Comment by perihelions | Hacker News Reader

Comment by perihelions | Hacker News Reader

- "Phos-Chek MVP-Fx is primarily made of ammonium phosphates, which are derived from phosphate. That rock, when mined, can contain trace amounts of heavy metals."

The thing they're catastrophizing about is rock phosphate—ordinary fertilizer that's mixed into the soil of every food farm in the world.

I'm not sure if the journalists who wrote this article are aware of this. "It's COVERING my garden plants!" reads quite definitely when you recognize it's f'ing Miracle-Gro.

https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-c...

- "Phosphorus is an essential element for plant and animal nutrition. Most phosphorus is consumed as a principal component of nitrogen-phosphorus-potassium fertilizers used on food crops throughout the world. Phosphate rock minerals are the only significant global resources of phosphorus."

https://www.health.state.mn.us/communities/environment/risk/... ("Heavy Metals in Fertilizers")

- "Risk assessments conducted by the US Environmental Protection Agency and others have concluded that the hazardous constituents in inorganic fertilizers generally do not pose risks to public health or the environment."

The devil is in the details. Even though all minerals contain impurities, NPK fertilizer is processed to reduce them to acceptable levels for agriculture. If they did not do this, places dosed with large quantities of it (year after year after…) would become superfund sites. It is the same reason coal is so nasty: the CO2 is nothing compared to the ash—which is loaded with heavy metals. If the ash retaining ponds around a coal plant ever broke, the land would be uninhabitable for centuries, so the the ppms and ppbs are crucial information here.

> Even though all minerals contain impurities, NPK fertilizer is processed to reduce them to acceptable levels for agriculture

Source? What process exactly?

So many types of mining have loads of fluoride or heavy metals to discard. Since we’re dealing with minerals, in some cases visual inspection & sorting is sufficient. In other cases where high purity is required, may need to dissolve/melt them and process a series of precipitates & evaporates (i.e. expensive).

Here’s a fertilizer example: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21681395/

You can find similar articles just about everywhere there’s an NPK plant.

I know gypsum, aluminum, uranium are faced with similar obstacles. Google if you want details. (I do control systems if that helps.)

> "Risk assessments conducted by the US Environmental Protection Agency and others have concluded that the hazardous constituents in inorganic fertilizers generally do not pose risks to public health or the environment."

What I believe you're missing is where this might be coming from. We live in an Institutional crisis, where for years propaganda was spread and amplified by internal and external actors (like Russia) to undermine institutions, with lies and conspiracy theories.

Bold claims were made that organizations and the government were captured by private interests, completely disregarding that actual qualified people are working to make sure things are safe, like products we consume.

Just for context, RFK Junior is the US Secretary of Health and Human Services.

So, to circle back to your quote, the Risk assessment made by the US Environmental Protection Agency could be easily dismissed by the following unfounded and unsupported claim, "yeah the US Environmental Protection Agency is serving the big companies; they should be dismantled."

Like it would be the easiest thing for Russia to start a trend to sway people to demand a ban on phosphate. They did similar things with regard to Ukraine, to the point where the US Administration is amplifying russian talking points.

To be clear, I'm not saying this article is a propaganda piece; what I'm saying is that this sort of opinion from someone who doesn't seem to fully understand the subject is a prime example of something that could be amplified for propaganda and contribute to institutional demise.

You seem to be implying that all claims of regulatory capture, or even simple incompetence or bias, are all the result of Russian propaganda seems like a pretty bold claim to me.

I am sure there are people who want to sow distrust for their own ends, but there are also good reasons for distrust.

> what I'm saying is that this sort of opinion from someone who doesn't seem to fully understand the subject is a prime example of something that could be amplified for propaganda and contribute to institutional demise.

Part of the solution is transparency and full information.

> “It’s not in our interest to share product with public or private agencies,”

Is not an attitude that inspires confidence.

> You seem to be implying that all claims of regulatory capture, or even simple incompetence or bias, are all the result of Russian propaganda

Can you quote me on that? Because it's like you didn't even read what I wrote. How can I be more clear than:

> To be clear, I'm not saying this article is a propaganda piece; what I'm saying is that this sort of opinion from someone who doesn't seem to fully understand the subject is a prime example of something that could be amplified for propaganda and contribute to institutional demise.

How is this implying that ALL claims, incompetence, or bias ARE the result of propaganda? And where am I wrong to say that this sort of thing is being amplified by, for example, popular US Podcasts that were, and some for sure still are, being funded by the Russian regime?[0]

This isn't a conspiracy theory by the way: it's well known that there are people being paid to promote propaganda, and there are people - like you said and well - that want to sow distrust for their ends, and also get paid by Russia to do it. There's still an ongoing investigation about the example I gave, but it's probably a mix of both.

But these aren't just the two types of people in the information space, that's just silly. Still, you should pay attention to who has, or gets, a big reach.

> Part of the solution is transparency and full information.

Is it? Because the solution seems to be about having a certain aesthetic, being loud, and disregarding everything else - you just need to make pauses to say "and that's a fact/the truth is/everyone knows this/it's common sense". Just look at the Trump administration, it's working pretty well for them.

[0]https://www.cdmrn.ca/publications/tenet-media-final-incident...

> all

OT: When you read hyperbole, the debate/discussion shifts somewhat subtley but substantially. Exploration and examination of the facts and merits ends - the word 'all' eliminates any variation from the extreme; it becomes attack and defense.

I agree with that, but that wasn't the point of my comment to say that any amount of disinformation is a product of propaganda.

My point is that there's a new Institutional crisis being exacerbated by conspiracies, disinformation, and misinformation. A lot of people have strong opinions based on a shallow perception of reality.

This contributes to the acceleration of Institutional collapse (like Democracy, Public Health, Public Service...), and it's being amplified by foul actors to feed back more into this nonsense. This feeds into distrust or even irrational hate of institutions that contributed to the success of Western countries.

I just gave a few concrete examples, with sources, of such an activity.

I'm not saying everything is right, or that there aren't problems, like corruption, opacity, etc. But it doesn't warrant destroying everything for the sake of an aesthetic or a misplaced sense of resentment acquired on social networks.

Yes, I got your point, which I agree with and was well said. Mine was tangential, as I said.

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