this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2023
285 points (96.4% liked)

News

23361 readers
4180 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

As lawmakers around the world weigh bans of 'forever chemicals,” many manufacturers are pushing back, saying there often is no substitute.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Potatos_are_not_friends@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Also back then, we didn't have massive populations. Most of the world struggled to survive. Finding food was a all-day activity. Should we go back to that?

[–] iegod@lemm.ee 11 points 1 year ago

Without the haber process modern civilization could not be sustained. We cannot go back without massive population losses. Dunno about you but I'm not picking which of my friends and family aren't important.

[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 year ago

So, but we don't need cancerous materials to do so. If you missed it, that was the point

[–] PhlubbaDubba@lemm.ee 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Cancer causing materials are not a necessity to support global scale populations.

Also, I frankly wouldn't mind returning to a world where almost half my time was my own and not my employer's.

[–] SaltySalamander@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Also, I frankly wouldn’t mind returning to a world where almost half my time was my own and not my employer’s.

It still wouldn't actually be your own. You currently work to afford your lifestyle. You'd still work the same amount, probably more, but you certainly wouldn't have your current lifestyle.

[–] PhlubbaDubba@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)
[–] Haywire@lemm.ee 0 points 1 year ago

You can have that today. You can still forage for food. It is even easier today.

[–] deaf_fish@lemm.ee -1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

So we lose non-stick pans, how does that make us return to a hunter gatherer society?

[–] Knightfox@lemmy.one 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Non stick pans, fire retardant mattresses, nonslip shoes, many forms of plastic, stain resistant shirts, water proof jackets, fume suppressants, metal coating/plating, high quality surfactants (ie lots of soaps), many types of pipe and the joining compounds used in plumbing, and the list goes on.

[–] deaf_fish@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What? This stuff is in soaps and plastics? Wow this stuff is everywhere.

Is this list all products effected or the products that have no known replacement?

[–] Knightfox@lemmy.one 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

It's not even a dent in the list of all effected products. For the no known replacement there should be a preface, we can generally make things without PFAS still, but PFAS is a major reason why the item is desirable.

For example, we can go back to lye and castile soap but we probably won't be able to have laundry or dish detergent. The alternatives exist, they just don't function well enough to be replacements. Without detergents you would need to pre-wash your dishes and laundry (or completely skip using) before using your washing machine and dish washer (hand wash everything). This says nothing about industrial usage of surfactants which is also really important.

We'd still have plastics, but we probably wouldn't have any plastics which are naturally "slippy," smooth, or soft. Hard brittle plastics only.

An example I used earlier, we could still have metal coating/plating, but it would probably look more like something from the early 1800s. PFAS is used in the process to suppress fumes and also to protect against corrosion, staining, and weathering.

I don't know enough to say how far back it would set us with computers. I have the sense they'd still exist, but we'd be set back several decades.

[–] deaf_fish@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Well, then I don't think it makes sense for an immediate blanket ban on it.

I suspect the best path forward is to set maximum limits and slowly adjust those down over time. I really don't think we want to continue to be inundated with carcinogens.

[–] Knightfox@lemmy.one 2 points 1 year ago

I generally agree. The links to cancer are a bit tenuous to be honest. We know at high levels they definitely are bad, but at low levels we aren't really sure. Looking at the effects to people living downstream of the DuPont plants, and who were drinking high quantities of it in their source water, we known it's bad. The problem is that it bioaccumulates and we suspect that at low levels, over long enough, it'll be bad. The low levels we're talking about are in the single digit part per trillion. It's really hard to put into context how small 1 ppt is. If we took Lake Superior as an example, 1 ppt would be 32 gallons in the whole lake. Loch ness lake would be 1.95 gallons.

NYC generates approximately 1.3 billion gallons of wastewater per day, that means 1 ppt would be about 5 mL per day in the whole city.

We know that PFAS is bad at high levels, but because the low levels are so low we are having a hard time proving it's bad. Most studies will say that there are links or that it's a likely carcinogen.

We definitely need to cut this stuff out, but doing so is going to seriously cripple most peoples way of life or we'll find a replacement which might not be as safe as we think it is.

[–] ricdeh@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Maybe consider for once that these compounds are not only used for pans, but also for other applications, like electronics?

[–] deaf_fish@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

I wasnt aware the laws were targeting electronics. Are we talking all electronics or just some?

[–] TigrisMorte@kbin.social -2 points 1 year ago

What a wonderfully unrelated to my post comment you've made. Since you are so kind as to make up what you want to argue against, perhaps you won't mind making up the response so those of us on topic can get on with discussing that topic.