EPA plans to limit or eliminate salmon-killing tire chemical found in Alaska

Of course, the copper based antifouling that replaced TBT isn't exactly benign either. Though the new generation of siloxane based antifouling that work by being slippery and hard for organisms to attach rather than being poisonous seems promising.

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.langmuir.9b03926

Plastic could be a similar case. Microplastics in the air and drinking water are possibly a health hazard, yet biodegradable alternatives are more expensive or not as durable. Similar points could apply to chemicals like Bisphenol A and PFAS. A lot of substances are highly suspicious but aren't phased out because they can't be replaced easily.

> interesting when you have a highly effective chemical that vastly improves performance or lifespan of something and it turns out it gives everyone cancer or seriously damages the environment

There might be a causative link. Life is parsimonious. If there is a niche, it will tend to exploit it. That means taking advantage of as many chemical pathways as possible.

Effective materials alter their environment—that is what makes them effective. But when released, uncontrolled, to disrupt the broader status quo, it follows that they are likely—somewhere—to alter a pathway critical to a life form.

The solution is containment. Effective materials should be shielded and reclaimed wherever possible. We know we can do this, because we do for chemicals toxic or very valuable to humans.

Have we tried periodically charging the hull the repel barnacles?

Or perhaps encourage a beneficial species to grow on the hill that won’t impede water flow (Eg special bacteria)

Yeah externalities in particular, like with CFCs or tributyltin, mess up incentives. A lot of individual benefit can be derived from pushing costs onto the general world and when the cost is individually hard to observe and/or spread out over time/space but magnified across massive numbers in total it can go on a long time. That said sometimes it's only "temporary" (which granted can be years or decades) until R&D catches up and figures out alternatives that still work but are just plain better. Like:

>Any boat owner knows the increase in speed and fuel economy from a clean hull is massive - and now you can’t get anything nearly as effective as TBT.

As far as I know there's been a lot of interesting progress on alternatives in just the last decade, even if that's not at all evenly distributed yet. I remember reading "Fouling Release Coatings: A Nontoxic Alternative to Biocidal Antifouling Coatings" [0] a decade ago as an interesting overview, and looking around seems like there has been significant progress since then. Advances in fluoropolymer brushes [1] looks pretty promising for example. Some of these may be more costly, but again the issue with the originals being "cheaper" is that they don't actually price in their true costs.

That said it would probably be more effective if there was a solid international framework and norms so that bans could be better coupled with future capital support for transition to more effective options once they come out (or best of all of course if they already exist). Including dealing with incentives around IP. If some new non/low-toxicity coatings appear that is easy for rich country users to immediately apply but folks in the Caribbean can't afford saying not merely "TBT is banned" but "we'll arrange you to get this replacement for cheap/free" might significantly reduce/eliminate ban evasion.

0: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/cr200350v | https://sci-hub.st/10.1021/cr200350v

1: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.langmuir.6b00695

Micro plastic from tires is one of the biggest sources of micro plastic. And its quite toxic too. We need less cars in urban environments

Is it really about being better or about being very cost effective but poisonious options?

> it’s toxic to marine life

I mean... working as intended? It's marine life that makes up the growth.

Using what's simple and what you know is safe: 304 stainless steel.

Some more details after I wanted to check my own assumptions [0]. This paper is an awesome read.

Chromium comes with the asterisk that hexavalent chromium is quite dangerous even in small quantities. I haven't found anything on the form of Chromium leeched from (relatively) cold temperature cooking or room temperature containing. Everything I've seen is in the context of worker exposure during hot work (welding).

0. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4284091/

Not necessarily, I’ve seen it slapped on all sorts of things, including PET and HDPE bottles and containers that don’t need a plasticiser anyway (BPA is mostly used in polycarbonate plastic and epoxy resins, can also be in PVC like phthalates).

But yeah, I avoid anything made of polycarbonate (especially in food contact) for that reason, but with water bottles and things it’s not super common except for some sports water bottles here in Australia.

Because rails are much costlier to build and maintain, and infeasible with the number of junctions we have on roads. And tank treads destroy roads.

Michelin tried.. (is still trying?) with the “tweel”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tweel

So does oil.

All those guidelines apply to cooking with oil on plain metal as well.

At high temperatures oil is worse than Teflon for birds.