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Washington Bans Chemicals; Industry Freaks
Frosty Piss writes "The governor of Washington is scheduled to sign legislation today to ban flame retardants called PBDEs in furniture, televisions, and computers in the state. This is despite the more than $220,000 the chemical industry has spent since 2005 to defeat the legislation. At a time when the federal government is largely ineffectual in regulating long-used but potentially dangerous industrial chemicals, the Washington ban could be the beginning of the end for PBDEs across the nation. 'The industry that makes deca and PBDEs is freaking out because they lost so severely in Washington state and other states will follow,' said a spokeswoman for the Washington Toxics Coalition. 'It really is a message from Washington state and policymakers that we won't accept chemicals that build up in our bodies and our children.'"
burn to death, we're fine with that...
This might be the first recorded Think-Of-The-Children infinite loop:
"If you get rid of the flame retardant, people will die in fires. Think of the children!"
"No, YOU think of the children, who are filling up with toxic chemicals!"
"YOU think of the children, who are currently on fire!"
(and so forth)
Meanwhile, the children grow up and move to Vancouver.
... does this mean that work on Vista will have to be moved out of state?
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
Wow a whole $200k over two years; they must really be serious!
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
...When you can't buy anything flame resistant or UL listed. Or anything, for that matter. Is Washington a big enough state to overcome the costs associated with a differentiated product line? Will companies even make things that can't cost-effectively comply with other regulations and industry liability practices that require flame resistance?
I'm not sure but I guess we'll find out.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Isn't that a HUGE issue? The chemical is CONCENTRATING itself in the food chain.
Either show that it decomposes into safe, naturally occurring chemicals or realize that it is time to look at banning it BEFORE it hits levels that are hazardous.
It really is a message from Washington state and policymakers that we won't accept chemicals that build up in our bodies and our children."
...She then went on to describe the huge new civil fines Washington state
plans to impose on manufacturers of furniture, televisions, and computers
that burst into flames.
Seriously, they need to think these things throught just a wee bit more - Whether requiring a given level of flame-resistance and then bitching about the toxicity of most flame retardants, or banning leaded gasoline in the '70s, only to replace it with MTBE that behaves exactly like lead in the environment.
Sometimes "bad" still counts as the lesser of two evils.
If the "chemical industry" is really so against, wouldn't they have done more? I mean really, $220,000 over two years doesn't exactly sound like they're really fighting this ban.
Everything in life is a trade off. How many actual deaths can be confirmed that resulted from exposure to these chemicals (probably zero but lets be generous) versus the number of deaths from fire that have been prevented by them?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I like that the /. ad on this page was "It only takes a spark" (smokey the bear).
But yeah, if one child catches fire but it saves ten thousand from cancer, that's unfortunately a better decision over all. Note it's not like children are spontaneously combusting without PBDEs, it's just that the companies will happily use the cheapest fire-proofing despite the consequences.
More to the point, a parent can stop a child from playing with a fire a lot easier than they can stop a corporation from leaking toxins into the water supply. This is, oddly enough, how legislation is supposed to work.
A.
"Long-used but potentially dangerous industrial chemicals" is an inflamatory and misleading phrase that can refer to things like gasoline, isopropyl alcohol and super glue.
...why didn't the industry use the thousands of bucks to develop a replacement instead of burning it for ads and bribing? i'm sure you can add a few more thousands to the sum which were spent "inofficially". okay, developing new materials might cost just a few dollars more, but you would have
a) a stable income based on these new materials
b) eventually something like good media and following that --> a slightly better reputation.
okay, this is far too logical.
This article is so spun and slanted, it's amazing that it doesn't spin around and fall over on its side.
"freaking out," yeah, okay. Maybe "quite concerned about possible sweeping actions and measures without any substantial proof" might be a better way to put it.
Demonstrate (if you can't prove) that there is _good_ reason for concern before flying off the handle.
This legislation deserves to be modded (-1, Flamebait).
The Bush administration has been stacking government agencies with people who have no interest in exercising their agencies power. The whole purpose of those appointments appears to be one of reduced regulation of corporate entities. But what will happen when State laws are getting in the way of the Bush administration's de-regulation plans? Will Bush and party push for federal legislation limiting state's rights to enforce stricter than federal laws? Given his actions over the last 6+ years, I wouldn't be surprised.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Someone used the rootkit.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
"t really is a message from Washington state and policymakers that we won't accept chemicals that build up in our bodies and our children.'"
or maybe it's just because they havent receive that big fat bag of money to keep quiet and kill the legislation.
The food industry was happy using saturated fats until the CSPI and the food nannies said lets go polyunsaturated. The industry got slammed for using sat fats and then got blamed for the transfats when it was the well-intentioned food nannies that lead to the change?
Did the furniture industry start putting PBDEs in the materials or were they compelled by some well-intentioned safety group or legislation? I'd like to know before I'm forced to hear a bunch of posts about how EVIL corporations are poisioning us when they just may have responded to the do-gooders.
This will also create more jobs in Washington state as consumers discover it is not possible to ship a chair made out of baked clay for a reasonable price. This will inspire a great number of new startup companies producing furniture in Washington state that compiles with both regulations banning chemicals whlie preserving the fireproof nature of chairs, couches and bedding.
Look for that distinctive reddish color of new Washington state approved furniture.
Movers will not be pleased with this, but the home improvement companies will have all the work they can handle - reinforcing floors to hold the new furniture.
I'm big on states' rights over federal ones, and local laws over state ones, on the assumption that the closer to home, the better the legislators will deal with what's actually going on. (Also lobbies find it much harder to affect vast numbers of low-level officials, even though you can buy them off with (1) hooker and (1) thimbleful of blow, rather than having to give them a whole sorority for a weekend -- coz there are just so many low-level officials compared to senators.)
But I have to wonder, at the same time, at what point legislation stops being about good-for-the-people, or even look-I'm-doing-something-vote-for me, and starts being about legislating morals, ethics, and such. One part of me wishes more states would make like California and start making effective carbon-emission-reduction laws, or Washington, making effective anti-dangerous-chemical laws, but how long before Tennessee bans birth control pills as suspect carcinogens, or any of a variety of other handwaving subterfuges that are intended not to make people safer but to force them towards different behavior? Maybe states' rights isn't such a hot idea after all.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
Whether it occurs naturally or not is not the issue.
The issue is whether it is concentrating itself in the food chain (and humans).
Since it seems that it is, it should be limited until it can be determined whether there is any damage associated with it or not.
This should certainly make those battery fires more interesting.
Oh, wait, that's not a bright side. Except literally.
These polybrominated diphenyl ethers are compounds that are thought to cause damage to the environment at higher levels than today but this could change. the long term health effects of these chemicals isn't as well known as we would like but is's probably a good idea to go on the side of caution [thalidamide and t-butyl methyl ether to name a few that went horribly wrong] although right now industry won't like it because they can't make money off of their sale, it is much better to be alive and healthy because of the ban and lose money than the alternative. US gov PBDE faq http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/phs68-pbde.ht ml
canadian PBDE faq
http://www.ec.gc.ca/CEPARegistry/documents/subs_li st/PBDE_draft/PBDEfaq.cfm
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
A quarter of a million dollars on something as vital to their business model as the continued right to poison our kids?
Clearly they were being stingy with the bribe money. Their successors won't make the same mistake.
Did you ever get the feeling the story is too damn long and in the present tense?
State-level "medical marijuana" laws have been invalidated because the Supreme Court said the Feds have the right to regulate inter-state commerce.
m arijuana/
Yeah, it makes no sense. But they ruled on it.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/06/06/scotus.medical.
Cheers to the state of Washington for banning industry freaks.
Lemme see here:
1. Have mature product with static revenues
2. Have legislature ban mature product
3. Feebly fight against ban so you can tell public you tried
4. Introduce new, more expensive product
5. Profit!!
The post calling for a -1 Flamebait mod being moded -1 Flamebait tickles my weird sense of humor. What's next, a post asking for a +1 Insightful mod getting moded +1 Insightful?
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
This could all be settled satisfactorily for everyone involved if someone puts in a sweet phone call to the Microsoft folks down in Florida. The mafium leave nothing but a few concrete boots.
...and they also want to require compact fluorescent bulbs which...contain mercury, another cumulative poison which doesn't break down.
Yes, folks, the same government nannies will have your neighbors throwing mercury into the trash. Never mind that it will get into the ground and your water supplies, costs more, is inferior light and sends money to the Chinese communists.
Never mind that the same thinking banned DDT which meant millions of Africans have died from malaria or that liberated prisoners from the Nazi death camps were bathed in DDT to kill the bugs living on them or that "Silent Spring" has been shown to be a work of fiction.
Never mind that banning asbestos created more danger because removing asbestos is more dangerous than using it properly, automobile brakes are nowhere near as capable, costs increased and, oh, yeah, the WTC would have stood longer because it was designed to survive airplane hits provided the guts were protected by asbestos so it would have stood a few more hours.
Nope, those who know what's best for us must rise and save us from ourselves.
So does that mean that Steve Ballmer has to move?
Of course, then someone will discover that ceramics have a higher radiation emissions than furniture made of wood and plastics. This will lead to legistlation to make sure manufacturers use materials that have any minute trace, naturally-occurring, radioactive matter removed.
Years ago the fiberglass industry started adding chlorine to polyester resin as a flame retardant. When the resin burned it released chlorine gas to starve the flame of oxygen. If you don't die of the fire, you'll die of the chlorine!
like a lot of problema in society, it's not so simple. ban the f*** out of these chemicals, what do i care? but at least get the facts straight, and the facts say these chemicals occur naturally, and if they occur naturally, it complicates the job of quantifying their real threat to us
mother nature is full of vile evil chemicals. just because something is natural, doesn't make it good, and just because something is artificial, doesn't make it bad. i just hate that simplistic look at life and these sorts of problems that says anything coming out of dupont is meant to give you cancer and the suits are out to kill you for a few bucks. that's not reality, that's paranoid schizophrenia
we derive benefits from artificial chemicals. we also suffer because of the effects of natural chemicals. this issue is not a simple matter of "industrial chemicals baaaad". so we need more science, and less simple-minded rhetoric on this and many other chemicals
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
People do not smoke like they use to. Thus it is probably a statistically safe bet to leave the fucking PBDEs out. Heck, I'd pay more if I had to to get a couch w/o the retardant on it. Either way, provide the market options. Let consumers choose but provide legislative protection for companies that do or do not use PBDEs so long as they label.
it's also concentrating naturally
yes, artificial sources can accelerate that concentrating above natural thresholds across which bad things start happening. so ban the chemicals, what do i care? i'm not contradicting the parent or the washington law. good law, i say
my point is simply that the issue is not so simpleminded: "industrial chemicals baaaaad"
no, plenty of natural chemicals rot your body, and plenty of artificial ones improve your health. i'm just sick of the simpleminded rhetoric that industrial chemical makers are out to give all of us cancer just to make a few bucks. that's hollywood, not reality. and reality is that, on the balance, industrial chemicals have improved our lives and our health. yes, that really is the truth
sorry if i'm not so simpleminded and propagandized as other people
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Just finished removing asbestos tile from my house :). What's really scary is our food supply. Sodium Nitrate, BHT, TBHQ, MSG, Hydrolized Proteins, Sulfates, Red 40. There's so much stuff in our food that's potentially or known to be a carcinogen. My personal fav is Sodium Nitrate, which was found be carcinogenic because it was causing actual cancer in cows it was fed to (the cows were being given feed made from old Herring). It's banned in Germany, but here in the USA we just add some Asorbic Acid in the hope that it'll stop it from breaking down into nitrosomes.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I wonder how this will affect china made furniture, or any furniture made outside us borders
I read that headline literally and pictured the newspapers. "Washington Turns Into Vacuum, Sucks Even More"
> It's a story like the one about Asbestos and DDT.
Exactly. Fear over reason. Asbestos isn't nearly so dangerous, if handled correctly, as to outweigh the benefits it provides. Yes when it was used carelessly (even if from ignorance at the time) and people were working daily in a cloud of the stuff without even a filter mask, it caused some nasty side effects. But on the other hand it could have been tamed with a bit of effort and kept on saving lives. Had the World Trade Center buildings been finished with asbestos many experts believe they would have survived.
Same with DDT. Sprayed indiscriminately with no though there were enough bad side effects it was a net harm. But since the scare and ban a few million people have died from malaria who could have been saved with a more sensible use of the stuff. But they are poor brown and black people so screw em if the spotted owls are OK, right? After all we still need to lose a couple of billion people if we are going to stop global warming.
Same here. We will overly worry over a few people who MIGHT be spared from cancer or some other horrible disease and carefully ignore how many WILL die or be horribly maimed because we eliminated yet another fire retardant material.
Manufacturers should stop bending over and taking this. Give em exactly what they asked for! Make special products for WA without the material but with a big label marked thus:
"This product was made especially for Washington State. It does not contain PBDEs in accordance with local law. Because of this it IS LESS SAFE and DOES NOT qualify for a UL listing because it does not meet the requirements for being flame retardant. Purchase and use of this unlisted product may void your homeowners insurance policy. At point of sale the attached contract must be completed and signed stating that buyer understands the risks and assumes all liability for any damages due to fire.
It also carries a $20 surcharge to cover our expenses in stocking a special version of this product.
See our website at [url of manufacturer] for more information and to obtain a list of the mental defectives who passed the law responsible for this state of affairs."
Democrat delenda est
Throwing a CF bulb in the garbage at the end of its life produces releases about half as much mercury as a coal plant powering an equivalent regular bulb. Note that this figure includes the smaller amount of mercury produced powering the CF bulb.
Given that coal is roughly 50% of all the power generation in the US, and that lighting is less than 50% of all power usage-- switching all standard bulbs to CF will result in a net reduction in environmental mercury *in addition* to reducing numerous other pollutants produced by generation.
And as a final note: which do you think is easier to collect and recycle? Mercury in bulbs, or mercury nicely mixed into our atmosphere?
Start investing in companies which specialize in removal... or start one yourself if you have the capital. Keep an eye out for the noted replacement materials and invest in companies which will produce and distribute it.
Once the line is crossed then it's on.
That would have been more newsworthy. "Washington bans industry freaks and chemicals"
0xB315AA8D852DCD3F3DCA578FD2E0BF88
If I am correctly informed these compounds are already banned there. As Europe is a quite big market there should be no problems in finding products without them...
You know, after reading the headline, I was really hoping that Washington had banned chemicals and industry freaks. I mean, who wants freaks around anyway? Especially industrial ones...
Long ago, when bad things happened for reasons no one understood, the people of that time blamed "evil spirits" or "the devil" or witches or sorcerers. Folks were afraid. You can still see this occur in primitive societies. Someone will get sick or the weather will be bad or the cows will die and it'll be blamed on evil sorcerers. Sometimes, someone is accused and killed for doing their evil magic -- often a personal enemy or rival or someone envied.
Some modern folks don't believe in magic, but bad things still happen that they don't understand. People still get sick unpredictably. Now it gets blamed on "chemicals". People are afraid. Sometimes someone will be accused and harmed financially (but not killed) for using these "chemicals" -- often a political enemy or rival or someone envied.
Rather than asking for their god (or God) to protect them from evil, they ask their government. Rather than asking for a blessing before they eat their meals, they buy government-blessed "organic" foods. Like their ancestors, they fear becoming "polluted" by something bad.
.
Fear, ignorance, and a lack of understanding shouldn't be the basis for decisions. The government makes a poor god and is unworthy or your faith.
Try being responsible for yourself. Instead of reacting, think. Instead of fearing, learn. Instead or harming or forcing (or killing), choose.
I just don't have time to waste going thru the points made and how they are wrong.
Somebody please point out his errors.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
First, let take a hypothetical look at the industry today: Probably a few companies producing the current chemical. They have already sunk the cost for research, facilities, paperwork, etc. They are not likely to want to spend more money just for a chance to end up where they are today. Depending on who they are, they might not even be able to.
Now the interim industry: several companies spending money to research, certify, and promote their solution. The industry is in flux. There is no clear winner.
Finally, the resulting industry: A few companies producing the new chemical. Some overlap with the old companies (maybe). Both winners and losers have sunk cost for research, facilities, paperwork, etc.
So the only chemical companies who might benefit from a ban are companies willing and able to expand. Yet they don't want to spend much money on lobbying because there isn't a guarantee that the ban will go into effect or that they will capture the market. The risk multiplier means it's not worth the money. But existing producers have an immediate vested interest. Lobbying costs compared to money already invested is minor.
(note: I'm not judging right or wrong, just giving possible motivations and how they are asymmetrical)
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
If its in the headline, it really should be in the summary - or at very least the linked article.
Or is it based on a statement made by some anti-industry rep?
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Ethanol is made from ... food. So...let the rest of the world starve to death (corn is the staple food source for a lot of the world and there's only so much which can be grown) so you can burn ethanol in your automobile?
Because this is a lot different from our current situation, where we just kill them directly, or allow them to be killed for geopolitical reasons, in exchange for oil? You're still dead either way.
Furthermore, the U.S. is a net importer of food. The corn we grow here mostly doesn't go to the rest of the world; it's expensive to transport and it's just not worth that much. The stuff that's not used for food mostly ends up being used for animal feed, fertilizer, or in some cases waste. The government already subsidizes it heavily, so there's a lot of it grown -- we might as well do something useful with it. Besides which, corn really isn't the best feedstock for ethanol -- it's only being considered because we have a surplus of it in the U.S. (due to subsidies and a lot of farmers with political connections). If the price of corn went up, it would no longer be attractive for ethanol production, and other crops with higher ethanol/biomass yields (grass species, mostly) would be more attractive.
(Plus, I don't agree with direct food aid to foreign countries except for absolute short-term emergencies, and sometimes not even then; if you allow some third-world country's population to expand dramatically -- which is what a steady food supply will do -- you're creating millions of people in an untenable position whose entire lives are dependent on outside charity. When the first world economy tanks, and people's interest in charity evaporates, suddenly you have a far worse problem than you did originally. The only food aid worth doing are the programs that lead to self-sufficiency, or build domestic industry to a point where food can be sustainably imported at market price. Otherwise you're just creating slaves; if you control whether someone eats or not, you might as well just own them as chattel.)
Never mind that it takes almost as much energy to make ethanol as you'd get from burning it, you have to burn more of it than gasoline to get the same energy return and it destroys your designed-for-gasoline engine all of which means more pollution and higher cost than burning gasoline.
Well depending on where you start the measurement, of course ethanol takes more energy to create than it does when you burn it. (Well, actually, the enthalpy change is exactly the same in either way, because it's conservative, but when you factor in inefficient systems it's not 100% reversible.) Petroleum takes a lot of energy to "make" too, which is why you don't see people going and churning it out; it's only made underground and it takes a while. Ethanol, on the other hand, gets made -- via plants -- pretty quickly. You grow something -- which converts sunlight, plus atmospheric gases and some soil minerals and nitrogen -- and then convert it to ethanol using microorganisms. Sure, you use up a lot of energy in order to convert the plant matter to ethanol, but you still come out ahead, and since the original energy source (sunlight) was basically free, that's all that matters. (You could avoid the biomass -> ethanol conversion loss by just burning the plant matter directly, but who wants to have a wood-pellet-fueled car?)
And the design changes you have to make to a gasoline engine to run it on ethanol are surprisingly minor. The biggest problem are the hoses and gaskets, but in most newer cars it's not that big a deal. It's not a very difficult problem in terms of engineering, they already do it in Brazil among other places, and Ford/GM/et al sell cars there.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Good thing...
I've been wanting those industry freaks banned for a while.
-- Working to secure tomorrows technology. Honestly Officer!
If this passes, I foresee a federal lawsuit claiming Washington state can not make this law as it effects interstate commerce which is the domain of the Federal Government.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
...when your dick falls off?
Then you assholes better give up smoking dope.
Signed,
A former Washingtonian
erin brockovitch?
kindly entertain me with what you think i'm ignorant about that i'm not
meanwhile, i ask you to look at the contributions to modern healthy society the "evil chemicals" have made
such bullshit
it's NOT the chemical industry out to kill you, unless you're a paranoid schizophrenic. it's mistakes are made, and things are corrected, like rachel carson and silent spring/ ddt
oh wait, sorry, i forgot: i lack the historical knowledge to be aware of rachel carson. scratch that. thanks to you, i know you know more about me in your prejudicial judgments of me than i know about myself
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
1. Discover mature product contains harmful chemical.
2. Ignore discovery until enough people hear about it that politicians decide to "lead".
3. Spend hundreds of thousands of dollars lobbying against change.
4. When finally forced to change, find some way to write off cost of change (and lobbying) so as to not pay taxes this year either.
5. Profit!
6. Brag to stockholders.
7. Get stock bonuses.
8. Dump stock and leave company before it augers into ground.
9. Profit!
10. Use small percentage of huge personal wealth to run for office on issue of cutting "unnecessary anti-competitive regulations".
11. Win by insulting "tree huggers".
12. Keep campaign promise by cutting regulations -- but only the ones that affect your biggest donors. Leave in place measures that hurt their competitors.
13. After leaving office, become corporate lobbyist.
14. Profit!
I know you come from the camp where all regulation is infallible and all corporations are PURE EEEVIL, but transfats are NOT CORPORATE SPITE or driving 1mph. The food police were advocating transfats:
While CSPI defended trans fats in their 1987 Nutrition Action newsletter, by 1992 CSPI began to speak against trans fats and is currently strongly against their use.[17]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans_fat
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PBDE
Nathan Friedly
Isn't that a HUGE issue? The chemical is CONCENTRATING itself in the food chain.
So this shouldn't be a problem unless, like Dick Cheney, you're eating the affected children, right?
Tweet, tweet.
- Learn some chemistry.
- Not say incredibly stupid things like the quote above.
I infer from the above quote that we will ban all food products since they build up in our body in the form of - wait for it - our cells. It makes me wonder if people are aware that we are all made of chemicals. What do they think amino acids, lipids, and carbohydrates are? (Or water for that matter?)Seriously, that's awesome that you live somewhere so fully green. But, as you pointed out-- 10% of your power is *still* dirty, and according to a quick google, residential lighting accounts for roughly 9% of total residential power consumption, which you will notice is a full percentage point lower than the amount of non-renewable power generation in your area. (even assuming that there is nothing but residential use, which is fairly certain to not be the case, skewing the figures even further in favor of switching) I've also given you the benefit of the doubt on your "renewable" power sources and assumed that none of them produce any emissions at all.
You would be hard-pressed to find *any* location in the United States where it doesn't make sense to switch to CF bulbs, even assuming nobody is recycling them, and every single bulb ends up in the landfill. It's a net power reduction, and a net pollutant reduction across the board.
Even with 90% zero-emission renewable power (something that is vanishingly rare in the US)-- the switch to CF bulbs is a gain without even recycling them.
Within the context of the article, anybody that can spell 'Chemical' should understand they are talking about PCBEs
Use some common sense when reading things like this, everyone else is.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Melamine Toxicology Harmful if swallowed, inhaled or absorbed through the skin. Chronic exposure may cause cancer or reproductive damage. Eye, skin and respiratory irritant. Isn't that the stuff the Chinese sent us in wheat gluten that's been poisoning dogs around the country?
And yet Dihydrogen monoxide? still goes unregulated.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
XXX#######
no evil corporate america is out to get you. life is not a hollywood movie. yes, there are bad people in this world, but the vast majority are stupid and bumbling, not evil. and they mean well, and with a little education, they right the errors of their ways. and besides, there are plenty of safeguards in place to protect the american consumer. remember rachel carson/ ddt? remember love canal? remember thalidomide?
people learned from these MISTAKES and put safeguards in place. it is just as wrong to assume every chemical is evil as it is to assume every chemical is safe, and your problem is that you think the status quo is to actually shove random untested chemicals on the marketplace and see what happens. ha! there are plenty of safeguards in place. do you know what kind of hurdles the pharmaceutical industry has to jump through before a drug is let on the market?
and mistakes STILL happen. and they are fixed. this is life. you will NEVER get a chemical indsutry that never puts a chemical out there that hurts someone somewhere somehow. and you will also never get a chemical industry that serves us with products that dramatically improve our lives without some missteps. you completely ignore the valid positive contributions, and dwell upon the mistakes, as if it were some weird capitalistic plot to kill you. so weird
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
but mostly, there are stupid and bumbling people out there, and, with a little education, they right the errors of their ways. if you actually stopped and talked to these guys fighting commonsense pollution legislation, i think you'd find some guy who think that pollution isn't a problem, the world is too big, that global warming doesn't exist, and all that extra cost is for nothing because of some hysteria
please note: i DO NOT agree with that, i think we need a LOT tougher rules on pollutants in the usa, that's my personal view. however, i'm just describing the way these guys probably think. and therefore, to better know your enemy, is a better way to DEFEAT your enemy
do you think it is superior though to think of them like mr. burns from the simpsons? "excellllennnt" (rubbing fingers). if we think of these morons fighting commonsense pollution legislation as evil, rather than just misinformed and mistaken, we give them more credit than they deserve, and inflate the problem into the realm of fantasy and myth, rather than simple fact to communicate to them and have them change their ways in shame for being misinformed
the point is to improve the world, right? or is your point to settle some sort of paranoid vendetta? how about we educate the idiots, rather than wage a holy war against some perceived evil bogeyman of a fat guy on top of pile of money out to kill us all in some weird hollywood plot?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript117_fu ll.html
Read that.
MOYERS: We are devoting our entire broadcast tonight to one important question: Are everyday chemicals harming our kids? In my lifetime, more than 75,000 synthetic chemicals and metals have been put to use in America. Chemicals, that in many cases, make our lives easier and better. They kill insects and weeds, clean our clothes and carpets, unclog our drains, create produce and lawns, pretty as a picture.
Most people walk around with those chemicals in their bodies. A few generations ago, the only "chemical" that might be in your body was lead. And you go off on some fuzzy logic rant about being responsible? You don't have a choice anymore, and know body really knows what these all this compounds do in the human body. Oh, that's right, this is slashdot where any half baked libertarian drivel about responsibility gets modded as insightful.
You can't just show up at the border waving a firearm.
and I'm too poor to fix it any other way. I had hazmat gear, and something called beanie-doo that I used to remove the mastic (the sticky stuff they used to put the cheap tile down). The real problem was I didn't know there was asbestos in the tiling until the floors had gotten to the point where I had to redo the tile. The way I found out was I was hiring a carpet company, and they wouldn't come in and work until the asbestos was gone. It was a nightmare to do, but relatively save with the hazmat gear and the beanie-doo (it binds to the asbestos fibers, keeping you from breathing them).
I'd love to move, but that's poverty for you.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Why not just ban matches?
The headline smacks of DIGG feel good fluff piece. $200k is chump chain.
Why are the industry freaking??? If anything they're going to be making more money.
Just like the "clean air" additives blue state require of gas sellers, gas sellers responded by jacking up the price.
If PDBE companies makes the alternative chemicals where again is the panic?
You like having asbestos dust in the air produced from brake pads?
If the risk of my dying in a car accident due to using inferior brake pads is higher than the risk of dying from cancer due to breathing in asbestos dust, then yes. I would rather have asbestos dust in the air from brake pads.
As for the effect of dust from brake pads, in the fact sheet from the National Cancer Institute of the NIH (in question 4, second paragraph) it states that there was no detectable increase in lung cancers or mesothelioma among mechanics working on brake systems. Now, if people working close up with asbestos pads aren't getting sick from the dust, then I'm not too worried about the asbestos either...but I am worried about not being in an accident
In conclusion, while we'd all prefer brake pads without asbestos and great stopping capacity, we should prefer the more effective braking pads with asbestos over the poorer braking pads without.
Disclaimer: I'm not a car nut, so I'm going on the assumtion that the new non-asbestos organic brake pads are in fact inferior.
EU has invented similar laws under the acronym RoHS. Those too are driving manufacturers of embedded devices nuts: without Pb., solder points corrode much faster - which is bad for equipment designed to be put in remote areas with extreme weather conditions... of course: far away from population centers where people could get hurt. RoHS compliant equipment can't last as long as current gear; and guess who's paying the price of replacing that stuff much faster than needed? And this replacement comes at a cost for the environment too...
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
$200K? If you don't want to play, don't bother showing up.
Good heavens Miss Sakamoto - you're beautiful!
They are talking about Washington State not Washington D.C. I don't think the politics there warrant larger contibutions that would be require by members of the US Congress.
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
We either let every company produce what they want and play catch up when we get a Love Canal-esque situation, or no progress will ever be made.
I see where you are coming from.
Blar.
Agreed. They should use chemicals that cause more painless forms of cancer.
...since the scare and ban a few million people have died from malaria who could have been saved...
This is simply false. Get your facts from somewhere other than Michael Crichton books. They're fiction, dude. And they're written by a liar.
Washington and Oregon are both known for extreme environmental legislation.
...spray the finished circuit board with some non conductive plastic or something, to eliminate the whiskers growing?
So, once these are all banned can the residents of Washington sue their state government when what would have been a mild exploding capacitor turns into a house fire?
Seriously people. The environmentalists are constantly shooting themselves in the foot. They banned a similar substance used in transformers. Then the largest (at that time) solar generating plant in the US had a transformer failure and the entire plant burned down. Of course the owners of the solar plant closed up shop and didn't rebuild. Why put billions into something to protect the environment when the environmentalists make it impossible to protect that investment by using the latest technologies.
In the 1990's, someone I know told me the inventing company (I forgot which, 3m maybe?) saw this coming and got out of the business, selling it to other companies.
See, air samples, water samples, and tissue samples of stuff all over the planet was showing up with traces of this stuff. Maybe it was causing problems or not, I don't remember. But the point being it was EVERYWHERE and not breaking down at all.
I have been waiting for this to come out of the woodwork and nail the stain/flame prevention makers. Though the chemicals are quite useful, the application and inability to keep them from getting all over makes them unappealing.
or maybe you took the most pantywaist hysterical interpretation of my words, without even truly reading or comprehending what i said. since what you just wrote directly contradicts what i actually said
gee, that's a hard one to decide
pffffffffft
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I'm not claiming that corporations want to kill us. That's idiocy. Even the tobacco companies, whose products undeniably kill people, want their customers to keep coming back. What I'm saying, though, is that many industrial manufacturers do not practice due diligence. There are a variety of excuses for this. Some people think it's a conspiracy. Some people think it's laziness. Some people think it is stupidity. I think that it's a combination of stupidity, lazniess, and greed. Fact is, it is not being done.
Now here's the part that kills me-- all those things you mention: Love Canal, Rachel Carson, Thalidomide-- they are examples of the 'responsible' people not practicing due diligence. So what you take away from those 'lessons' you cite? My guess is that you think that 'people who care about public health are wackjobs'. What I take away from it is this: we can't trust the people who stand to gain when our health is at stake. They will make the same mistakes, and when you catch them with their pants down, they will deny it.
Maybe YOU need to brush up on your history. Did you know that when Rachel Carson published Silent Spring the chemical industry universally called her a lunatic? From Time Magazine (courtesy of Wikipedia): Yes, mistakes happen. But they happen over and over again. But why not be better prepared? Look, I live in the 20th century. In the morning, I put contact lenses in my eyes, I use my microwave oven to make breakfast, and I sit in front of a computer all day. I take ibuprofen when I have a headache. These things are products of modern chemical, electrical, and mechanical engineering. OBVIOUSLY I am not 'ignoring the positive contributions'; what I'm saying is that if you think these modern conveniences are as safe as they can or should be, because all of the folks making chemicals have 'learned' from their mistakes, then you are living in a fucking bubble.
hysteria at it's finest
yes, your hindsight is perfect. i'm glad you think everyone else should have perfect hindsight too
Look, I live in the 20th century. In the morning, I put contact lenses in my eyes, I use my microwave oven to make breakfast, and I sit in front of a computer all day. I take ibuprofen when I have a headache. These things are products of modern chemical, electrical, and mechanical engineering. OBVIOUSLY I am not 'ignoring the positive contributions'; what I'm saying is that if you think these modern conveniences are as safe as they can or should be, because all of the folks making chemicals have 'learned' from their mistakes, then you are living in a fucking bubble
actually, i'm not sure what you are trying to say. but it seems from the rest of what you wrote that you should stop using the microwave, the computer, contacts and ibuprofen. by your own standards: practice what you preach and stop using these things, because they haven't been tested thoroughly by some sort of super accurate and prescient set of standards about things we don't even know yet
i mean, when they sprayed ddt they should have checked first for the effect of ddt on the rigidity of bird's eggs, right? and before thalidomide was released into the general public, they should have checked for teratogenetic effects first, right?
because when these products were released, effects like these were widely understood and comprehended, right?
hindsight, moron, do you understand that concept? you should try to understand what it means to the words you say and why you are flat out wrong and obviously pantywaist hysterical
christ, getting a sampler of the way you think, i'm amazed you can summon the strength to get out of bed in the morning, considering all of the unknown threats out there... boo!
oh i'm sorry, we should already know and test for what we don't know! my hindsight is retroactive!
pfffft
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Chemicals are assumed to be safe for human use until proven otherwise
uh... what are you smoking? can i have some?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Yes, but there are many plastic parts that give you no chance of swallowing, inhaling, absorbing or chronic exposuring to the melamine inside them. Also, the melamine has been used to make dinnerware together with formaldehyde. Or in laminate flooring and Mr. Clean's magic eraser, with formaldehyde too. It also has small environment impact as itself.
BTW, I don't get it why US, one of the biggest wheat exporter, imports wheat gluten from China, one of the biggest wheat importer?
There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
'It really is a message from Washington state and policymakers that we won't accept chemicals that build up in our bodies and our children.'"
Like what, niacin and Vitamin E? Iron? Calcium?
Or maybe he's referring to antibodies.
Who the hell knows. But chemicals are bad. Like, for sure.
The idea behind using ethanol instead of petrol is that currently there's a lot of CO2 stored in petrol, but by growing plants then burning them, we're not adding any CO2 to the atmosphere.
o f_the_Future-e852.pdf
So you mean to tell me that we get 100% of the energy that went into growing that plant back in burning it in the car that uses the methanol? Neat trick that, I suppose peasant laborers harvest the crop by hand, drag it in from the fields on sledges, mash the corn, refine it, and then carry the finished product to the gas station by bicycle?
(We'll ignore that the highest percentage of methanol is the E85 that GM is pushing and that's only 85% ethanol, that other 15% is magic dragon puffs?) Here's a good breakdown on what Ethanol and the other alternatives really cost (yeah, it's a PDF) http://media.popularmechanics.com/documents/Fuel_
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
"We've not found substances that cause cancer, just substances that have a statistical association with increased risk of cancer."
If you can't give a rat cancer by giving it a massively oversized dose of it, it probably doesn't cause cancer.
This stuff turns into dust. It's absorbed into the body.
c arcinogens_home.htm
I still don't trust industry. They own the ACS(american cancer society),which doesn't teach prevention because of all the chemical companies on the board.
http://www.preventcancer.com/consumers/household/
"Methylene chloride, the propellant used in many aerosol products, is carcinogenic. Some products containing methylene chloride have been pulled from the market, but the carcinogen continues to be found in many consumer products such as spray paint and stripper.
Not a single cosmetic company warns consumers of the presence of carcinogens in its products - despite the fact that a number of common cosmetic ingredients are carcinogenic or carcinogenic precursors."
They may be the first to legislate against Oxygen, but... well, have you seen LA?
Meta will eat itself
Should I be buying stock in non-PBDE flame retardant chemical companies?
:)
Come on Slashdot, we can make serious bank!
I love getting investing advice from anonymous online fora.
insurance industries in the campaign. They would have easily convinced insurace providers to throw some laundering, I mean lobbying, money at the issue.
Flame retardants are a huge issue in how quickly houses are destroyed by fires. A matter of minutes versus seconds for fires to spread in many cases. The faster a fire spreads the more insurance companies have to pay for damages. They would have certainly thrown closer to millions rather than low 6 figure numbers at the lobbyists.
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
How about educating dumb-ass people to, you know, not fuck arround with fire? I've got smoke detectors all over, and escape plans. Let Darwin sort them out.
Blar.
I'm more inclined to believe the ADA than you on that one, sorry. Moreover, the mercury in fillings is an amalgam and the studies of both of these incidents have not found any significant health risk. In case you don't know what an amalgam is, it means that one metal is dissolved into another, just as salt dissolves in water. In the case of dental fillings, mercury forms an amalgam with silver.
I mean, if we're to believe that certain elements are inherently harmful, would we not have to avoid common table salt? Its chemical formula is NaCl--one sodium atom with one chlorine atom. If you know anything about chemistry (and I don't expect you to), you'd know that both of those elements are quite poisonous. Salt, however, is completely essential for life (although it's unhealthy to go overboard, you would die without _any_ salt). What's worse is that the elements dissociate when dissolved. That is to say, you end up with Na+ and Cl- ions floating freely in, say, water! Or, for example, your body (go look up sodium channels sometime, I'll wait).
As they say, the difference between medicine and poison is often the dosage. So please, present some kind of scientific evidence before trotting out those well-studied, well-refuted examples of supposedly toxic buildup. I have seen nothing alleging actual harm that was not soundly refuted for either mercury amalgam fillings or immunizations.
Clearly, the one(s) you have suck.