Hacker News Reader

Comment by ArkanExplorer | Hacker News Reader

Regulating and managing consumer chemicals after the fact is no longer sufficient, and in some cases counter-productive.

For example, bans on long-chain PFASs (Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) has meant industry has just switched to short-chain PFASs, which are more difficult to filter out of water:

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.estlett.0c00004

We need to establish a whitelist of acceptable compounds and force industry to work within that for anything that will shed into the environment, be exposed to foodstuffs, or be worn by humans.

View on HN

Until that happens, start with your home.

How many pollutants do you voluntarily introduce into your own environment-habitat?

(And for every pound you buy, several pounds of byproducts are shed during production.)

That's the point, its impossible.

We cannot force individual consumers to become chemists, and interrogate every material they come across.

In many cases the materials are completely unknown. Is the PFAS used on a Big Mac burger wrapper listed in its ingredients?

It's not about "we", it's about "you", and what you choose to do with your life-- right now, not tomorrow or whenever the "consensus" agrees on it, but what you put in your own environment and body of your own volition.

Hold on. I'll get started on that as soon as I finish my bachelor's degree in chemistry and build a lab where I can test all the substances that I bring into my house. You have such great ideas. No idea why I haven't done this yet.

It's not that complicated. Replace disposable plastics with reusable materials.

You don't need a bachelor's degree.

Look at what you're bringing into your home, go down the ingredients list, look them up.

It will take you about 5-10 minutes per product.

And a couple of minutes more for each of the other causes that we want to make consumers responsible for, e.g. carbon impact, treatment of workers throughout the supply chain, local environmental destruction along the supply chain, etc.

Well, if I know that all that goes into the product... all the supply-chain impacts from all the different components of the product... and i STILL add my dollar-vote... which literally says, "yes, please keep doing this, and i'll keep giving you dollars"... and i am aware of all this happening, this entire picture... how am i NOT responsible, or at least complicit, in the process?

There is no ethical consumption. You can only weigh different evils against each other. Unfortunately you only have extremely limited information and limited energy to do so. It hence makes a lot of sense to let governments handle this for you.

Or just have an independent regulatory body analyze the product ONCE and ban the thing before the manufacturer cooks up a million batches and puts them all out to market. I'm lazy and I'm also not qualified to evaluate the danger of random substances I find in the store.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com