We really need to adopt an 'unsafe-until-proven-otherwise' mindset for materials, similar to how we view drugs. If you read up on the history of leaded fuel and other products, it defies belief.
We have failed all future generations
Just today I learned that all commercial beverage bottles and cans in the US are treated with fluorinated gases and then leach these same forever chemicals to whatever beverage they contain.
Looking at the past, profits are more important that human or animal life. For example: https://qz.com/1630348/dupont-and-3m-face-a-growing-list-of-...
What do you mean “proven safe”?
Water is unlikely to be consumed in the toxic doses. The few cases where water overdoses happened were drinking competitions where participants forced themselves to drink many liters of water as fast as possible, leading to fatal electrolyte imbalances.
You're basically describing the challenge itself - how do you balance risk vs. benefit? The FDA does it every day, all day and still makes the wrong call sometimes.
Right now, I'd argue to be wary of _any_ novel polymers and substances (yes, it already happens for medicine and food), and to critically re-examine whatever was introduced before. The issue of microplastics and their impact on the ecosystem is clearly something we didn't think about before (more likely, we straightaway dismissed it).
Hormones excreted in the urine are measurable in waterways. Hormones have an impact on all sorts of organisms, even at low concentrations.
Would it have been better to ban birth control pills until we figured out a way to avoid contaminating waterways? What if we never figured it out?
Would the world be a better place without birth control pills but hormone-free waterways?
Edit: the point is quite valid for other drugs though.
Honestly, yes. The copper IUD was invented in the 1960s, not long after birth-control pills; besides, condoms had existed for a long time by that point. As far as contraception goes, the pill shouldn't be the first choice - many women experience significant mood changes from the hormones, and it's quite possible that the hormones circulating in the water have deleterious effects on both male and female fertility. I'm aware that the pill was a significant contributor to the sexual revolution, but the effects of that, 60 years later, are not uniformly positive.
You mean the thing that makes up the extreme majority of every living being is unsafe? Do you legitimately believe it is necessary to study and prove that?
What will you say if we discover another element that should be checked for in the water otherwise health risks occur? Was our proactive search to prove water safe insufficient? I guess so, but how could we possibly have done better ahead of time?
The point isn't that you have to provide a comprehensive proof of safety, which is arguably a philosophical impossibility, the point is that if you have a cool product idea like putting lead into fuel, you have to apply before you're allowed to market it. What exact tests they are going to run then will be subject to scientific debate and changes over time (so your product might get pulled if it's found to be toxic later). Some posters informed me that that's how it actually works already, in the EU at least. But in that case I guess we have to demand that they apply stricter standards if they miss chemicals that poison our rain water or kill the bee population.
> For water you test for known contaminants like these forever chemicals and a host of others. Your question is insinuating that we don't know how to test for water safety, which is dishonest
Then don't call it 'unsafe until proven otherwise'. Safety standards are a great idea. They're not this and calling it this is just a recipe for failure when new information makes it look like the original research was insufficient and that its a policy failure.
It's mainly a change of mindset - leaded fuel is such a good example, it was known to be toxic right from its invention (almost killed its inventor), yet it took us decades of arguing before we were ready to act on that knowledge - because said inventor and his cronies always managed to cast a shadow of doubt, and we seemed to act like as long as we weren't 100% sure we couldn't ban anything (so basically 'safe-until-proven-otherwise').
Things haven't really changed, not even in the EU that purportedly already acts under this principle, if you look at the current debates like on glyphosate.