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Your comment also reminds me of the late 80s and early 90s when tobacco companies pumped massive amounts of cash into cancer research to muddy the water around
by forgetfreeman 3y ago
Your comment also reminds me of the late 80s and early 90s when tobacco companies pumped massive amounts of cash into cancer research to muddy the water around the harms being caused by their products.
- mattmaroon 3y agoVery different. The evidence was much stronger there. The correlations were so high as to be impossible to ignore. (It also helped that smoking was so prevalent across race/class/age etc that it practically controlled for all the other variables inherently, which is true of drinking water exposure to PFAs too.) There were conditions like emphysema that were basically unheard of in non-smokers (or people who worked in certain occupations that involved a lot of combustion byproducts) and common in smokers. The correlations here (at the levels most of us are exposed to) are incredibly weak. Don’t take my word for them, look them up. This is more like the link between aspartame and cancer. There’s no smoking gun, no high correlations. If you look up the symptoms “linked” to it, there are hundreds at least. Not all correlations are equal. But, I install R/O filters in my house because I am not certain it is not harmful and why take the chance? I’m just not certain it is harmful and I would need to be to support jailing people or banning the chemicals immediately and entirely.
- alwayslikethis 3y agoAbove all, you should not be able to dump things in the environment which doesn't break down. They also accumulate in your body and is not possible to remove quickly. Moreover, they knew since the 70s [1] that it was probably harmful, but kept making it anyways pretending it was safe. There needs to be corporate responsibility for the cleanup, which may well bankrupt the compnay, and personal criminal responsibility for those who made the decision. 1. https://qz.com/1643554/3m-knew-pfas-was-contaminating-us-food-supply https://qz.com/1643554/3m-knew-pfas-was-contaminating-us-foo...
- lazide 3y agoA bit of a straw man here - but water doesn’t meaningfully break down. Sodium chloride (salt) also doesn’t meaningfully break down. It’s not that simple.
- alwayslikethis 3y agoWell, just the things that do not exist naturally in that location then.
- lazide 3y agoSo no concrete? Stainless steel? Glass? No silicates?
- forgetfreeman 3y agoIs there a particular purpose you're pursuing with this obvious pedantry or is it merely performative?
- therealdrag0 3y agoIf a lay man’s vague proscription is so easily counter acted perhaps one should reconsider its meaningfulness.
- forgetfreeman 3y agoSo performative then, gotcha.
- therealdrag0 3y agoWhat does that even mean in the context of a discussion like this? Doesn’t make any sense lol.
- Zigurd 3y agoAlso leaded gas, also asbestos. Leaded gas left a trace in the Earth's crust about which future archeologists will remark of our fallen civilization "Oh yeah, this kind of explains the PFAS layer, too."
- mattmaroon 3y agoThere is always a time where a harmful substance is introduced, suspicions develop, and data is inconclusive. As I mentioned, that may be where we are with PFAs. But for each of these there are dozens of examples where people are hysterical about some new substance, correlations are shown, and it turns out to be nothing. We could be there with low level exposure to PFAs too. With asbestos, like with cigarettes, there was a form of cancer that almost only appears in people exposed to it. That’s a solid smoking gin that’s totally absent here.
- Hikikomori 3y agoSo it's okay to expose people to whatever might kill them and only do something decades later when proof overwhelms companies and politicians trying their best to do nothing in the name of profit?
- qwerasdf5 3y agoI see you used the word 'when' instead of 'if'. Are you from the future? How do you know this?
- Hikikomori 3y agoSure, proof might never overwhelm corporate power and politics and people will be exposed to something bad forever.
- qwerasdf5 3y agoSorry, that's not what I meant. What I mean is: You are predicting that the overwhelming proof will ever exist. This prediction may turn out to be true, but why should I believe your prediction over that of anyone else's? Do you have some insider knowledge or expertise that you can share? Edit: Also, what do you give the odds of your prediction, by severity of outcome? I want to see how the odds you provide stack up against the economic and thus social consequences of under-regulation or over-regulation.