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Comment by schmookeeg | Hacker News Reader

Ignoring the massive political elephant that exists in all of this stuff -- isn't this a good trigger, as demand for the "updated standards" products will force these companies (or resellers of these products) to either validate their products for sale in the US or force the US to recognize these EU standards?

I suppose an immediate counterpoint is that the US Consumer seems unwilling to clamor for high-quality products. :/

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If motorcyclists had the power to demand common sense policy improvements, filtering would be legal everywhere, and cities would start adding PTW (powered two-wheels: motorbikes and e-bikes) lanes alongside the current acoustic bike lanes.

It's a relatively small constituency. Most politicians don't want to upset the status quo to advocate for them. A lot of non-riders have enough negative experience (hearing scary stories or being startled by delivery drivers working within the current system) to actively add friction to the conversation.

For instance, NYC's current chief-of-police is a nepobaby. Her mom is a high society type who is afraid of bicycles, so the police have been actively abd specifically harassing cyclists this year.

Yeah, after I posted (and disappointed a few people apparently) I was thinking about just how sticky this stuff really is, and how our political system is a "broad brush" system. It seems to muddle a lot of the smaller sensible details.

Thought-provoking for sure. I'm glad I ride in a filtering-legal state :)

For sunscreen, they just make a separate less effective version for the US market. The market of people who would say "well, I won't buy sunscreen at all unless it's as good as foreign variants at blocking UV-A rays" is pretty small.

The real harm of the sunscreen thing is that the FDA being weirdly far behind the rest of the OECD at approving new agents means we're stuck with stuff that's a pain to apply and feels gross to wear. This harms health, because people will be less consistent about applying and re-applying when it takes more time than it might, and when the product feels nasty on the skin.

Many grey-market imported sunscreens apply in like 1/4 the time of US ones, feel like nothing at all once rubbed in, don't leave your hands feeling oily and like you need to scrub hard with soap and water right after applying, and have almost no odor. We're like decades behind on that tech, for reasons that I don't understand.

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