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Comment by lulzury | Hacker News Reader

This is amazing news, but as is often brought up when discussing PFAS, will something else that we don't yet know is harmful replace the function these substances were serving?

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Unfortunately, like BPA, they will likely replace it with something just as harmful but less tested, since chemical regulations in the US work on a blacklist and not a whitelist.

So which countries use the whilelist approach?

The EU

So how did PFAS get into EU food packaging if they use the whitelist approach? And why are they only now starting to ban it?

https://www.food-safety.com/articles/9292-eu-poised-to-make-...

Because PFAS were considered inert and safe for the longest time. And they are widespread across applications and industries. However, they are in the process to be phased out completely. PFOA are already restricted, I think.

Source?

Europe produces a ton of chemicals and I seriously doubt they wait 20 years for long term and wide spread studies before putting products out.

A whitelist does not imply 20 years testing data. It means, allowed substances need to be explicitly authorized before introduction to the consumer market.

For food, pharmacological and cosmetic ingredients, the EFSA requires scientific evaluation concluding no harmful effects in advance. Of course, if later harmful effects are observed authorization can be withdrawn. This is in contrast to e.g. the FDA process where such substances do not have to be demonstrated safe like that beforehand, AFAIK.

https://food.ec.europa.eu/safety/chemical-safety_en

https://environment.ec.europa.eu/strategy/chemicals-strategy...

I feel like a realist’s take is still positive. Some will be replaced with wax or other safe options. Others will use sketchy unregulated chemicals. But I can’t see those chemicals being much worse on average than PFAS. So a net positive overall.

These companies will not be stopping the use of items until they have a replacement. I don't understand how we can't just test the items intended as the replacement rigorously.

I mean we can and likely will. It won't stop it from being unsafe in a new novel to be discovered way.

You can't replace it with anything known to be unsafe. The FDA's process isn't actually that bad, if one can tell in advance it will be unsafe then no bueno. But if it seems like it should be safe in theory and nothing we know currently contradicts that then go for it.

Trans fats is a great example, they occur naturally in food we already eat and look chemically to be perfectly fine. Given the scientific knowledge at the time it would have been impossible to predict in advance that they were harmful to humans.

People say it's blacklist vs whitelist but outside just banning everything new it's hard to get stricter. There's not much an approval from the FDA would do except verify that they did the testing they said they did. This isn't a case of the FDA being like "shoot if only we had seen this sooner we would have never allowed it."

The FDA's process would be much better if learned which substances are unsafe faster and responded to the knowledge that a substance is unsafe faster. PFAS were introduced in the 1940s. We started getting an idea that they were harmful in the 2000s. Six years ago the term "forever chemical" was coined and it entered mainstream discourse.

It took us ~60 years to start to realize they are harmful, another ~15 to be certain, and another ~5 to ban them.

It is kind of strange that because we cannot test products on individual people because that would be inhumane, we end up testing products on animals, deciding they're ok, and then dumping these chemicals on billions of people only to find out 50 years later that there are unexpected side effects.

I have vague memories of how people were so concerned about deforestation and trash that they pushed to get rid of paper bags and replace them with safer, clean, recyclable plastic, and now we still have deforestation and trash but also now plastic rains from the skies and lodges in the clogs in our arteries and has polluted distant islands where no human has ever touched foot on and created an island sized patch of garbage in the ocean that needs billions of dollars of cleanup to fix.

Oh well, I guess that is "someone else's problem". Yay.

I can't tell, but are you advocating for human test subjects?

No. I am pointing out the irony of the situation that if we were cruel enough to test the effects of these chemicals on a select few humans that it would have prevented humans worldwide from suffering under the cruelty of an untold multitude of side effects, but our own sense of ethics and justice prevented us from doing the thing that created the least total amount of suffering and cruelty.

That being said, I would still not advocate for human testing of chemicals and products, not even for death row inmates because there are too many things people would want to test and there is no bottom once we start going down that slide.

However, I would advocate for digital human simulacra that we could test the effects of chemicals on rather than any living creature. I hope that in the near future we could make a virtual human that we can carry out these tests on at many times normal speed so we can solve these things once and for all.

Yes, there is a dilemma that human test subjects could potentially save more lives than it cost. This is largely a utilitarian argument at its core. The current social more -- largely established post WW2 -- is that we should greatly regulate human test subjects and do a lot to mitigate the risks associated with it.

It may have taken the public ~60 years, but the companies making them knew much much earlier.

You realize a 10 serving package can say 0g trans-fat and have 5g of it inside?

Thanks to the FDA!

>Some will be replaced with wax

I'm a little behind on the times it seems, but how would wax be produced in such industrial quantities? Which kind of wax? There's several, some artificial some not.

Wax paper and parchment paper (often silicone impregnated) are already huge established businesses. The amounts used in other products in already substantial.

So, not real wax, but another chemical.

Wax is a chemical.

Of course, right? It’s hard to see it any other way.

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