The difficulties with this position are at least two-fold. First, you claim that the use of bominated fire retardants is "unnecessary" because we can build fla

The difficulties with this position are at least two-fold. First, you claim that the use of bominated fire retardants is "unnecessary" because we can build flame-retardant materials without them, but the problem they are solving is not "building flame retardant materials" but "building flame retardant materials under some very specific constraints of cost, longevity, storage, transport, manufacturability of the product they are used in, etc". People who have never actually manufactured anything are often given to under-estimating the number of constraints on the process and airly wave away the issues faced by the people tasked with doing so (a common name for such people is "senior managers"). How good are the alternative flame retardants? Do they cost more, increasing price pressure and causing people to not replace their old electronics with new for a longer period of time, therefore actually increasing overall population risk? How do you calculate all that? Second, "the risks outweigh the benefits" leaves unanswered the question "to whom"? The distribution of risks and benefits is not uniform. Replacing one product with another may well shift the risks and benefits, but can you tell me that we won't be having this conversation again a few decades from now, as the unexpected consequences of what you currently believe to be safer (not "safe" but "safer") alternatives become clear? What is obvious to you is clearly not obvious to others (many of whom also have interests in the matter that might cloud their judgement, although of course the same is true of NGOs, which are in general even less science-based than industry risk-analysts.) This is why in any regulatory question of this kind treating the decision as a no-brainer and your opponents as the root of all evil is likely to be counter-productive. A better approach is to acknowledge a) the legitimacy of their concerns, including their concern about making a profit and b) bring up concrete, specific and detailed ways that the industrial processes in question could be improved. It's easy to think of abstract improvements that won't work. The debate regarding ozone processing in the pulp and paper industry is a good example of how abstract claims that ozone was a perfect substitute for chlorine if only those evil capitalist industry dunderheads would come to Jesus turned out to be less than entirely true: ozone does have potential and is being used, but in practice turns out so far to be a less-than-complete replacement for chlorine bleaching: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleaching_of_wood_pulp#Ozone http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleaching_of_wood_pulp#Ozone