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The EPA wants total removal of lead pipes
- bfrog 3y agoIs it such a terrible thing? If there’s money to make it happen then by all means. Know my home town though it could plow through all that money and get all of one neighborhood worth of service lines replaced. Atrocious inefficiency would be an understatement.
- scotty79 3y agoThis should have been done 20 years ago.
- toomuchtodo 3y agoSecond best time is today.
- oyashirochama 3y agoAt the cost of hundreds of billions and disruption of nearly every road in the USA, yes. Doing it in the more vulnerable areas should be done first and if the lead solder has stabilized, work those areas last. Over a period of 20-30 years is better since that's roughly how long it took to install in the first place. This would lower the price and economic costs too. (this is what they do btw)
- instagib 3y agoWhy you should drain your hot water heater regularly and not use hot water for drinking: https://blogs.edf.org/health/2018/02/26/lead-hot-water-issue-worth-testing/ https://blogs.edf.org/health/2018/02/26/lead-hot-water-issue... They’re lead traps.
- doubled112 3y agoI was always taught to use cold water for anything to do with food. Never thought of lead.
- quickthrower2 3y agoProbably because hot water is stored and if it happens to go below a certain temperature bacteria can multiply
- bregma 3y agoWater that's been sitting in a heater tank is oxygen-deprived and tastes dull when you use it for food preparation. That's the main reason to use aerated cold water instead of water from the hot-water system.
- EnigmaFlare 3y agoIn some houses, the hot water is fed by an open header tank in the ceiling. Whatever dust, dead mice or bird poos fall into that, can contaminate the tap water. I went off drinking hot water as a kid after seeing the deep layer of fine dust built up in the bottom of it.
- samtho 3y agoAs pointed out in a different comment thread here, that’s a header tank which was used in older, multi-level buildings where city water pressure was not adequate for the rise to upper floors. Builders would set up a tank that slowly filled using the lower pressure and could act as a sort of mini water tower for the building. This did not contain hot water, but there is a chance a hot water tank was using this supply.
- EnigmaFlare 3y agoWhere I lived, the cold water was at much higher pressure than hot. I assumed it was common for cold to be mains pressure and hot to be from a header tank when present. Maybe it was an unusual case of retrofitted hot water (house was likely built before the invention of hot water).
- bgentry 3y agoUnless you have a tankless water heater and no lead pipes in your house, in which case it’s fine to use the hot water from the tankless water heater for food / coffee / tea. At least that’s my understanding.
- __MatrixMan__ 3y agoThat's my understanding also. I only do it if I was already using hot water recently though. It seems pretty wasteful to pour all of that perfectly good cold water down the drain while I wait for the hot stuff to get to the faucet.
- oooyay 3y agoI have a tankless water heater. Does anyone know how accurate these things are? https://www.amazon.com/Safe-Home-LEAD-Drinking-Water/dp/B091JKJSL4 https://www.amazon.com/Safe-Home-LEAD-Drinking-Water/dp/B091... I'm down to do some weekend science.
- jzelinskie 3y agoDoes this mean I shouldn't be doing my dishes with hot water?
- lotsofpulp 3y agoI assume if you have a newer house with PVC or PEX piping, this is not a concern.
- doubled112 3y agoShould we worry about plastics instead?
- stephen_g 3y agoPEX (and polyethylene in general) is one of the least concerning plastics, it’s not worth worrying about on that front. (I wouldn’t want to drink out of PVC though since it often contains phthalates as a plasticiser).
- exmadscientist 3y agoRigid PVC has few if any plasticizers. (This makes sense: it isn't very plastic!) This is the type usually used for water pipe, at least around here. It's probably not very dangerous. Flexible PVC is nasty.
- lazide 3y agoAlmost certainly, though most of the problematic plasticizers (anecdotally) probably work themselves out in the first couple years. We likely won't see any real studies on it for awhile though, but [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S004896972101442X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00489...] is concerning. "In the US, PEX pipe manufacturers often request a pipe to be certified in accordance with the NSF International/ANSI 61 Standard leaching procedure (NSF International, 1988). However, the results are not made public and the water that contacts the pipe for its first 90 days is discarded and not tested. Therefore, there is a general lack of available data to be used for an LCA on US PEX pipe products." Water in plastic pipes is pretty stanky at first, especially the first couple months/weeks. PEX has issues with permeability - it's highly oxygen and chemical permeable. Also contaminants from manufacture working themselves out. PVC has a lot of plasticizers and stabilizers, and warmer temps make it leach faster. Many of them endocrine disruptors. That said, no such thing as a free lunch. And as long as the water is kept moving, chances are it's fine after awhile. Avoid the 'stanky water fountain' effect by letting the water run a bit before drinking/using it if you're worried.
- Infernal 3y agoIf it’s a lead trap… wouldn’t that mean the water that comes out has less lead in it than the water that goes in? Assuming the water going into the heater is the same as the water coming out of your cold tap.
- throwaway89201 3y agoNo, the article states that lead particles from upstream get trapped inside the water heater, which then gradually dissolve, especially when left stagnant overnight.
- mattmaroon 3y agoRight but all those particles just end up in your glass in the cold water supply right? Better they get trapped in heater.
- anonymouskimmer 3y agoWhether or not it's a good idea would really depend on what percentage of hot versus cold water ends up consumed (versus used for non-consumption purposes). Over the lifetime of the undissolved lead accumulation.
- adrianN 3y agoI believe elemental lead is not terrible when ingested, but lead ions are much worse.
- Paul-Craft 3y agoYeah, metallic lead is pretty safe to handle overall, as long as you don't inhale the dust. I wouldn't want to go trying to ingest it, but the amount of incidental exposure you'd get from handling, say, a lead brick at room temperature, is not much of a worry. Wash your hands after handling it, wear proper PPE, and you should be fine. Edit: this isn't counting stuff like using lead solder. In that case, ventilate the crap out of your work area (preferably doing the work under a hood), wear PPE, and clean any equipment used.
- superseeplus 3y agoMost dishwashers are connected to hot water. Some higher end dishwashers can work with cold water, but the cheaper ones don’t. Does this mean using a dishwasher is a problem as well?
- 15457345234 3y agoThis must be a US-centric thing, having had many dishwashers in my time and having never seen one with anything other than a cold water inlet. I assume this is related to the availability of 230v/15A for the heater element.
- wkipling 3y agoMust be. I'd say most dishwashers are connected to the mains supply and not pre heated.
- crazygringo 3y agoIf you have hot water, why wouldn't you use that for the water connection? My dishwasher has a heating element, but the colder the water is, the more it has to work. So if it's cheaper to use gas-powered hot water from the boiler than to heat it electrically, why wouldn't you? And it's there in the kitchen right next to the sink which has hot water available anyways, so it's kind of a no-brainer. Yes, I'm in the US -- you can see on a kind of average dishwasher installation manual [1], it specifically instructs you to connect it to a hot water line. [1] https://www.whirlpool.com/content/dam/global/documents/201012/installation-instructions-W10282559-RevA.pdf https://www.whirlpool.com/content/dam/global/documents/20101...
- adrianN 3y agoMy dishwasher uses sufficiently little water that it would get mostly cold water from the hot water pipe.
- crazygringo 3y agoYeah, the standard advice is actually to run your kitchen faucet on hot until you get hot water, before you start the dishwasher. I'm always rinsing off the bigger gunks of food with hot water anyways as I load the dishwasher, so it's hot already. At the end of the day it doesn't matter that much. The main point is just, if you have hot water available, it's hard to see why you wouldn't take advantage of that.
- mattmaroon 3y agoThis is a really stupid testing method. They should have tested both water supplies at the faucet. This does seem to indicate the hot water tank is removing lead from the water and thus you would be better drinking it than cold unless something is going on between the heater and your faucet.
- stjohnswarts 3y agodrinking hot tap water is really dumb considering this and also legionnaire's disease potential
- mattmaroon 3y agoOther way around. This would indicate cold water has more lead.
- mattmaroon 3y agoAlso, Legionnaires isn’t a risk from your water heater.
- stjohnswarts 3y agoit is if you don't turn the temperature up high enough.
- washadjeffmad 3y agoThis remarkably old advice from a time before modern water treatment, sacrificial anodes, and automated temperature control is also why so many recipes instruct to "fill a pot with cold water" before it's boiled. Although, seeing the inside of an old water heater is all anyone would need to convince them to leave the hot water for washing.
- mschuster91 3y agoGiven that many people leave their plumbing/water system in their homes be just the way it is for decades, it's still wise advice.
- CalRobert 3y agoThere are places where the hot water is in an open (!) container in the attic and it could have dead rodents, etc. in it. Ireland, for one - which is part of the persistence of separate hot/cold taps in bathrooms.
- globular-toast 3y agoYes, that's called a header tank. It's common throughout the UK too. It means low water pressure, especially upstairs. The actual hot water is still in an insulated tank within the house. The header tank holds cold water. Most new installations are unvented systems with no header tank, but this comes with its own tradeoffs. The hot/cold tap thing is funny. We were just taught not to drink from the bathroom tap at all. It still seems gross to me when people do or like in hotels where you have to.
- denton-scratch 3y agoThe header tank is to maintain pressurisation in the radiator heating system; modern "combi" boilers don't need a header tank.
- Angostura 3y agoI think you might be thinking of the cold water tank in the attic that was historically used to feed decent cold water pressure to the upstairs taps only. This is why I was told to never drink out of the taps upstairs as a kid. Think these up much rarer these days. Hot water is always stored in an insulated hotwater cylinder in the UK, not open.
- kleiba 3y agoI don't follow. My hot water is heated up about 60cm before the tap, as it runs through. Is that a regional thing? Are you saying that you're keeping a large quantity of water at temperature at all times just in case someone might need it later? Wouldn't that be super inefficient energy-wise?
- I_Am_Nous 3y agoThis is the standard North American approach, we have large insulated tanks that hold water at generally 38-48 degrees Celsius. My home uses a 40 gallon "water heater" using natural gas with an always burning pilot light. It's possible to "run out of hot water" as a result.
- argiopetech 3y agoThe common statistics I've heard is 30% of household energy usage goes to keeping the hot water heater at temp. How much of your power usage is water heating?
- woobar 3y agoLooked at my natural gas usage. In the summer it only used for water heating/keeping it hot at 10 therms/month. Total annual gas usage is 700+ therms. 12*10/700 = 17%. And this includes both heating and keeping it hot. This site [1] quotes 0.0113 therms to heat a gallon of water. 120 therms / 0.0113 / 365 = 29 gals of hot water per day. This place [2] estimates 41 gallons of hot water per day used during peak demand. My estimate is that we use more for showers, less for washers/dishwashers, same for faucets. Looks like I would spend all of my BTUs on heating these 29 gals of water every day. Most likely close to single digits %% for keeping it hot. [1]https://webbsupplycompany.com/scalesafe/what-does-it-cost-to-heat-your-water/ https://webbsupplycompany.com/scalesafe/what-does-it-cost-to... [2]https://michaelandson.com/blog/what-size-water-heater-do-i-need#:~:text=Using%20our%20list%20of%20appliances,Kitchen%20faucet%20%3D%204%20gallons https://michaelandson.com/blog/what-size-water-heater-do-i-n...
- hammock 3y agoDoes a tankless/instant water heater avoid this problem?
- andrewstuart 3y ago[flagged]
- fnordpiglet 3y agoI suspect this is a trap for a conservative administration, who will likely try to roll back such orders.
- callalex 3y agoIt’s really odd to frame an objective improvement as a “trap”.
- fnordpiglet 3y agoI think you need to read more of the sentence. It’s objectively good to everyone, even fiscal anti regulatory conservatives, to not have lead pipes. But to fiscal anti regulatory conservatives the method is antithetical to their dogma. So they will feel compelled to roll back while waving hands about how the goal is good the method is flawed etc. But since the goal is objectively good to all, almost everyone will just see “evil conservatives killing us for money.” In that sense, as I said, it’s a trap for the next conservative administration.
- callalex 3y agoCalling it a trap implies malicious intention. Instead reality is that people are just trying to accomplish a good thing because it is a good thing. That Republicans may decide to be evil and shoot themselves in the foot with regressive policy doesn’t make doing good things a trap.
- fnordpiglet 3y agoOh if this were how political policies were created. Especially in the final year of a presidency they create an array of things that the “other guy” will likely repeal due to misalignment with their political ideology in their implementation if not their goal. Then they can call “gotcha” on the other guy if their opponent wins. Sometimes they do stuff like start messy military operations as they leave the White House, too. See Somalia and GB Sr
- andrewstuart 3y agoAmerica's Water Problem Is Way Worse than You Think https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZY0IscIvue4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZY0IscIvue4
- superseeplus 3y agoHow harmful is lead in solder used to join copper pipes? Lead free solder was mandated only around 1986, so presumably there are a lot of copper pipes around using solder containing lead.
- sokoloff 3y agoThe exposed/wetted area of a soldered joint is pretty damn small and I’d expect those 40 year old joints have reached an acceptable steady state by now. That’s not an excuse to use leaded solder on supply pipes as plumbing with lead-free solder is perfectly easy, but I don’t sweat* the old copper pipes in my 1920s home. https://www.copper.org/applications/plumbing/techcorner/soldering_brazing_explained.html https://www.copper.org/applications/plumbing/techcorner/sold... * That pun was inadvertent.
- kube-system 3y agoI'd imagine the extremely tiny portion of solder exposed to the water supply is nothing compared to the "lead-free" brass fittings which were permitted to contain various non-zero amounts of lead depending on the year, and still do. But with most things, the dose makes the poison.
- collegeburner 3y agoyou have two problems with new formulations though. one is lead-free solder seldom works as well as the box claims. two, antimony is somewhat concerning from a toxicity standpoint though i'd say less than lead i wonder if we don't just quit and go to brazing all joints. rod is pricier than solder and takes more heat but probably less toxic and certainly more dutable
- sokoloff 3y agoTin/silver soldering (~95/5) would probably be better than brazing for water supply piping as brazing will tend to anneal the hard drawn copper tubing, which isn’t desirable from a strength standpoint.
- 3y ago
- refurb 3y agoIt seems like removal of lead pipes is overkill? Typically lead pipes develop a layer of deposits that pacify the metal, stop corrosion and prevent lead from leeching out. The Flint water crisis was a cock-up by the water utility that resulted in loss of pacification and leeching of lead, but that a mistake that can be prevented. Seems like regular water testing (already done) is a reasonable solution. I could see decommissioning of lead pipes (i.e. an work done needs to replace them) but a wholesale "removal all lead pipe whether or not they contribute to lead exposure" seems like overkill.
- vkou 3y agoEven with biofilm-protected lead pipes, you still need to flush the system, by letting the water run for a minute or three, before you drink it.
- refurb 3y agoLead pacification results in a layer of insoluble material on the interior surface of the pipe so that the drinking water doesn't contact lead. It's typically done at the source - at the drinking water plant. It can result in undetectable levels of lead in the water, despite the pipes being made of lead. This summarizes the chemistry quite nicely: https://www.acs.org/education/resources/highschool/chemmatters/past-issues/2016-2017/december-2016/flint-water-crisis.html https://www.acs.org/education/resources/highschool/chemmatte... There is no need to "flush" the water, because it doesn't contain any lead.
- mjh2539 3y agoThis is part of the reason why engineers in antiquity always explicitly favored hard water when choosing the headwaters to route aqueducts from.
- sct202 3y agoIt is probably wise to flush though as unless you have tested recently you have no idea if the lead protection is working. My own home (70 years old) recently failed lead tests (3 samples with ranges 14-45 μg/L) that we had to request from the city. Otherwise we would have had no idea.
- Jimmc414 3y agoIt’s refreshing to see the EPA seemingly doing it’s job.
- downrightmike 3y agoIts been on the books since the 90's, but it would cost too much just to repaint lead painted homes, so nothing much has gotten done. Highlights of the program: https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/lead/about/2000s.html https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/lead/about/2000s.html
- Propelloni 3y agoThis seems like a lame excuse. Surely the USA can up their water plumbing requirements without replacing lead-based paint on other surfaces. Other nations have regulated this for decades now. It's about progress, not perfection.
- barney54 3y agoIn the US, lead pipes in new construction were banned almost 40 years ago. This is not a matter of the pipes not being regulated, it's an issue of replacing older pipes.
- nickpeterson 3y agoI also think it’s one of those , “if we just wait long enough the problem fixes itself” type of things. That said, the question becomes, how long does a lead pipe work without failing? I suspect that amount of time is longer than anyone wants to admit. Apparently we’d rather give the externalized cost to prisons instead of plumbers.
- downrightmike 3y ago$17B for 10 years https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/6/12/18661193/lead-pipes-paint-flint-michigan-usa-cost-fix https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/6/12/18661193/l... Assuming that it doesn't balloon like any real projects
- justrealist 3y agoI don't object but honestly lead paint is a much bigger issue and I wish we'd invest there instead.
- schiffern 3y ago>instead I wish we could somehow do two things at once.
- slackfan 3y agoThe problem isn't really the pipes themselves (lead by itself isn't reactive with water), it's the fact that we keep messing with various additive chemistries, which may cause reactions with the lead pipes. All in all another gov boondoggle to enable another another gov boondoggle framed as "THINK OF THE CHILDREN" panicbait. (Because adults never get lead poisoning, and are immune to its effects completely and utterly). </sarcasm> Meh.
- quickthrower2 3y agoNot in US but I feel much better having an RO system and drinking that water
- quickthrower2 3y agoIt costs about the same as an entry level iPhone. So if you can put up with a lower spec phone, you can afford it :-).
- nickthegreek 3y agoWhat’s the yearly maintenance/filter cost though?
- quickthrower2 3y agoConverted to USD I think I spend $100/y average. Depends what filter needs replacing.
- keepamovin 3y agoAll environmental sources of lead that can readily contaminate humans should be removed. This is a good move. It would be great to see an international treaty on this, with goals and enforcement for signatories.
- Solvency 3y agoI live near a small airfield. The kind celebrities and wealthy people fly out of every day, mostly recreationally. Every single small plane still uses leaded gas. Flying overhead, all days, every day. At low altitudes. And no one is changing that any time soon. As in tens of decades. Just leaded gas everywhere in the sky.
- zht 3y agoSure? I mean we can’t remove lead everywhere all at once but taking them out of pipes is better than nothing right?
- pseg134 3y ago[flagged]
- wanderingmind 3y agoWhy do you want to rip out pipes before banning small/private jets?
- AlgorithmicTime 3y agoJets don’t use leaded aviation gas.
- keep_reading 3y agoAlso came here to point out that celebrities aren't traveling the world in these cheap slow planes ...
- romafirst3 3y agoDoes everyone else have a subscription to the Washington post? Could we just have a system where we don’t post pay walled articles? It seems hacker news community members are okay with posting web archive links (there are none here) in the comments but why are we even playing this game at all? Let’s not post articles without free sources.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- arcanemachiner 3y agoI don't disagree. On my mobile browser, though (Cromite), I can disable the Javascript for that site in 3 taps, which fixes the problem.
- frogulis 3y agoUsually someone would post a link to the article on a web archive which has the paywall removed, take a look for that.
- OfSanguineFire 3y agoPeople post the archive links, so it is fine. Enjoying paid content without paying has been a common thing in the hacker community all the way back to the days of warez on Usenet and BBSs.
- pvg 3y agoIt's a long settled issue on HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989 Accessible link: https://wapo.st/3T5QYnt https://wapo.st/3T5QYnt
- thinkcontext 3y agoI'm always surprised that there are people that read Hacker News that don't know how to get around paywalls.
- tzs 3y ago1. The comments on paywalled articles are often (as is the case for this particular story) useful and interesting even if you have not read the article. I don't see why we should be deprived of an interesting thread just because some people might not have access to the article. 2. No one has to read every HN submission and participate in every thread. If a particular thread does require reading the article to get much out of the thread, do what I do--skip it. 3. If #2 is happening a lot with articles from a particular paywalled source, and it sounds like I really would have enjoyed or found the thread useful, that provides a strong hint that maybe that source is one that I should considered subscribing to.
- rendall 3y agohttps://archive.is/Fcvcg https://archive.is/Fcvcg
- dehrmann 3y agoWhile I like the idea, I've also "fixed" enough mostly working systems over the years to know that if it's not done carefully, this could cause more problems than it fixes.
- halcek 3y agoThen it should be done properly, rather than not at all, no?
- fsckboy 3y agothe EPA could be concerned with lead pipes leaching into the natural environment, but civil engineered lead pipes leaching into drinking water is not the EPA's bailiwick.
- mlyle 3y agoThe EPA sets drinking water standards. https://www.epa.gov/dwreginfo/drinking-water-regulations https://www.epa.gov/dwreginfo/drinking-water-regulations
- luplex 3y agoLead exposure is a global health problem that we have a clear path to solving - enable governments to track and remove sources of lead. If you're looking for a worthy recipient of your EOY donations, do check out the Lead Exposure Elimination Project: https://leadelimination.org/ https://leadelimination.org/
- coffeecat 3y agoThere are better causes to donate to, in my opinion. Pb is nasty stuff, but the purported risks have been inflated beyond what's actually grounded in solid evidence. The term "Pb poisoning" has two different meanings: traditionally it's referred to blood lead levels above about 50 mcg/dL, at which demonstrable symptoms occur (slowed reaction times, etc). But in recent decades, it's also used to describe much lower levels (>15 mcg/dL, >10 mcg/dL, or even >5 mcg/dL), for which the only evidence of harm comes from observational studies. Observational studies establish correlation, not causation, and there are good reasons to doubt that the observed correlations are due to Pb neurotoxicity. The relationship between Pb exposure and cognitive/behavioral outcomes is intractably complicated, because for most children Pb exposure is primarily from dirt/dust ingestion, which in turn correlates with a child's developmental status, household cleanliness, and subtle aspects of parenting behaviors (in addition of course to more widely appreciated factors like age/condition of the home). Poor nutrition also causes higher BLLs. It's been demonstrated that publication bias in the Pb literature has steadily risen over time, as reported effect sizes have increased. Several studies have found Pb correlations which resemble a U curve, where children with the highest blood lead levels have better cognitive/behavioral outcomes than those with intermediate BLLs (because outside the range of BLLs which are primarily driven by dirt/dust ingestion, "something else is going on", which doesn't correlate as well with cognitive/behavioral outcomes). Dirt/dust ingestion (and therefore, BLLs) drop precipitously around age 2, because this is around the time when children outgrow mouthing behavior - some children a bit earlier, some children a bit later. BLL measurements at this age therefore a metric of developmental status. Or alternatively, this is the age at which "lead causes the most harm". My argument is of course not that you should go paint your child's nursery with chrome yellow. Ingesting paint chips can be enough to put a child into the "actual lead poisoning" BLL range (drinking water from lead pipes generally cannot). But excluding exposure from leaded gasoline (which was formerly the dominant source of exposure, but which has fortunately been banned almost everywhere) and people living near smelting facilities, it's probably not the scary ubiquitous IQ-point larcenist that it's made out to be.
- RGamma 3y ago[flagged]
- h2odragon 3y agoWe should go back to wood: https://www.hiddenhydrology.org/the-water-in-the-wood/ https://www.hiddenhydrology.org/the-water-in-the-wood/
- halcek 3y ago[flagged]
- the__alchemist 3y agoThe fluoridated water situation appears to be the reverse of what you describe.
- barney54 3y agoWhat? The US banned new lead pipes almost 40 years ago.
- halcek 3y ago[flagged]
- Retric 3y agoThe US allowed lead pipes to be installed in the mid 1980’s, that’s crazy. Edit: 1986! But in this case banning them means preventing their use.
- bluGill 3y agoEurope was only slightly ahead there. Europe has far more lead pipes in use today than America. Of course use is spotty, some cities lead pipes are everywhere, some don't have much. However Europe needs to clean themselves up not laugh at the US.
- Retric 3y agoI’m in the US, many US cities banned lead pipes in the 1920’s. We banned lead paint in 1978, pipes just took a lot longer than I was expecting. Europe varies quite a bit. In 1999: “Ireland, United Kingdom, France, Portugal, and Belgium all had higher percentages of lead lines ranging between 15% and 51%. Germany, Spain, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands had between 3% and 9%, while Denmark and Greece had less than 1%”
- 3y ago
- vertnerd 3y ago[flagged]
- Eumenes 3y ago[flagged]
- 6stringmerc 3y agoWE NEED MAKE WORK INFRASTRUCTURE DITCH DIGGING JOBS IN THE US DO THE MATH ON MUNGER'S WEALTH VERSUS WHAT IT COULD DO IF DIRECTLY INVESTED IN LOCAL CCC TYPE PROJECTS. Why not? Oh, you wanna be the rich class too? Enjoy your crumbling kingdom.
- blastbking 3y agoFinally... should have been done decades ago.
- xtat 3y agoFirst thought was how is this not already a thing.
- giantg2 3y agoIt would probably be better to have a longer term solution. $45 billion for lead today. I'm guessing in another generation they're choose to remediate some other contamination like PFOAs or some plastics used in pipe liners. At this point it'd be better to just give grants for installing home water filters and then use the money from chlorination to supply an annual filter stipend. Cover all the issues at once.
- Proven 3y ago[dead]
- zackmorris 3y agoI wish we had a public database of who approved lead pipes after a date when they were known to be dangerous. Same with all of the other health and environmental threats we face with micro plastics, PFAS, glyphosate, freon, etc etc etc, going back 100 years. With that database, we could create liens on the corporations/families/individuals which profited from passing their externalities onto the public. Then they could pay for the cleanup and/or go bankrupt. Where I'm going with this is that the current power structure in the US is built on ignorance. Many millionaires and billionaires are only wealthy because they've gamed the legal system to dodge most claims against them. Examples are the Sackler family, the Koch family, the Walton family, the list is long: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryadolan/2020/12/17/billion-dollar-dynasties-these-are-the-richest-families-in-america/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryadolan/2020/12/17/billion-... Now, I have nothing against wealth creation through hard work and building things. But when it's done by corrupting the system, at some level that must be considered unpatriotic. Yet a politician wears a lapel pin and claims to love America while accepting money from the people who hurt us. This is a failure of leadership. I'd propose that wealthy individuals can start setting an example by doing the right thing in a very public way, or risk bringing the wrath of the masses against them. And it wouldn't take much to pull the wool off people's eyes, especially with AI. How hard would it really be to use historical precedents as training data? We're in the midst of a Global Awakening where everyone can see in real time that the mainstream news doesn't match what they see reported by real people on social media. We've also reached a level of technological development where people are starting to provide resources for themselves outside the system via renewable energy, automation, hydroponics, 3D printing, etc. Those trends point to a reduction in wealth concentration and authoritarianism. Yet the wealthy and powerful manipulate the system even harder, running authoritarian candidates, spreading anti-intellectual propaganda, starting proxy wars.. and soon using AI to trick people to vote against their own self-interest at even more unbelievable levels. At a time when people are barely able to earn enough money to make rent and put food on the table. You don't do that when people are struggling, you do it in the boom times like the mid-2000s. I almost wonder if they have a guilt complex, like they want to get caught?
- pas 3y agoGlyphosate is one of the most studied chemicals, and it's okay. (The issue is that farm workers are not given protective gear.) Lead in pipes is also not that big of a problem as it was in gasoline. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38500123 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38500123 We still don't know much about PFAS. It's definitely not great that we have strange stuff in our blood and food, but eating charred food is a lot more carcinogenic. Just to keep that in mind. Especially when you are throwing around the charge of ignorance.