Most hygiene products get away with listing diethyl phthalate as 'Parfum'.
What we need is not savvy consumers what we need is regulators to get serious.
They did it with sustainability, with sweat shops, with food, with cleaning products. It's ridiculous.
It's a societal problem that can't be solved by individual consumers.
I think it's unfair to characterize Swan's take as trying to 'offload all responsibility to "consumers"'. Presumably the "get rid of these chemicals in our environments" doesn't just intend "our" to only mean some hyper-vigilant subset of the population. One can advocate for removing these from the marketplace while simultaneously having the stance that for now, in the world we actually live in, people can take some steps to limit their exposure. People are always going to ask "but what can I do _now_ to protect myself and my family?" and it's not unreasonable for an expert in the field to try to have an answer.
And that is without even getting into misinformation campaigns.
Endocrine disruptors are airborne and globally ubiquitous in the form of micro-plastics. All drinking water in the world is contaminated with it. [1]
I'm really not meaning to be dramatic on this, but we've completely missed the boat on this one while we were arguing about climate change, and it's much too late to do anything about it now.[2]
I'll not be here to see either way, and it's unlikely anyone else currently alive will unless Ray Kurzweil was right this whole time, but IMHO (I.e. take this with the pinch of salt a random Internet comment warrants) it's likely humanity as a species only has a few hundred years left at most.
This isn't meant to be doom-mongering, it's just that while we worry about some dramatic cataclysmic event like a nuclear war, a pandemic or a meteor strike, the science seems to indicate it's much more likely that humanity will die off with a quiet whimper in a few generations.
It's worth noting that this is not a mainstream view, and that the UN projects a level population out to 2300 [3] - I just don't see that the science backs up this claim, especially given recent understandings of fertility decline.
[https://cdn.who.int/media/docs/default-source/wash-documents...]
[https://www.salon.com/2022/01/16/bpa-plastics-harmful/]
[https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/sites/www.un.org.deve...]
I am not sure how much of these plasticizers survives on the microplastic that you refer to. in our water supply or in airborne polyester fibers? Those are major sources of microplastic contamination but I am not sure they are major sources of _plasticizer_ contamination.
In this case there is mounting evidence against phthalates and bisphenols as endocrine disruptors. This is the stuff getting into your blood stream through ingestion or skin absorption mostly from plastic containers, hygiene products, etc.
This is one of the problems, we are missing studies that can demonstrate sources and source contribution to this problem.
This is why I hate when people compare climate change to other problems (like GP did).
Sure, there's a lot of microplastics out there, but the science is still out on what that means for us. Meanwhile we know how bad Climate Change is, so if we have limited resources to fight problems, definitely fight the one you know is bad, even if it's not as engaging as thinking about your own sperm.
My point is that people at large generally don’t care enough to be really bothered by climate change, so there’s no budget in the limited attention we as a species are willing to set aside for inconvenient truths to consider much else.
Same thing I heard for decades about AGW. And still do. In fact, they probably make up a majority in Congress. There were decades of people out there saying the science was still out to worry warts asking about the wisdom of dumping gigatons of CO2 into the atmosphere.
We don’t have to worry about someones grandchildren starving in 2060 if they aren’t going to be born in the first place.
I know more than a few white conservatives who have had to use IVF, and the AGW-denying IVF doctor I know rants about phthalates/plastics even though it’s good for her business. We have a 100X more opportunity to convince them of plastics action than we do of climate action.
>Same thing I heard for decades about AGW.In fact, they probably make up a majority in Congress. There were decades of people out there saying the science was still out to worry warts asking about the wisdom of dumping gigatons of CO2 into the atmosphere.
People can deny the science, but C02 concentration is the mechanism for global climate eras and we've known that for almost 200 years [1]. I don't care who believes in science because that has no impact on whether it is correct or not (only you, my fellow scientist, can determine that for yourself).
There is no agreed-upon mechanism for how microplastics harm humans, but again to the point of science, if you can point me to proof, I'd love to see it.
Long story short, you are very likely making a false comparison between those two topics.
>We don’t have to worry about someones grandchildren starving in 2060 if they aren’t going to be born in the first place.
Sure, and again, show me the proof/model that this is going to lead to the end of mankind. I's love to see it.
>I know more than a few white conservatives who have had to use IVF, and the AGW-denying IVF doctor I know rants about phthalates/plastics even though it’s good for her business. We have a 100X more opportunity to convince them of plastics action than we do of climate action.
We have a 1,000,000x better chance of convincing them that Trump is an immortal demigod, doesn't mean we should do it.
Again, we should dedicate effort to things that we know matter even if it requires effort.
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S163107131...
In any normal universe, the onus of proof would be on you to prove dumping it into our environment is safe.
Unfortunately, we live in a world where your world-view in Congressionally safe. Enjoy.
So yes?
And again, I'm not saying it's good/safe, it's just in a resource-limited world the only problem is global warming.
You didn't include a link to support the claim that humans only have "a few hundred years left at most". I think this is extremely unlikely to be true. What is your recommended reading?
“It's worth noting that this is not a mainstream view, and that the UN projects a level population out to 2300”
I’ll clarify above regardless.
The slowdown in population growth has been a topic of world leaders for quite some time. This isn't a topic of interest because world leaders are somehow concerned about the cause (e.g. chemicals in the environment). In fact, the cause is well known and due to fairly straight forward anthropologic factors. As quality of life improves, population growth declines. This happens in nature as well. Populations under stress tend to reproduce more. World leaders are interested in modeling/understanding this as it has macroeconomic effects (e.g. Japan's decade long struggles with stock market decline). This is also why the US and the west in general has went so heavy on quantitative easing for the past decade. They are trying to stave off deflation. Unfortunately, COVID and the associated supply shocks caused that plan to go off the rails a bit...
Finally, I'm not sure what climate change policy has to do with any of this.
> A bidirectional relationship between testosterone and obesity underpins this association indicated by the hypogonadal-obesity cycle and evidence weight loss can lead to increased testosterone levels.
It has nothing to do with being savvy.
Lately I've been seeing straws made from a compostable plant based polyester. It's unclear whether they are still using problematic plasticizers in them.
That's literally the job of regulators, see asbestos or cancer causing pesticides that have been banned or severely restricted. Do you expect all consumers to have degrees in chemistry and read papers to make risk assessments about the 10,000s of chemicals they come into contact daily?
Before asbestos or cancer causing pesticides were regulated, they were perfectly fine to sell and use, but they were not in fact safe for people. In most cases, regulation lags science. In quite a few cases, things we know probably aren't safe are not regulated at all, or not sufficiently regulated. Regulation has many inputs: good science is one of them, but expediency is another, and so is corruption, and frankly so is incompetence. In any case, because the regulatory status of a substance has no relationship to whether or not it will kill you, it is safest if we have good regulation AND people do as much due diligence as they are comfortable with. Ultimately, it's your health, so you have to take responsibility for it.
Industry plainly lists potassium sorbate, sorbic acid, and sodium nitrite, which are known carcinogens.
On top of that, the packaging matters: PET is a phtalate which is an endocrine disruptor.
In practice, people like their alcoholic drinks and don't understand why that by itself is enough to require the Californian proposition 65 "substances at this location are known to cause cancer" sticker.
1: https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/04/health/insect-rodent-filth-in...
Especially with mold, zero is very very difficult to attain.
But fairly, limited:
> Articles containing substances of very high concern (SVHCs) on the Candidate List at a concentration above 0.1% weight by weight (w/w)
They also have an app that can scan UPC codes.
I'd want a carve out for home "manufacturers" that sell less than the US median wage per year in product. They should be able to just display the QR codes cut out from the packages of their ingredients rather than creating their own QR code infrastructure.
The quality and availability of the information you can find varies greatly, but it's very easy to contribute. You won't find much that is not already written on the label though.
These companies shouldn't be able to use these ingredients in the first place, labels or not. It's not our job to read lists of 30+ ingredients and their wikipedia entries to know if we're at risk or not
I tire of being the fool buying expensive tasteless natural organic foods and spices!
And when it isn't - both the "not just a river in Egypt" and "blame some handy & culturally appropriate boogeyman" strategies are popular and low-effort. And usually enjoy widespread social support.
Your comment was heavily upvoted.
Please drop these off-topic distractions from your HN comments, especially bits about upvoting and downvoting, which are such a common source of meta-noise that the site guidelines specifically exclude it: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
People do want that, which is why organic food is rising in popularity, why vegan cosmetics are a thing... the problem is politicians are bribed by big industry influence to not regulate too hard.