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Comment by sschueller | Hacker News Reader

You can't tell me they didn't have enough time to switch to an alternative. Such environmental regulations takes time and don't just show out of the blue.

Maybe we should be asking how toxic is this coolant that such a plant was forced closed by new regulations?

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> Maybe we should be asking how toxic is this coolant that such a plant was forced closed by new regulations?

The article says PFAS, but I'm going to guess it is Flourinert[1].

The whole thing about fluorinated hydrocarbons is that it can't burn through oxidation.

Probably a very hard thing to swap out without compromises on fire hazard or corrosion.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluorinert

Wikipedia lists FC-70, FC-72 and FC-75 as compounds of Flourinert. With my limited school understanding of chemistry those all look like they have perfluoroalkyl-parts and therefore fall under the PFAS definition.

They can burn, they just break down very slowly (PFAS half-life’s can range by over 5 orders of magnitude depending on the type).

Creating a new option, certifying it for different processes, and getting it into full production takes a long time and costs a lot of money. The semiconductor industry has made a variety of inconvenient changes (I.e. photoresists) in the past for the purpose of reducing toxicity.

I suspect that this is a more challenging problem than you think.

Yep, I know of a microwave laminate (i.e. Teflon PCBs) whose yield dropped to 10% after a certain solvent was banned. The substitute does not work worth a shit.

Extremely pure fluorine-based gas is used as dry etchant to produce gas phase SiF4 during pattern etching.

Periodic table does not have many alternatives to fluorine :)

Waste can be dealt with, but society needs a good tariff system to prevent groups from bypassing costs…

“If we refuse to do anything, they’ll have to back down.”

That's the thing - it's not very toxic, that's why it's used.

But it's toxic enough that when it builds up it causes problems that are very difficult to detect.

Finding a less toxic alternative isn't easy - it took decades to discover the toxicity of the current chemical, specifically because its toxicity is so low.

Finding a less toxic alternative isn't easy - it took decades to discover the toxicity of the current chemical, specifically because it's toxicity is so low.

Maybe, just maybe, and work with me here, it's not that big a deal. Treating everything as if it were plutonium isn't a sustainable way to move humanity forward.

Anathema to the EU's way of thinking, certainly... yet defensible from an objective point of view.

The problem is that it virtually never goes away, keeps building up in the environment, and results in ever greater levels of toxicity over time.

What would be a good resource to look up symptoms of fluorocarbon toxicity? Unless/until you burn them, my understanding is that these are some of the most chemically-inert substances in common use.

Is the problem the end chemical or the intermediary waste stream?

Even if the end result is inert, there are probably a LOT of waste byproducts that are pretty nasty--this is fluorine chemistry, after all.

If the site is just dumping those, that's going to be bad.

Also raises the question: if 3M can't contain the stuff, then how can we be sure that Asian fabs can?

There is a big difference between containing 10 gallons and containing 10 tons.

There is also a big difference between containing the product and manufacturing the product.

To be fair, it doesn't sound like 3M was trying very hard to contain this--they mostly seemed to just be dragging their feet and doing business as usual.

It would be great if you could dig up more information to back up this assertion instead of just assuming motives and facts not in evidence.

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