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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.'"
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.
Wow a whole $200k over two years; they must really be serious!
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Yeah, as long as it's not too many. Otherwise we'd have to ban anything that's not metal/glass/ceramic.... oh, wait, those could cut someone, so we better ban them too. The question is not whether it's dangerous, it's how to balance the inherent tradeoffs between the various dangers.
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.
You'd be surprised at the current effectiveness of Vista's Firewall. Talk about retardant!
And now we're replacing it with ethanol, which doesn't.
MTBE is still better than lead, because lead never breaks down, being elemental. But don't let the facts get in your way.
Requiring a given level of flame resistance is not unreasonable, nor is refusing to use chemicals which are somehow ending up in the food chain. That may mean they end up sitting on a bunch of unpadded metal furniture or something. I don't particularly care.
Seldom are there ever only two choices.
You're acting like this is the only fire retardant available, or that there aren't ways to reduce flammability that don't involve spraying toxics on your products or otherwise making them unsafe.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I would not be surprised either — promises to "cut the red tape" and reduce the regulatory burden is part of the reason I vote Republican...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
It's not as bad as the Washington Biological Survey, abbreviated as "Wash. Biol. Surv.", which people may mistake as animal cooking instructions.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
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.
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!!
Is Washington a big enough state to overcome the costs associated with a differentiated product line?
If you read the article- there are alternatives to the banned chemicals. In fact, the same companies that make the banned chemicals make the alternatives.
The wonderful thing about capitalism is that it is remarkably adaptive. Even if Washington State isn't very large, they still represent a lot of buying power. I once read that my local town's residents have the buying power in the hundreds of millions of dollars...
Let's also not forget that "making things easy for corporations" (which pay single-digit percentages of taxes, when in the 50's they paid about half) should be the absolute least of our priorities, especially when it comes to matters of public health.
Watch the Bill Moyer special sometime about pollution- give a sample of your blood to someone with an analytical lab, and they'll be able to find hundreds, if not thousands, of industrial chemicals. They've become completely pervasive.
Please help metamoderate.
...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.
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?
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.
The problem with Asbestos is that it was used as an every day building material. This meant you had every day builders working with it. The sort of guys who wont even bother to wear proper boots or a hard hat because, well, whatever. There is no reason in the world to believe that they could ever work safely with asbestos.
Not to mention the poor bastard homeowners who just want to hang a picture or knock a wall down, and don't stop to think that perhaps putting a sledgehammer in their wall might one day cause them to develop a very nasty and painful form of cancer. Let alone their kids, who end up breathing in the dust. Yes, I know, they should stop to think, but people are dumb.
Expecting dumb people to safely handle something as nasty as asbestos was never going to work. It would be like selling regent grade sulfuric acid on the shelves of Wal*Mart as a drain cleaner and expecting people to handle it safely and not dispose of it down the nearest storm drain.
I repeat : any chemical, that is not bio-degradeable, ends up on our plate and accumulates in the whole eco-system.
Any material that is not biodegradable, stays in the foodchain for thousands of years. We are slowly poisoning ourselves. You think too small-scale.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
*shrug*
Or maybe manufacturers should get off their asses, stop buying everything from Dow chemical, and switch to purchasing cost-competitive, biodegradable fire retardants that vastly exceed the performance of existing chemicals on the market.
Competing products are out there. We make one that blows the doors off any other fire retardant, performance-wise, and is eco-friendly to boot. So why are we having difficulty getting into the market? Because without legislation than bans nasty brominated materials major manufacturers see no reason to upset their supply chains.
You can bet your ass my company is drooling all over this, and we'll be pushing hard on distributors in Washington state.
Heck, if anyone out there is interested in using our products, leave a reply to this post with contact info and I'll get someone to get into contact with you.
Actually, California has only banned penta-PBDEs and octa-PBDEs, but has not banned deca-PBDEs--and the ban doesn't go into effect until next year. Europe, which started the whole thing, has only banned penta-PBDEs and octa-PBDEs but not deca-PBDEs--California's legislation is modeled after Europe's. And the reason why deca-PBDEs are not banned is because the Swedish study which showed problems with PBDEs only showed problems with penta- and octa- but not with deca-PBDEs.
Washington is banning all PBDEs, including deca-PBDEs, which were not shown by the Swedish investigation as being harmful. As such, the Washington legislation goes beyond California's or Europe's.
Here's how it works.
You're the CEO Megacorp 1. You produce SuperDooperFunTechs, a brand of computer, containing CAnCeR2 toxic waste as a flame retardant.
A state, say, one that contains the world's largest computer software company, bans CAnCeR2.
You, being a CEO, naturally hear about this on Slashdot. Naturally, your first reaction is to have a hissy fit. You then read the suggestions by dslashbot (202099) advising you to "stick it to the man" and simply refuse to sell your wares in said state.
"Har har" says you. "That'll learn 'em".
At which point the CEO of Megacorp 2, who produces SuperDooperFunTech's main rival, PowerMegaSeriousTech, says "Wow, Megacorp 1 is withdrawing from that state? Why? Because there's a ban on CAnCeR2? Hmmm, do we have CAnCeR2 in our PowerMegaSeriousTech?"
A flunky then says "Why, yes your seriousness, but wait. There's a whole host of flame retardants that are not banned, we just use CAnCeR2 because it's cheap. Remember that memo? Save every penny? If we switched to GRe3N, the lowest cost alternative, we'd have to add $2 to the price of our PowerMegaSeriousTechs. Call it $3 if you take into account that we would probably only want to do that for the state in question."
"Ha ha!" says CEO of Megacorp 2. "Profits!".
And so the story has a happy ending. Megacorp 2 sells safe, toxic waste free, PowerMegaSeriousTechs to our environmentally conscious state. The state's happy citizens have their PowerMegaSeriousTechs, they're $3 more expensive than they are in the neighbouring states, but that's ok. The CEO of Megacorp 1 is fired for being so shortsighted as to seriously believe that the choice is always between affordable fire retardants and being sued for numerous fires. Meanwhile, as more and more states ban CAnCeR2, the costs of alternatives plummet as chemical companies the world over realize there's money to be made in non-toxic flame retardants, and CAnCeR2 is a dead-end.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
What about purified silicon? Glass? Drywall? Aluminum, or any pure metal?
I'm a huge fan of not slowly poisoning ourselves, but I think your criteria of using only biodegradable materials is unreasonable. There are ways of neutralizing chemicals outside of biology.
Then what about naturally occurring chemicals? PDBEs are found in nature (with carbon isotopes not found in synthetic chemicals).
While I agree that PDBEs should be replaced with currently available chemicals that are biodegradable, we don't know everything. We don't know where naturally occurring PDBEs come from or where they go. Technically, there may be some bacteria out there capable of degrading PDBEs, but we still shouldn't be using them.
It's enough to say that we shouldn't use dangerous chemicals unless we have to.
You can't just show up at the border waving a firearm.