The United States of Toxins | Hacker News Reader

The United States of Toxins

priceonomics.com

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Pounds weight is a terrible way to measure toxins. This report is basically meaningless, because it lumps together toxins with vastly different risks. Eg. sodium carbonate is included, which is just common washing soda. I wouldn't eat it but the risk is easily manageable. Compare with, eg. dimethylmercury, which is scary even at parts per billion concentration. An actually useful measurement would take into account both potency and persistence of toxins.

Agree! Thank you! What a terrible way to compare, shows a complete lack of basic scientific literacy to compare based on mass, very deceiving.

To compare the states properly they would need to do a risk assessment essentially, which is difficult and complex to say the least...

Also most of the 'toxins'from mining are probably heavy metals which are pretty easy to treat and contain in that context.

I didn't see sodium carbonate in the list, but you probably do eat it - it's a food additive.

Copper and manganese are on the list, and are absolutely necessary to live! If you completely cut them out, you would die.

Yes and arsenic is an essential element for rats, hamsters, goats, chickens and probably humans. Go figure!

I wasn't aware of this!

Although numerous studies with rats, hamsters, minipigs, goats and chicks have indicated that arsenic is an essential nutrient, the physiological role of arsenic is open to conjecture. Recent studies have suggested that arsenic has a physiological role that affects the formation of various metabolites of methionine metabolism including taurine and the polyamines. The concentration of plasma taurine is decreased in arsenic-deprived rats and hamsters. The hepatic concentration of polyamines and the specific activity of an enzyme necessary for the synthesis of spermidine and spermine, S-adenosylmethionine decarboxylase, are also decreased in arsenic-deprived rats. Thus, evidence has been obtained which indicates that arsenic is of physiological importance, especially when methionine metabolism is stressed (e.g. pregnancy, lactation, methionine deficiency, vitamin B6 deprivation). Any possible nutritional requirement by humans can be estimated only by using data from animal studies. The arsenic requirement for growing chicks and rats has been suggested to be near 25 ng g(-1) diet. Thus, a possible human requirement is 12 μg day(-1). The reported arsenic content of diets from various parts of the world indicates that the average intake of arsenic is in the range of 12-40 μg. Fish, grain and cereal products contribute most arsenic to the diet. - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24197927

also, dividing by area wouldn't be inappropriate.

> Pounds weight is a terrible way to measure toxins.

But it is one thing: undeniably objective. The alternative would include a "rating" system which the industry can use to say "yeah we emit x hundred tons per year of chemical y but it is next to harmless, better go after company z and their waste"... leading to inevitable chains of lawsuits dragged over years.

For what its worth for many industrial processes there exist technical means of greatly reducing emissions (e.g. for smoke stacks: gas washers, desulfurization technologies, fine-dust retainers), but as long as environmental costs don't get billed to companies or required by the state, companies have no incentive to reduce emissions, as every dollar spent is a dollar less profit.

Maybe it's time to introduce legislations that allow the government to hold the shareholders accountable e.g. for Superfund sites, that would at least provide a decent incentive for companies to clean up or to provide enough cash to compensate for environmental damages after closure - right now companies can simply close/be liquidated and the taxpayers have to foot the cleanup bill.

This is the same as measuring developer productivity by counting lines of code: perfectly objective, but worse than useless.

Millions of tonnes of any waste released into the environment, no matter how "harmless", are too much. Humanity needs to tackle its waste problem, and that soon, or we are going to drown our kids in trash. Or, given that nitrates (which aren't that toxic per se) are the 3rd position in weight are perfect food for algae, we're drowning them in algae and without fish.

Not to mention that much of the stuff that gets released in huge quantities can actually be used as a natural resource. Instead of capturing and using it we're throwing all the stuff away.

Therefore, any way of looking at the environmental issues is good - anything that can be tackled should be tackled.

This is a terrible idea. People have repeatedly shown they are willing to give up very little to address environmental problems. That makes it even more important that when we use limited social capital to address a problem, it's the most important problem that can be addressed.

> when we use limited social capital to address a problem

Let an actual free and fair market solve it. When externalities have to be included in pricings (be it insurance premiums for superfund cleanup, earmarked money in trusts for cleanup, or simply preventing emissions in the first place) instead of having them shouldered by society, the market will by itself weed out companies doing excessive environmental damage.

That seems like a convoluted definition of "free market". For that to work there needs to be some agreed upon definition of what effects are considered "externalities" and there also needs to be an enforcement mechanism. There's no way that's going to be handled other than central planning.

> the market will by itself weed out companies doing excessive environmental damage

Do you have any data to support this fairytale?

> Let an actual free and fair market solve it.

Ideally, yes, but that's like saying "we'll just use nuclear fusion to meet our energy needs."

Or: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assume_a_can_opener

I see the logic in what you are saying but I wonder if it would just lead to a situation where every problem just becomes, "not severe enough to warrant attention". I've sort of seen this with opposition to environmental regulations being opposed on the grounds that it "costs too much money".

But if you are implying that productivity is analoguous to toxicity, then in this case no statement was made on toxicity. It was left out, so it's like just counting lines of code without associating it with productivity. So maybe it's less useful on the surface, but it's also more accurate raw data that others could remix into their own solutions and conclusions.

It's worse than meaningless because it distracts from more damaging issues because "Wow! Heavy!"

If I have 10kg of mercury and I dump it in a river, that measures 10kg of toxic waste.

But if I have pile of 10 million kg of rock that contains 1kg of mercury, it's reported as a million times worse for 1 tenth the toxin.

What you want is weight divided by the LD50 dose of that toxin.

Less toxic stuff will have a lower rating per pound, while more toxic stuff would kill more people per unit of weight.

If someone could make a version of this report that weighted toxicants for TD50 per km², it would be interesting to see the data plotted against epidemiology rates in the same areas.

"Fatal units" might be more useful.

This is misleading. Huge amounts of nitrates are injected into the Midwest's soil, so much so that children cannot drink the groundwater and must be given bottled water. Yet the chart shows Nebraska and Kansas as having low levels of toxins released into the environment.

Many other toxins must have been omitted from this study.

Sad that this report is using the word "toxins", synthetic toxicants are not included in the definition of toxin.

The National Emissions Inventory is a more complete picture of our nations emsissions. The TRI is only conceded with permitted industrial sources. The NEI includes estimates from other source types including :

- On-Road mobile sources (cars / trucks ) - Non-Road mobile sources such as trains and plains and construction equipment - Non-Point emissions such as land-fills, agriculture burning and unpermitted sources such as dry cleaners

https://www.epa.gov/air-emissions-inventories/2014-national-...

They show the supply side.

I'd like to see the demand side. How much toxic waste does each person's behavior promote being used? How much is embodied in each product?

They listed cities by square mile, why don't they do the same for states. It's a glaring omission. When we hear that Alaska has released the most toxins of any state and Rhode Island has released the least, it's reasonable to conclude that's because of the area of the two states.

> Three of the top 5 cities -- Humboldt, Lander, and Eureka -- are in Nevada. All are known to contain multiple, active gold mines that collectively release hundreds of millions of pounds of toxins.

Here's interesting tidbit for arguing with people who say bitcoin is killing the planet.

So piling up lead/zinc ore leftovers outside the mine in Alaska is clearly polluting? Would need more data.

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