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Comment by cyberax | Hacker News Reader

So the article contains the data for the detected concentration. And it's basically a nothingburger.

For example, the samples contained 37 to 80 micrograms per liter of cadmium. The safety limit for _drinking_ _water_ is 5 micrograms. So diluting the retardant with 10 times the water makes it safe enough to drink.

Lead content in the samples was wildly different, from 7 micrograms to 800, indicating that the sampling procedure itself was unreliable.

Similar story for chromium, 100 micrograms is the safe level, and 200-300 micrograms were in the tested samples.

In fact, only arsenic is concerning, with roughly 10-60 times the allowed concentration for the drinking water.

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> In fact, only arsenic is concerning, with roughly 10-60 times the allowed concentration for the drinking water.

Even this is unconcerning. The water standard for arsenic is unscientifically low for unrelated political reasons. There is no evidence that it is unsafe at much higher levels, as is common in many locales.

Arsenic is an essential micronutrient in animal biology, similar to selenium. We require some amount of arsenic in our diet and water is a common source. (More surprisingly, there is evidence that lead is an essential micronutrient in trace quantities but its biological function is not currently known.)

>(More surprisingly, there is evidence that lead is an essential micronutrient in trace quantities but its biological function is not currently known.)

Do you have some links about this? I found some papers re arsenic but I can't find anything re lead.

The amount of slop on Google has ruined everything, it is hard even for me to find papers and I know about it. But I do have a starting point for you:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2246629/

It is genuinely surprising but there is evidence for it.

> Lead content in the samples was wildly different, from 7 micrograms to 800, indicating that the sampling procedure itself was unreliable.

That isn't the only possible explanation for the variance. That much variance could have been in the product itself, e.g. if the suppressant was supplied by different companies or by the same company that has sourced raw materials from different mines for different batches.

Do you think they really mean "per liter" of the actual sample or is this possibly the amount in an already diluted solution that they made from the sample? It seems like an odd unit of measurement otherwise.

What would have been helpful in the article was a comparison to the levels produced by the fire itself. Fires in residential areas produce all sorts of nasty stuff. While we should make the retardant as safe as we can, if it prevents something even worse from being released it still could be a win.

Not to mention, if the chemical producer doesn't want to be unfairly charged with toxic pollution that came from other sources, they could supply the damned info and proof of it's veracity, and/or samples.

This ball is entirely in their court and they deserve no benefit of the doubt on something like this.

There is clearly something there. It is 100% rational, from this starting point with the info that is available, to proceed on an assumption that the exact numbers are incorrect, and that we still would not like the correct numbers, even after weighing against not using any fire retardant, or using some other less effective or more expensive alternative.

> There is clearly something there.

What is there? The retardant is made from phosphate rocks. The same ones that are used for fertilizer. Lettuce that you eat has cadmium and arsenic from the phosphate (or potassium) fertilizer. It's simply unavoidable.

And of course the manufacturer is cagey. They all know about no-science-allowed wasteland of San Francisco and Los Angeles, with no-brain juries gladly awarding damages based on junk data on "chemicals".

> Do you think they really mean "per liter" of the actual sample or is this possibly the amount in an already diluted solution that they made from the sample? It seems like an odd unit of measurement otherwise.

The article doesn't specify. But it doesn't particularly matter either way.

Basically, don't drink the fire retardant, and you'll be fine. Even habitual exposure is not a big deal at these levels.

First off, water standards were weak in the first place (because of lobbying from the chemical industry) and have been weakened several times since, so they've become a joke. If you're over the federal limits, you're in pretty bad territory.

It's also not a "nothingburger." How much area do you think one liter covers in ground area? Now go look at the giant cargo planes dropping the stuff thousands of pounds at a time?

All that crap washes down into waterways or leeches into the soil, then into the water table.

> Lead content in the samples was wildly different, from 7 micrograms to 800, indicating that the sampling procedure itself was unreliable.

...that's not what that indicates, no. It could also be that lead is very inconsistently spread through the chemical.

Chromium doesn't have a safe level, just like there's no such thing as a safe level of radiation.

Before you start hammering away that the chances to you or me are extremely low: so are house fires, murder, etc. They still happen, and they happen to somebody. A low concentration of chromium consumed by a large population will definitely cause health impacts.

> It's also not a "nothingburger." How much area do you think one liter covers in ground area?

Quite a lot? This makes it even safer. The next rainfall, and all the retardant is diluted to safe levels.

> All that crap washes down into waterways or leeches into the soil, then into the water table.

It's already there. Where do you think arsenic, chromium, lead, and other minerals come from?

> Chromium doesn't have a safe level

You do realize that chromium is a component of stainless steel? Your cookware leeches plenty of it.

And it's not particularly dangerous, either, unless it's in its hexavalent form.

> just like there's no such thing as a safe level of radiation.

There is. The normal background are about 20 micro-Roentgens per hour.

I could totally believe that it would be good for our health if we could somehow eliminate the radiation background (but it's clearly not feasible).

There are areas on Earth where the natural background radiation is literally dozens of times higher than normal. People there don't have elevated cancer risk or shorter life spans.

Radon does cause elevated lung cancer risk, though.

Radon does, also, oddly have a therapeutic effective with treating arthritis [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14673618/].

> just like there's no such thing as a safe level of radiation.

This is absolutely untrue. Living organisms _must_ deal with damaged DNA all the time or they wouldn’t be able to live for very long. There are many ways our environment can cause DNA damage, and radiation is definitely one of them. At low levels of radiation our own self–repair mechanisms easily fix the damage and no harm is actually done. This is especially good since we live in a constant bath of radiation all the time. We cannot escape it so it’s a good thing we don’t need to.

What isn’t good is that because of politics and fear most government regulations do not recognize this. Flawed safety regulations like this cost us a huge amount of money every year, both directly in the form of higher costs and indirectly in the form of lost opportunities.

> just like there's no such thing as a safe level of radiation

You're being pounded with 1-4 mSv per year of ionising radiation right now. Everyone has been, all the time, for millenia.

The safe limit for people working in the nuclear industry is 12 times higher than this.

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