated.
- washbrain 4y ago
  Sure, but if your chemical can enter the hydrosphere and never break down, we should maybe study it for a long long long time before applying it to everything.
- ksidudwbw 4y ago
  If it binds to hormone receptors it's pretty brain dead easy
- DemocracyFTW2 4y ago
  Since it will be practically impossible to remove PFAs from the planet's surface and atmosphere short of hoping it will all eventually wash out and gets buried in sediments (but will it, ever?), when so much is at stake at our very existential foundations, I believe we should forego the immediate wide-scale application of novel compounds unless they have plausibly be shown to be safe. Yes, that can prove to be very difficult but somehow I feel having one less formula for making anti-stick pans or, historically, having to use a slightly more expensive antiknock agent are small prices to pay if it keeps the air and the water free from chemicals that cause troubles for decades if not centuries for uncounted numbers of people and animals. There's always some risk left no matter the rigor of testing. Shouldn't keep us from doing our best.
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
  And yet it's potentially very easy to prove something is unsafe, or likely to have unforeseen effects. In vitro bioassays, animal testing. Lots of the chemicals causing problems today could have fairly easily been screened out this way. Just because epistemologically it's impossible to ever know for sure something is safe, that's not a justification for going ahead with almost no testing at all.
voisin 4y ago
Exactly! The burden of proof to prove that something is harmful somehow landed on the public, which allowed harmful things to continue to be in use for years (decades!) while things were litigated and all manner of disinformation was pushed out by industry. This should never have been allowed to be the case. Slightly off topic: The recent movie starring Mark Ruffalo, Dark Water, is excellent. It covers PFAS and one lawyer’s fight to bring it to light. Very similar to the excellent “A Civil Action” starring John Travolta in the 90s or early 2000s (obligatory: the book is far better than the movie).
jhbadger 4y ago
Nothing in science can be "proven". Proof only exists in mathematics and logic. You can't prove something is safe, but you can provide evidence that it is unsafe. And generally the best evidence for something being unsafe is unfortunately only available after something is in widespread use because then the links to cancer, birth defects, or whatever can be found. There are lesser forms of evidence based on testing on animals and cell lines than can be done before the widespread use, but these have a lot of both false positives and false negatives.
- Tao3300 4y ago
  Induction usually works, so we think it will work tomorrow. But that in turn is... uh oh!

master_crab 4y ago

It’s very difficult (if not impossible) to prove chemicals are safe. All regulatory bodies can really do is prove that something is not safe.

southerntofu 4y ago
> It’s very difficult (if not impossible) to prove chemicals are safe. Yes, but it's certainly possible to rule out entire classes of harms by asking the right questions before putting a product on the market. Maybe 100% safe is impossible but 99% is still a pretty low bar/standard when it comes to health/pollution risks. The problem is in the current situation, corporations push toxic products on everyone that they either know to be toxic or really don't want to find out. Then we wait for people to get sick and die, then finally after it becomes a too big scandal for corporate PR and government regulators to pretend they didn't see, they start to maybe study the problem and issue guidelines. This timeline is so broken and we see the same thing in the medical world where substances we'd known to be harmful for years/decades kept on being marketed and prescribed to unknowing patients. I personally have no faith in governments (who created or benefited from these abuses), but if you're a believer in regulations, the bare minimum they can do is publish 100% of toxicity claims/studies without any delay from submission (public inbox). This could help in that whistleblowers are often coming forward with such claims (such as the EDF nuclear whistleblower lately) but it's hard for them to find a platform, and for the public to get informed.
- fuzzfactor 4y ago
  >corporations push toxic products on everyone One aspect we have, is defense materials being mass-produced for potentially large-scale warfare, then really raking in the bucks when a consumer application can be found. That way everybody wants some, not just soldiers. And if it's consumable, so much better since that calls for continuous mass-production. And where's it all going to end up? What part of the environment? Well, that's diferent for different materials. Sometimes a material itself is highly disruptive, other times it's the vast quantities that end up being mass-produced. Even then the risk of an unforseen toxic outcome has always been underestimated.
washbrain 4y ago
Sure, but if your chemical can enter the hydrosphere and never break down, we should maybe study it for a long long long time before applying it to everything.
ksidudwbw 4y ago
If it binds to hormone receptors it's pretty brain dead easy
DemocracyFTW2 4y ago
Since it will be practically impossible to remove PFAs from the planet's surface and atmosphere short of hoping it will all eventually wash out and gets buried in sediments (but will it, ever?), when so much is at stake at our very existential foundations, I believe we should forego the immediate wide-scale application of novel compounds unless they have plausibly be shown to be safe. Yes, that can prove to be very difficult but somehow I feel having one less formula for making anti-stick pans or, historically, having to use a slightly more expensive antiknock agent are small prices to pay if it keeps the air and the water free from chemicals that cause troubles for decades if not centuries for uncounted numbers of people and animals. There's always some risk left no matter the rigor of testing. Shouldn't keep us from doing our best.
mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
And yet it's potentially very easy to prove something is unsafe, or likely to have unforeseen effects. In vitro bioassays, animal testing. Lots of the chemicals causing problems today could have fairly easily been screened out this way. Just because epistemologically it's impossible to ever know for sure something is safe, that's not a justification for going ahead with almost no testing at all.

voisin 4y ago

Exactly! The burden of proof to prove that something is harmful somehow landed on the public, which allowed harmful things to continue to be in use for years (decades!) while things were litigated and all manner of disinformation was pushed out by industry. This should never have been allowed to be the case. Slightly off topic: The recent movie starring Mark Ruffalo, Dark Water, is excellent. It covers PFAS and one lawyer’s fight to bring it to light. Very similar to the excellent “A Civil Action” starring John Travolta in the 90s or early 2000s (obligatory: the book is far better than the movie).

jhbadger 4y ago

Nothing in science can be "proven". Proof only exists in mathematics and logic. You can't prove something is safe, but you can provide evidence that it is unsafe. And generally the best evidence for something being unsafe is unfortunately only available after something is in widespread use because then the links to cancer, birth defects, or whatever can be found. There are lesser forms of evidence based on testing on animals and cell lines than can be done before the widespread use, but these have a lot of both false positives and false negatives.

Tao3300 4y ago
Induction usually works, so we think it will work tomorrow. But that in turn is... uh oh!