Don't look now, but PFAs have been "replaced" with a chemical called "GenX." These companies will just shapeshift their toxic sludge every time a major suit is won. Sickening...
This is a hard problem; in general you don't want to shut off all new technological development, and presumably the worse something is for you, the faster the harm will become apparent (e.g. thalidomide). But I'd be interested to see a full-system cost/benefit analysis of e.g. PFAS. If the cost is "with X probability, cause Y QUALYs of harm to the population over 30 years", and the benefit is "improve convenience of cooking by making pans non-stick", what are the maximum values of X and Y that we should be happy to agree to?
It doesn't seem to me that society is currently well equipped to make decisions in this way.
10 million or more fetuses exposed over 30 years with results ranging from fatal aggressive cancers in young children to birth defects. DES still shows effects two full generations later - in the grandchildren.
During the time DES was in use it was often defended using the “But women have estrogen already and this is exactly the same so obviously it’s fine” sorts of dismissals.
And now, here and again I encounter people dismissing concerns about BPA or PFOA and other endocrine disrupters with hand waving about how if there was really a problem we would have seen it and reacted to it by now so - the reasoning goes - obviously there is not a problem or, if there is one, it’s minor. And then I think of DES.
The more people realize the FDA does not care about us and learn to take personal action the better.
We generally call these things government agencies, but any other body with the same function - private or public - will be susceptible to the same kinds of forces that government agencies are. All we can do is try and build institutions good processes, adversarial audits that ensure processes are followed, and mechanisms to adjust processes when they're found to be lacking.
We generally call the latter mechanisms democracy. It's not great, but it's the best we've come up with.
Citizen's levying large class-actions suits and making documentaries like "The Devil We Know" are perhaps the best tools we have to stop fascist corruption.
PLA can compost in industrial sites, but (edit: add a not here) in normal environments, perhaps that is the reason for your quote marks.
So at least the bulk of the material in the bioware is pretty safe, especially when compared against PFA/PFOAs. That's not to say that it's impossible to mix PLA with some other, unsafe chemicals.
Traditional polymers: Oil in, power in, cheap product out, correct disposal and recycling required or planet suffers.
Biostarch polymers: Industrial waste in, huge amount of power in, comparable but more expensive product out (but can be relied on to biodegrade eventually if incorrectly disposed of).
The real solution is better food distribution systems with more efficient and re-usable packaging and cutlery, so that disposal is not required.
It used to be common to collect used glass bottles and re-use them. That practice still happens in countries like Thailand and Vietnam.