Slashdot Mirror
California Classes LED Component Gallium Arsenide a Carcinogen
Reader LM741N, pointing to a report released this month by California's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, writes "Gallium Arsenide has now been listed as a carcinogen. Given the increasing usage of gallium arsenide, the main constituent in LEDs, and their recent championing as more efficient light sources in recent news stories and Slashdot, there may be significant environmental concerns as related to their disposal. Morover, workers in industries using the substance may be at risk of cancer as well."
I guess I will have to stop eating LEDs, at least while in California.
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
to cause cancer and everything associated with living. As a result, the California legislature has required that signs be posted every where that states, "Living causes cancer. To limit your risk, stop living."
Ah, California, where everything is known the cause cancer.
Including sand. When I lived there, one of the utility bills (I forget which one) always had a statement that the company used chemicals "known to the state of California to cause cancer", because they used sand at some of the plants.
When you mix Californium and Governmentium, causing cancer is the only chemical reaction that is allowed to happen.
The radioactive decay products of Californium include Liberelium and a heavy isotope of Governmentium called Bigovernmentium, which when combined are known to be toxic.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Did you forget to back that up with some compelling statistics you're saving for later? Let's compare housing values in silicon valley vs. detroit to see if you're right.
Sign blindness is more of a real problem than the tiny amount of Gallium in LEDs. If you want to protect people, you can't deluge them with constant warnings. They eventually become sign blind and begin ignoring, or worse mocking warning labels. According to the labels, every can of paint in the hardware store causes cancer in California. But what I don't know is if paint A is going to make me infertile the moment I look at it, or if paint B is just a problem if I drink 5 gallons of it. The labels don't have any kind of granularity.
A color coded system might do consumers well. No color==mostly OK. Green==Don't eat a bunch of this, it's not good for you. Yellow==Take care when using this, ventilation is a good idea and long term exposure is probably going to hurt you. Red==For the love of all that is holly, wear a respirator or leave it for the pros. Black==if you are reading this, you're already dead.
California needs to remember that poison is in the portion. EVERYTHING is poisons in the right quantity. A warning label can be useful, when not slapped on every surface that it can physically bond to.
Warning! This cliff is known to the state of California to cause plummeting, falling and smassing of bones. Gravity in effect at edge of cliff face! Short term exposure to gravity can cause serious injury.
This one's tricky. You have to use imaginary numbers, like eleventeen... --Hobbes
We have such a warning at work, on the doors. There are indeed dangerous chemicals in the building, in one chemical lab, accessible to maybe 10 chemists. The remaining 1,990 workers do sales and support and design stuff on computers.
#1 GDP of US states, #10 GDP per capita. Diversified economy including agriculture, shipping, assorted manufacturing, and high tech.
Truly, a downtrodden people, crying out for the better way of life enjoyed by their fellow men in Mississippi.
While we're on the subject, after the thorough screwing that California got from the ever wise and beneficent market during the electricity deregulation and crisis, I'm guessing that they might not be rushing with open arms into a bold era of state nonintervention.
Which is why it has consistently had the strongest economy in the nation?
As a life-long resident of California, I can guarantee that the success of the economy is in spite of the state government, not because of it.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Well, its a free country, so feel free to not read any warning you like. But I like knowing that the power cable on my blender contains lead and that I should wash my hands after plugging it in and before touching food. I like knowing which products at Home Depot are more likely to cause respiratory problems. And yes, if a building I worked in contained excessive levels of some toxin, I would like to know about it.
You don't get that kind of information though. You get a generic Proposition 95 warning sign that basically says "something sold, kept, or used on these premises has been deemed a cancer risk by borderline hypochondriac bureaucrats at the state level." It's no fucking use at all.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Truly, a downtrodden people, crying out for the better way of life enjoyed by their fellow men in Mississippi.
The right-wing anarcho-capitalist nutjobs HATE it that "liberal" states tend to be far more economically prosperous than the "conservative" anti-environment, anti-union states. It kills them.
Since when is it a bad thing to notify consumers that the products they're buying and using may pose a health risk?
Since doing so excessively will trivialize the risk.
Imagine if instead of severe thunderstorm and tornado warnings, the national weather service issued "wet weather" warnings any time it wasn't sunny. You couldn't tell the difference between a summer shower and a hurricane, and since summer showers are much more common you wouldn't realize today's warning meant 80mph winds until it was too late.
If you are going to do warning labels for things that aren't a significant risk, you should at least put a "danger level" on them. We could have categories like for tornadoes:
Instead of the Enhanced Fujita Scale, we'll have the Enhanced California Scale:
EC0 - You might get cancer. But 40 million other Californians won't.
EC1 - 1 in a million lifetime cancer risk from a single exposure
EC2 - 1 in 10,000 lifetime cancer risk from a single exposure
EC3 - 1 in 100 lifetime cancer risk from a single exposure
EC4 - If you touch it and live another 50 years, you'll get cancer
EC5 - You'll be lucky to be alive a year from now
EC6 - You'll be lucky if you live long enough to finish reading this senten
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
"I was thinking they'd be a viable alternative to mercury-filled CCFL's."
They still are, and truth be told CCFLs, despite containing mercury, are a viable alternative to incandescents which aren't exactly made of sunshine and pixy dust. The real problem is that we expect to just be able to throw everything in a bucket, ship it off to the dump and never have to worry or think about it again. That has never been a reasonable thought, but we're just starting to figure that out now. When the expectation is impossible to achieve, you shouldn't be surprised by disappointment.
In the mean time, I'd suggest not crushing up and snorting your LEDs, because even if the cancer doesn't kill you, I'm sure that the deadly poisons and glass fragments will.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
Did you forget to back that up with some compelling statistics you're saving for later? Let's compare housing values in silicon valley vs. detroit to see if you're right.
That's just a comparison of the desirability of living in those places. No, it's more accurate to compare state government fiscal responsibility between California and Ohio. The fact that the economy in California continues to be able to support ruinously idiotic government that continually spends more than it takes in is part of what keeps the idiots in charge, in charge. If California were a marginal rust-belt state, it's residents would have thrown those morons in the legislature out long ago.
That's sort of a silly comparison. If California were a rust-belt state then it would receive more in federal spending than it pays and there would be no problem. California pays the federal government $50 billion per year more than the benefits it receives. If California wasn't subsidizing the unsuccessful economies of those rust-belt states with its very successful economy (a gross state product equivalent to the GDP of Italy), there would be no problem whatsoever. Complain all you want about the idiots in charge in California, but at the end of the day if it weren't for California, many of the governments of the States in the US would be bankrupt.
California is liberal only in that it is less conservative than other states. Our politics are all over the map. We want legalized marijuana, but three strikes. We want compassion for first offenders, but we demand the death penalty. We demand impartiality in the judiciary, and yet we require that judges be elected and stand for re-election every four years.
As for the economics, we have a government whose spending has grown 40% in the last five years, and yet has had a combined population and price index growth rate of only 29%. We have no budget, spending expectations having outstripped revenue expectations by more than $15 billion out of $140 billion, nor do we have any signs of getting a budget soon, and the politics of the budget this year are even more brutal than past years. One Democrat who refused to cast a vote (she was protesting the refusal of the majority to bring up legislation she wanted heard) found that her office was moved across the street that afternoon on orders of the Democratic Majority Leader. (Not that her vote would have changed anything -- it still several votes short of passing.)
Unemployment in California is at 7.3% as of August, up from 6.2% in May. It ranges from a low of 5.0% in Marin County to 23.3% in Imperial County (admittedly a smaller county). Los Angeles County is at 8.1%. The foreclosure rates for the state have tripled in the last year.
There are states in worse shape than California (though I don't know if anyone has a budget mess as bad). Still, it's not exactly all peaches and cream in California.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Besides, the price of homes there isn't just a measure of desirability, but also a measure of the ability of the economy to support those prices.
No... it used to be. The price of homes in most non-rural areas is not an indicator of the economy's ability to support those prices. Hence the ever increasing foreclosure rate. Hence, house prices have gone up many times more than income (as a for instance, houses that were worth $30K here in a NY suburb 30 years ago are now worth $480K (nothing but upkeep). House prices have thus went up 16 times their previous value... while wages for such people have went up by a factor of 2.5 to 3.
I doubt most of Cali or any other place that isn't rural or very close to rural isnt having the same problem. As the gap widens, it is going to become sickeningly obvious to more people that it's not what the economy can support that is driving house prices...
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
White LEDs are made of Gallium Nitride not Gallium Arsenide. It's the Arsenic in GaAs that is a carcinogen.
Maybe you should have gone on to the second page. The capital gains tax is not typically considered a tax on the middle class. From the links you provided he isn't raising the social security tax rates, only increasing the amount of taxable income. That looks like it would probably impact the upper middle class, but these aren't struggling families. I don't see any evidence given of middle class income tax increases.
As for gas taxes nothing you linked to indicate he supports raising gas taxes, although if he did raise gas taxes and offset the increase with credits elsewhere it would probably be one of the best things you could do for the country. In case you haven't notice, or dependency on foreign fuel is a very bad thing.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
AC: Ever worked a day in your life? I mean the hard kind of work that'll make you sweat during the day and blow black shit out of your nose and lungs at night? (or worse/similar) I doubt it.
Some people in the US work for a living doing hazardous work. Yeah even more hazardous than jockeying that desk of yours all day.
Of the things that can be hazardous for people to work with, some of them are hazardous to your lungs - like sand.
"Play sand" like the kind you probably spend your days with has been thoroughly washed and graded for safety.
People who work around industrial sand (anything from quarries to paint shops) and breath a lot of silicates (very fine sand) end up with cancer.
I'm sure it's funny to you and some other people -- why else would so many signs be needed to point these things out?
Sadly more people of your mind you do not expatriate to a place where they already do business "your way" such as...well, nearly any second or third world country. You can sprinkle lead paint on your corn flakes and have silica sand for desert if you like. Sure civilization has its warts, but if you don't like it, don't fake like there's no alternative and try to drag the rest of us back in time. Bye.
-Matt