‘Forever chemicals’ deserve more EPA scrutiny | Hacker News Reader

‘Forever chemicals’ deserve more EPA scrutiny

bloomberg.com

138 pointstwelve4019 comments

It seems to me that the EPA has been totally captured by corporate interests. It's hard to listen to stories about decisions they've made, for example approving Atrazine[0] despite the protests of the scientific advisors, and have any confidence that they'll actually make a meaningful impact.

[0] https://youtu.be/i5uSbp0YDhc

Seems to me the body doing the science and the body doing the regulating and enforcement shouldn’t be the same.

What does that help in an political environment where anonymous lobbying is more or less legal?

The incredibly lax lobbying and campaign financing law in the US leads to the expected levels of corruption and the greatest democracy in the world is completely powerless to rid itself from this obvious problem.

Scratch the surface in the USA and you'll see it in all major regulatory bodies: FDA, FCC, EPA, FAA just as top of mind examples.

I don't understand why more people don't regard the US as a country riddled with corruption. They literally won't let Boeing or AT&T or Comcast or Dow or ADM fail no matter how criminal they become.

I sure hope there’s a reasonable middle ground between nothing and requiring a manufacturer to prove a new chemical is safe like you prove a drug is safe (as in the opening an aloft). The regulatory process around new drugs is incredible. It’s almost a marvel that drugs are still approved at all. We still can’t even get the good European-approved sunscreens in the US.

"Stuff that goes into your body and can kill you" isn't an area where we need looser regulations.

Is this not a statement fully generalizable to tighter regulations on food and medicine, no matter how tight current regulations are?

Today we lose immeasurably more lives through unnecessary delays of important new medicines. There is no cost benefit calculation whatsoever.

Sounds quite measurable actually, so forgive me if I don't take your word for it. A promising new drug with a hidden side effect that is, for example, only observable 10-20 years later, could conceivably kill far more people than all the good drugs waiting to be approved could save.

I agree things could be sped up for things that treat terminal conditions, but that's not the majority of pharmaceuticals and even there, the situation isn't that simple.

forever chemicals is another step in horrible messaging by the scientific community about the environment.

first we had global warming, then we have yearly “point of no return 2C” targets, now we have “forever” chemicals

why does it have to be so polarizing? plastic was just about a “forever” chemical until we did any work breaking it down and now have many solutions to degrading it. i’m sure these new chemicals will be similar in 10-20 years.

the fear mongering does nothing to help the real problem

There's a lot of confusion in this post, but just to pick on one particularly errant bit, "forever chemicals" are not new chemicals, they've been around as long as plastics have (1940s - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Per-_and_polyfluoroalkyl_subst... )

A key difference between them and plastics is how deeply they get into the body and bloodstream. (There is some similar crossover with chemicals used in plastic like BPA, but more generally the concerns around plastic are around environmental damage vs individual organism and organ damage.)

(That age is also a reason to believe they aren't immediately apocalyptic since we've been living with them for a while, but research into how much can be well tolerated is very important since they stick around so well.)

What economical solution do we have of breaking down plastic?

High heat and oxygen.

Do you know what that releases into the atmosphere?

Well, you _are_ responding in a thread to someone who does not believe climate change is a real issue, so... At least they are self consistent?

If well done, co2 and water. Or, if you want to do carbon capture instead, you can bury it.

I'm really confused by this post because we don't have good solutions to degrading plastic that I'm aware of?

because it's pulled out of, well, you know where.

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