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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.'"
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.
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.
Someone used the rootkit.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
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.
Demonstrate (if you can't prove) that there is _good_ reason for concern before flying off the handle.
Demonstrate (if you can't prove) that there is _good_ reason to believe that this stuff is harmless?
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
China, Europe and Japan have banned PBDE, plus California, I think Washington is going to be OK.
There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
Aside from the fact that your example is purely speculative, you are also free to move to a state which lines up with your personal preferences.
If we truly had states' rights, the several states would each adopt a particular point on the economic and moral continuua, and people can choose where they like to live.
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!!
...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.
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
Legislation is great when you agree with it--it is a reasonable reaction to a growing public concern that needs to be addressed in a thoughtful way.
On the other hand, Legislation sucks when you disagree with it--it is an overreaching abuse of the power of the government to impose the will of a neanderthal few upon otherwise freedom loving people.
Don't matter what the legislation is, nor how it is passed or if it is the Federal government telling the States to knock it off, or if it is the States banning together to use their relative size to impose their standards upon the nation. Legislation is good when you agree with it, and it sucks when you disagree with it.
Simple as that.
But, if something is harmful to the environment to the point that you don't have a choice...
If someone is smoking, you can leave the room.
If someone is putting toxic chemicals in your drinking water, there isn't quite as much you can do. If someone is putting toxic gases in your air, it's hard to get away from it.
I am far from an environmentalist, but there are a lot of toxic things that are legal right now that are really bad for you. This is different from, say, banning fatty foods or something. I can avoid fatty foods, I can eat organically, whatever, but it's a bit different when I can't get away from it, unless I move to Antarctica or something.
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!
There is more than one way to start a fire: Dell Laptop Burns House Down
Congress finds the following:
(1) More than two billion pounds of polyurethane foam are sold in the United States every year.
(2) Polyurethane foam is found in mattresses, bedding, upholstered furniture, carpet padding, soundproofing materials, and countless other objects commonly found in homes and office buildings.
(3) Firefighters refer to polyurethane foam as `solid gasoline' because of its flammability, and when burning, it emits deadly gases including arsenic.
(4) Between 1980 and 1998, mattress, bedding, and upholstered furniture fires killed almost 30,000 people in the United States. During the same period, these fires injured more than 95,000 people.
(5) Direct property damage from foam fires over the same period was nearly $10 billion.
(6) Exposed polyurethane soundproofing foam led to 100 deaths and 200 injuries at the Station nightclub fire in West Warwick, Rhode Island, on February 20, 2003.
(7) A typical room fire will reach `flashover', the high temperature point at which all combustible materials in a room ignites, in 5 minutes or less from the time at which polyurethane foam filled furniture catches fire. The National Fire Protection Association's standard requires that 90 percent of the time, the first firefighters must arrive at the fire within 4 minutes. Foam Fire Safety Act
What can't truly be described - but only understood through experience - is the amount of smoke generated by a smoldering coach or mattress; fog gray and impenetrable it leaves you blind and disoriented, no lamp, no flashlight, will be of any use to you at all. You must not let go of anything that can guide you.
- 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.
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
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?
Well, coal plants present a smaller number of points of emission, at any rate, so rather than having to encourage/mandate behavior of 300 million, you only have to control the behavior of a few thousand coal plants.
(Though the challenge of reckoning with the political influence of coal plant owners might be an issue.)
Tweet, tweet.
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.
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.
Got any stats to back that up? (i.e. your tacit assertion that traffic fatalities have gone up...)
So you make your argument, then say, "My argument is based on pulling a fact out of my ass."
Nice.