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Could we change the link to the better article it links to? https://medienportal.univie.ac.at/en/media/recent-press-releases/detailansicht-en/artikel/uptake-of

by ethbr1 2y ago

Could we change the link to the better article it links to? https://medienportal.univie.ac.at/en/media/recent-press-releases/detailansicht-en/artikel/uptake-of-tire-wear-additives-by-vegetables-grown-for-human-consumption/ https://medienportal.univie.ac.at/en/media/recent-press-rele... It has more informative content: >> The concentrations of the tire additives in leafy vegetables are low overall and are, for example, 238 ng/kg for benzothiazole (BTZ), or 0.4 ng/kg for 6PPD, a substance whose transformation product 6PPD quinone is known to be highly toxic for aquatic species like coho salmon. Depending on the diet, this leads to a daily intake per person of 12 to 1,296 ng for BTZ, or 0.06 to 2.6 ng for 6PPD. This is comparable in magnitude to drug residues, which also enter the food chain. According to Thilo Hofmann, the study shows clear results: "While the concentrations and daily intake are fortunately relatively low, additives from car tires are still found in food. That's not where they belong." According to Hofmann, the next steps should now be to investigate the environmental and human health aspects. With regards to the finding, IMHO we're missing an opportunity to price persistence into chemical production/use. There should be direct costs to a company choosing to use indefinitely-persistent chemical in their products, as opposed to something with shorter environmental degradation. Maybe there are use cases where that's worth paying! E.g. tires. But we should financially incentivize the global outcomes we want.

refibrillator 2y ago
The samples of leafy vegetables were from Israel, Italy, Spain, and Switzerland. I have a bad feeling the numbers are much worse in urban and suburban United States, where car culture utterly dominates in close proximity to many farms and home gardens.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- ethbr1 2y ago
  Possibly, but most US produce comes from low-density areas. By definition, otherwise nobody could afford massive acreage. That means the less populous parts of California, Arizona, and Florida. It'd be interesting to do an upstream drainage trace though, as many rivers do flow through urban areas. Although less so in California? Given they're mostly mountains-to-sea, so would hit fields before major coastal population centers?
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
jdietrich 2y ago
Benzothiazole has been evaluated by the European Food Safety Authority as safe for use as a flavouring at exposure levels of up to 1.2μg/capita/day. https://efsa.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.2903/j.efsa.2008.875 https://efsa.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.2903/j.efsa...
- nehal3m 2y ago
  Hmm, that good ol' tire flavour. Yum.
- unglaublich 2y ago
  How do they assess this? Do they experiment in isolation, or do they add all other known maximum exposures to the mix before they add this other one?
unglaublich 2y ago
There should be a similar price for companies extracting finite resources from the planet: opportunity cost for future generations.
- OutOfHere 2y ago
  One can argue that mined metals are not going anywhere. They stay on the planet. If anything, they become easier for future generations to access via recycling. It would be different if the metals were being exported outside the planet.
dclowd9901 2y ago
Not to be a wet blanket, but people have talked about pricing externalities into manufacturing for years now and as far as I can tell literally nobody at the policy making level is even breathing a word of it.
OutOfHere 2y ago
LOL. There is no "pricing" of this persistence. It just accumulates and accumulates. It is incompatible with life. It has to be banned completely except perhaps for extremely rare whitelisted use cases such as in laboratories for calibrating detection equipment.
- ethbr1 2y ago
  Allowlisting has the problem of being more subject to lobbying. Better to pick a more objective measure (environmental persistence) and then calculate cost addition directly from that.
  - OutOfHere 2y ago
    How can one calculate the cost of hurting someone else? How much should X pay a country's government to lower everyone's life expectancy worldwide by 10%? There is absolutely no objectivity to be had here, only bribery. It is so silly that it's not even funny. Moreover, money is an inflationary national currency, which itself is subject to heavy dilution. What good is a fixed rate going to do when it accomplishes the most damage in the decades ahead? Or how is it going to benefit animals and people of other countries that are not affiliated? We already have a system for regulating extremely toxic agents like deadly viruses, explosives, radioactive materials, and other very hazardous materials. It works. In truth there is no moral right that one has to emit pollution that hurts others.
    - ethbr1 2y ago
      > How can one calculate... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_economics https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_economics > We already have a system for regulating... The TSCA is Swiss cheese, considering it started by grandfathering in 62,000 chemicals, which will never be tested. The EPA is generally able to test about 0.4% of chemicals. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_Substances_Control_Act_of_1976 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_Substances_Control_Act...
      - 2y ago

by ethbr1 2y ago

refibrillator 2y ago

The samples of leafy vegetables were from Israel, Italy, Spain, and Switzerland. I have a bad feeling the numbers are much worse in urban and suburban United States, where car culture utterly dominates in close proximity to many farms and home gardens.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
ethbr1 2y ago
Possibly, but most US produce comes from low-density areas. By definition, otherwise nobody could afford massive acreage. That means the less populous parts of California, Arizona, and Florida. It'd be interesting to do an upstream drainage trace though, as many rivers do flow through urban areas. Although less so in California? Given they're mostly mountains-to-sea, so would hit fields before major coastal population centers?

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

jdietrich 2y ago

Benzothiazole has been evaluated by the European Food Safety Authority as safe for use as a flavouring at exposure levels of up to 1.2μg/capita/day. https://efsa.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.2903/j.efsa.2008.875 https://efsa.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.2903/j.efsa...

nehal3m 2y ago
Hmm, that good ol' tire flavour. Yum.
unglaublich 2y ago
How do they assess this? Do they experiment in isolation, or do they add all other known maximum exposures to the mix before they add this other one?

unglaublich 2y ago

There should be a similar price for companies extracting finite resources from the planet: opportunity cost for future generations.

OutOfHere 2y ago
One can argue that mined metals are not going anywhere. They stay on the planet. If anything, they become easier for future generations to access via recycling. It would be different if the metals were being exported outside the planet.

dclowd9901 2y ago

Not to be a wet blanket, but people have talked about pricing externalities into manufacturing for years now and as far as I can tell literally nobody at the policy making level is even breathing a word of it.

OutOfHere 2y ago

LOL. There is no "pricing" of this persistence. It just accumulates and accumulates. It is incompatible with life. It has to be banned completely except perhaps for extremely rare whitelisted use cases such as in laboratories for calibrating detection equipment.

ethbr1 2y ago
Allowlisting has the problem of being more subject to lobbying. Better to pick a more objective measure (environmental persistence) and then calculate cost addition directly from that.
- OutOfHere 2y ago
  How can one calculate the cost of hurting someone else? How much should X pay a country's government to lower everyone's life expectancy worldwide by 10%? There is absolutely no objectivity to be had here, only bribery. It is so silly that it's not even funny. Moreover, money is an inflationary national currency, which itself is subject to heavy dilution. What good is a fixed rate going to do when it accomplishes the most damage in the decades ahead? Or how is it going to benefit animals and people of other countries that are not affiliated? We already have a system for regulating extremely toxic agents like deadly viruses, explosives, radioactive materials, and other very hazardous materials. It works. In truth there is no moral right that one has to emit pollution that hurts others.
  - ethbr1 2y ago
    > How can one calculate... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_economics https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_economics > We already have a system for regulating... The TSCA is Swiss cheese, considering it started by grandfathering in 62,000 chemicals, which will never be tested. The EPA is generally able to test about 0.4% of chemicals. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_Substances_Control_Act_of_1976 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_Substances_Control_Act...
    - 2y ago