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We know that these chemicals are terrible for human, animal, and plant health. There isn't a debate. We know which companies are responsible for polluting. The

We know that these chemicals are terrible for human, animal, and plant health. There isn't a debate. We know which companies are responsible for polluting. They've been doing it for years, knowing the damages in greater and greater detail all along the way. Why aren't we forcing the polluters to pay for the cleanup as well as the likely-tremendous costs of damage to people's health and the ecosystem? And why aren't these chemicals banned? At what point does the government do anything about widespread problems like this? We don't get much of anything in the way of protection from bad domestic actors (in this case, polluters) for our tax dollars. It's getting quite tiring to live in a country where the rules seem to be "anarchy for thee, and profits for me".

sp332 3y ago
[Edit: sorry, I was confused here]
- multiplegeorges 3y ago
  The wikipedia page has detailed discussion and many references for you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Per-_and_polyfluoroalkyl_substances https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Per-_and_polyfluoroalkyl_subst...
  - RandallBrown 3y ago
    The wikipedia page definitely doesn't make it sound like there's no debate at all.
cwkoss 3y ago
The companies don't have nearly enough assets to pay for clean up. Would be more just to seize them and auction them off for enough funds to do 1-5% cleanup, but that would probably be an uphill battle politically.
- Brusco_RF 3y ago
  Any genuinely terrible idea should be an uphill battle politically. Do you know how much you, personally, benefit from modern material science? Do you think our nation could even operate with out Bayer, Dupont, 3M and the likes?
  - e1g 3y ago
    We are about to find out if we can do without 3M as they face eradication from a $140B cleanup litigation https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-06-02/3m-heads-to-trial-in-existential-143-billion-pfas-litigation https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-06-02/3m-heads-...
    - autoexec 3y ago
      We could always keep the company and fry the shareholders and executives responsible. If there ever were a company the nation couldn't do without, the only sane answer is for the government to take it over for national security reasons. Otherwise that company could hold the US hostage, or be bought out/taken over by foreign interests and used to collapse the entire country while we'd be powerless to stop it.
      - Brusco_RF 3y ago
        What you are describing is "expropriation." Cuba and Venezuela both did it. So if you want the US to look more like Venezuela, keep it up
        autoexec 3y ago
        As if that was the one thing that put Venezuela in the position it is in now. Venezuela does a lot of things we already do in the US too, but somehow we aren't identical either. Maybe our situations are more complex than "this one weird trick will salvage/destroy your country"
- nomel 3y ago
s5300 3y ago
[dead]
concordDance 3y ago
> We know that these chemicals are terrible for human, animal, and plant health. There isn't a debate. A statement with neither nuance (no distinguishing the types of chemicals) nor precision (no quantification), either false (because we do not actually know for certain that all of them cause noticeable quality of life decrease even at tapwater concentrations) or trivial and meaningless (e.g. enough of any substance will harm health). Here's the article: > High concentrations of some PFAS may lead to adverse health risks in people, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Research is still ongoing to better understand the potential health effects of PFAS exposure over long periods of time. Simply saying "There isn't a debate." doesn't make a statement true. It's certainly true that some of these chemicals have good evidence for harming human health at concentrations people could actually encounter them in. It's not true that we know this for all of them, nor what concentrations cause issues. Your post reads like a call to action, rather than a curious and considered analysis. The propagation of these types of posts makes hackernews a worse place as more and more people use it to proselytise rather than explore, discuss and learn. If you wished to actually contribute you could cite some form of meta study giving a breakdown of the health effects of the various chemicals at certain concentrations.
jwagenet 3y ago
> And why aren't these chemicals banned? Not saying they shouldn’t be, but a problem is companies will just move on the the next, likely bad, similar chemical until it is also banned. I’ve seen suggestions to require chemicals to be proven not dangerous before widespread use, but this seems untenable. Perhaps the best solution is not to ban the chemicals themselves, but to obligate containment of waste, regardless of if it’s “bad”.
- losteric 3y ago
  Why would a robust testing process prove to be untenable? We have a fairly high bar in medicine. For all it's flaws on the care and payment side, the medical research process seems robust without shortage of innovation.
  - mc32 3y ago
    After effects can take decades to detect.
    - autoexec 3y ago
      But often they don't and wouldn't it be nice to catch those at the very least?
  - jwagenet 3y ago
    In the US, it seems at the policy level this would be impossible to implement. From a practicality level, it would take very long to validate to the point of stifling innovation (good or bad) and would require international cooperation. Compared to medical research, medical interventions are risk based at the individual level and we are willing to accept marginal improvement with awful side effects. Chemicals apply risk at a societal level and settng by appropriate limits seems difficult vs mandating better waste containment.
- smallerfish 3y ago
  That's supposedly what the EU requires - https://chemicalsinourlife.echa.europa.eu/how-are-chemicals-controlled https://chemicalsinourlife.echa.europa.eu/how-are-chemicals-... I know they have issues with PFAS, but I'm unclear whether that's just because they were grandfathered in, or enforcement is lax, or both.
AlanSE 3y ago
Not trying to be the troll, but this debate is missing the obvious retort. > Why aren't we forcing the polluters to pay for the cleanup Because then the manufacturing goes to China. It doesn't get cleaner, it might actually get worse. The pollution goes somewhere else. Economic anxiety (which is politically explosive, see 2016 election) goes up domestically. What we need is effective regulation, not bureaucratic us-versus-them regulation. We need more engineering spending and less legal spending. And as a consequence, yes, we need fewer choices in consumer products and higher prices, and we need consumer safety laws that prevent offshoring from undermining all of that.
- mc32 3y ago
  Also, what are viable alternatives? It seems like a game of whack a mole. Ban one chemical, use a new one, years later new one is worse. We could go back to pre plastics, enjoy less sterile things along with more disease, etc. someone’s gotta make the calculus.
  - Spivak 3y ago
    The answer is to have an allowlist but that's a political nonstarter. If we cut plastic use to just medical devices and food storage that would be a massive win.
  - logifail 3y ago
    > We could go back to pre plastics, enjoy less sterile things along with more disease Hint: it's actually about money, not sterility. A foodstuff packed in a glass jar with a metal screw-top isn't going to spoil any faster than the same thing in a plastic container, but the glass weighs more, and costs more, so if all other things are equal the retailer will of course opt for the supplier with the cheaper and lighter packaging.
    - mcpackieh 3y ago
      > A foodstuff packed in a glass jar with a metal screw-top isn't going to spoil any faster than the same thing in a plastic container, In fact glass is easier to sterilize; it isn't porous and holds up to high heat and chemical disinfectants like bleach. This makes it superior to plastic for food preservation.
duped 3y ago
> Why aren't we forcing the polluters to pay for the cleanup as well as the likely-tremendous costs of damage to people's health and the ecosystem We are (1), but to be frank the "payment" isn't enough. We need criminal liability for executives and board members. Apparently there's not enough incentive not to destroy public health for generations. > At what point does the government do anything about widespread problems like this? When they stop being corrupt. (1) https://www.wqad.com/article/news/local/public-safety/3m-contaminated-water-10-billion-settlement-drinking-polluted-qca/526-6dc91f82-a807-4d1f-a574-1d6206df843c https://www.wqad.com/article/news/local/public-safety/3m-con...
- tivert 3y ago
  >> Why aren't we forcing the polluters to pay for the cleanup as well as the likely-tremendous costs of damage to people's health and the ecosystem > We are (1), but to be frank the "payment" isn't enough. We need criminal liability for executives and board members. Apparently there's not enough incentive not to destroy public health for generations. Criminal liability for decision-makers is the way to go, along with some plan that wipes out the shareholders but otherwise doesn't destroy or cripple the company as a going concern. The company itself isn't guilty, and it has lots of innocent stakeholders (e.g. customers, lower-level employees) who would be harmed if it was damaged.
  - aoeusnth1 3y ago
    The govt should be able to sue the company for more than it’s worth and simply nationalize it if it wins. Think of it as a death penalty for corporations.
    - andruby 3y ago
      But that would also introduce a perverse incentive by giving the government a way to take over companies. (And yes I do believe that governments and/or individuals with power would abuse this for personal gain)
      - 3y ago
lend000 3y ago
> We know that these chemicals are terrible for human, animal, and plant health. There isn't a debate. Is that really true? My understanding is that studies show that people with the highest levels of PFAS have increased risk of liver disease. Exactly how much PFAS exposure results in significant risk is still unclear, considering a decent chunk of people eat food from PFAS lined food wrappers, cook in PFAS coated cookware, rub their teeth with PFAS coated dental floss, drink PFAS contaminated water, and touch PFAS coated clothing and other surfaces on a daily basis and do not have any obvious resulting problems. I'm not saying I disagree that there's a problem, and I personally try to reduce my exposure, but clearly the ratio of usefulness to toxicity is a lot better than with other substances, which have been more tightly controlled in recent history, such as lead and asbestos, and that's why the response has been less urgent. Even now, after decades of study, it isn't clear exactly what the effects are and how likely it is to affect people based on their daily habits.
jlmorton 3y ago
We need something like Betteridge's Law of Headlines for the phrase "There isn't a debate." Needless to say, when someone claims there is no debate, there is in fact a debate.
2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
> We know that these chemicals are terrible for human, animal, and plant health. There isn't a debate. Of course there is a debate. How bad are they? Has anyone died from them? How do we how know much compensation people deserve? If they are so terrible then why has it taken so long to pin that down?

sp332 3y ago

[Edit: sorry, I was confused here]

multiplegeorges 3y ago
The wikipedia page has detailed discussion and many references for you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Per-_and_polyfluoroalkyl_substances https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Per-_and_polyfluoroalkyl_subst...
- RandallBrown 3y ago
  The wikipedia page definitely doesn't make it sound like there's no debate at all.

cwkoss 3y ago

The companies don't have nearly enough assets to pay for clean up. Would be more just to seize them and auction them off for enough funds to do 1-5% cleanup, but that would probably be an uphill battle politically.

Brusco_RF 3y ago
Any genuinely terrible idea should be an uphill battle politically. Do you know how much you, personally, benefit from modern material science? Do you think our nation could even operate with out Bayer, Dupont, 3M and the likes?
- e1g 3y ago
  We are about to find out if we can do without 3M as they face eradication from a $140B cleanup litigation https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-06-02/3m-heads-to-trial-in-existential-143-billion-pfas-litigation https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-06-02/3m-heads-...
  - autoexec 3y ago
    We could always keep the company and fry the shareholders and executives responsible. If there ever were a company the nation couldn't do without, the only sane answer is for the government to take it over for national security reasons. Otherwise that company could hold the US hostage, or be bought out/taken over by foreign interests and used to collapse the entire country while we'd be powerless to stop it.
    - Brusco_RF 3y ago
      What you are describing is "expropriation." Cuba and Venezuela both did it. So if you want the US to look more like Venezuela, keep it up
      - autoexec 3y ago
        As if that was the one thing that put Venezuela in the position it is in now. Venezuela does a lot of things we already do in the US too, but somehow we aren't identical either. Maybe our situations are more complex than "this one weird trick will salvage/destroy your country"
nomel 3y ago

s5300 3y ago

[dead]

concordDance 3y ago

> We know that these chemicals are terrible for human, animal, and plant health. There isn't a debate. A statement with neither nuance (no distinguishing the types of chemicals) nor precision (no quantification), either false (because we do not actually know for certain that all of them cause noticeable quality of life decrease even at tapwater concentrations) or trivial and meaningless (e.g. enough of any substance will harm health). Here's the article: > High concentrations of some PFAS may lead to adverse health risks in people, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Research is still ongoing to better understand the potential health effects of PFAS exposure over long periods of time. Simply saying "There isn't a debate." doesn't make a statement true. It's certainly true that some of these chemicals have good evidence for harming human health at concentrations people could actually encounter them in. It's not true that we know this for all of them, nor what concentrations cause issues. Your post reads like a call to action, rather than a curious and considered analysis. The propagation of these types of posts makes hackernews a worse place as more and more people use it to proselytise rather than explore, discuss and learn. If you wished to actually contribute you could cite some form of meta study giving a breakdown of the health effects of the various chemicals at certain concentrations.

jwagenet 3y ago

> And why aren't these chemicals banned? Not saying they shouldn’t be, but a problem is companies will just move on the the next, likely bad, similar chemical until it is also banned. I’ve seen suggestions to require chemicals to be proven not dangerous before widespread use, but this seems untenable. Perhaps the best solution is not to ban the chemicals themselves, but to obligate containment of waste, regardless of if it’s “bad”.

losteric 3y ago
Why would a robust testing process prove to be untenable? We have a fairly high bar in medicine. For all it's flaws on the care and payment side, the medical research process seems robust without shortage of innovation.
- mc32 3y ago
  After effects can take decades to detect.
  - autoexec 3y ago
    But often they don't and wouldn't it be nice to catch those at the very least?
- jwagenet 3y ago
  In the US, it seems at the policy level this would be impossible to implement. From a practicality level, it would take very long to validate to the point of stifling innovation (good or bad) and would require international cooperation. Compared to medical research, medical interventions are risk based at the individual level and we are willing to accept marginal improvement with awful side effects. Chemicals apply risk at a societal level and settng by appropriate limits seems difficult vs mandating better waste containment.
smallerfish 3y ago
That's supposedly what the EU requires - https://chemicalsinourlife.echa.europa.eu/how-are-chemicals-controlled https://chemicalsinourlife.echa.europa.eu/how-are-chemicals-... I know they have issues with PFAS, but I'm unclear whether that's just because they were grandfathered in, or enforcement is lax, or both.

AlanSE 3y ago

Not trying to be the troll, but this debate is missing the obvious retort. > Why aren't we forcing the polluters to pay for the cleanup Because then the manufacturing goes to China. It doesn't get cleaner, it might actually get worse. The pollution goes somewhere else. Economic anxiety (which is politically explosive, see 2016 election) goes up domestically. What we need is effective regulation, not bureaucratic us-versus-them regulation. We need more engineering spending and less legal spending. And as a consequence, yes, we need fewer choices in consumer products and higher prices, and we need consumer safety laws that prevent offshoring from undermining all of that.

mc32 3y ago
Also, what are viable alternatives? It seems like a game of whack a mole. Ban one chemical, use a new one, years later new one is worse. We could go back to pre plastics, enjoy less sterile things along with more disease, etc. someone’s gotta make the calculus.
- Spivak 3y ago
  The answer is to have an allowlist but that's a political nonstarter. If we cut plastic use to just medical devices and food storage that would be a massive win.
- logifail 3y ago
  > We could go back to pre plastics, enjoy less sterile things along with more disease Hint: it's actually about money, not sterility. A foodstuff packed in a glass jar with a metal screw-top isn't going to spoil any faster than the same thing in a plastic container, but the glass weighs more, and costs more, so if all other things are equal the retailer will of course opt for the supplier with the cheaper and lighter packaging.
  - mcpackieh 3y ago
    > A foodstuff packed in a glass jar with a metal screw-top isn't going to spoil any faster than the same thing in a plastic container, In fact glass is easier to sterilize; it isn't porous and holds up to high heat and chemical disinfectants like bleach. This makes it superior to plastic for food preservation.

duped 3y ago

> Why aren't we forcing the polluters to pay for the cleanup as well as the likely-tremendous costs of damage to people's health and the ecosystem We are (1), but to be frank the "payment" isn't enough. We need criminal liability for executives and board members. Apparently there's not enough incentive not to destroy public health for generations. > At what point does the government do anything about widespread problems like this? When they stop being corrupt. (1) https://www.wqad.com/article/news/local/public-safety/3m-contaminated-water-10-billion-settlement-drinking-polluted-qca/526-6dc91f82-a807-4d1f-a574-1d6206df843c https://www.wqad.com/article/news/local/public-safety/3m-con...

tivert 3y ago
>> Why aren't we forcing the polluters to pay for the cleanup as well as the likely-tremendous costs of damage to people's health and the ecosystem > We are (1), but to be frank the "payment" isn't enough. We need criminal liability for executives and board members. Apparently there's not enough incentive not to destroy public health for generations. Criminal liability for decision-makers is the way to go, along with some plan that wipes out the shareholders but otherwise doesn't destroy or cripple the company as a going concern. The company itself isn't guilty, and it has lots of innocent stakeholders (e.g. customers, lower-level employees) who would be harmed if it was damaged.
- aoeusnth1 3y ago
  The govt should be able to sue the company for more than it’s worth and simply nationalize it if it wins. Think of it as a death penalty for corporations.
  - andruby 3y ago
    But that would also introduce a perverse incentive by giving the government a way to take over companies. (And yes I do believe that governments and/or individuals with power would abuse this for personal gain)
    - 3y ago

lend000 3y ago

> We know that these chemicals are terrible for human, animal, and plant health. There isn't a debate. Is that really true? My understanding is that studies show that people with the highest levels of PFAS have increased risk of liver disease. Exactly how much PFAS exposure results in significant risk is still unclear, considering a decent chunk of people eat food from PFAS lined food wrappers, cook in PFAS coated cookware, rub their teeth with PFAS coated dental floss, drink PFAS contaminated water, and touch PFAS coated clothing and other surfaces on a daily basis and do not have any obvious resulting problems. I'm not saying I disagree that there's a problem, and I personally try to reduce my exposure, but clearly the ratio of usefulness to toxicity is a lot better than with other substances, which have been more tightly controlled in recent history, such as lead and asbestos, and that's why the response has been less urgent. Even now, after decades of study, it isn't clear exactly what the effects are and how likely it is to affect people based on their daily habits.

jlmorton 3y ago

We need something like Betteridge's Law of Headlines for the phrase "There isn't a debate." Needless to say, when someone claims there is no debate, there is in fact a debate.

2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago

> We know that these chemicals are terrible for human, animal, and plant health. There isn't a debate. Of course there is a debate. How bad are they? Has anyone died from them? How do we how know much compensation people deserve? If they are so terrible then why has it taken so long to pin that down?