I almost think we should have a whitelist of good chemicals instead. Within another 30 seconds, carcinogenic chemical number 12001 will make its way into something.
> To make it harder for chemical firms to avoid having individual chemicals banned, the European Chemicals Agency prefers dealing with chemicals in groups.
> Otherwise, firms can use a tactic called "regrettable substitution -- altering the composition of chemicals to create sister chemicals that could be just as dangerous, The Guardian reported.
> The toxins will be part of a regularly reviewed rolling list, according to the European Commission.
Afaik there is already a fundamental difference to how the US and EU approach that.
In the EU new products need to follow the precautionary principle [0] and proof that their product is safe for consumers, before being allowed to be sold on the market.
While in the US the product is assumed to be benign until evidence to the contrary surfaces, which is then usually solved trough civil law suits suing the company using something that is discovered to be nasty.
For some known risky categories of chemicals - definitely! It should not be possible to tweak chemicals known to be dangerous just slightly and expose the public to them until enough evidence accumulates that surprise this version was also poisonous in exactly the same way.
I think these kind of analogue laws are dangerous because it's difficult to define what an analogue of some chemical is, and if there are set rules, then you again give out a playbook of how to avoid them.
Good because as we just seen in the latest Vartasium video [1], even chemicals or elements we know are toxic for hundreds of years get pushed into the public and cause huge harm.
We recently moved into a house with large garden out the front, so I thought I'd grow some vegetables this summer.
I started to till the soil and noticed there was a lot of plastics. I dug deeper and soon realized that our yard was once an area where the previous owners incinerated their rubbish as I started to dig up very old and rusted steel drums which was the incinerator. I spoke to neighbours and they told me everyone used to do this in the area. We excavated the top soil and disposed a lot of it, I still didn't trust it. but it looked nicer.
I decided to pave the area and make raised garden beds and fill them with new soil. It's basically impossible to build them out of wood without lining them with something which may have negative health effects to humans or plants.
In the end I found an old stone / concrete planter, there's probably something in there bad for me too, but I just couldn't believe that even glazed pots contain lead?
> I just couldn't believe that even glazed pots contain lead?
In the US, even pottery intended for use with food may contain lead, to this day apparently:
"..there are no U.S. regulations (to my knowledge/correct me if I am wrong!) that specifically regulate the overall content of lead in pottery—even for pottery pieces intended for use with food and beverages."
> It's basically impossible to build them out of wood without lining them with something which may have negative health effects to humans or plants.
There are plenty of known-safe materials to line garden beds with. Even unlined treated timber has been shown to be safe with only tiny trace amount of treatment making it into the plant. You might be being too paranoid for your own good.
> It's basically impossible to build them out of wood without lining them with something which may have negative health effects to humans or plants.
Not so! Many types of wood (cedar is a big one) can withstand direct weather/soil exposure for extended periods of time (multiple years at minimum). Yes you'll need to maintain them every so often, but surely you aren't going into gardening not expecting to maintain equipment.
> The Brussels effect is the process of unilateral regulatory globalisation caused by the European Union de facto (but not necessarily de jure) externalising its laws outside its borders through market mechanisms
TIL. I didn't know there's a term for it, but it makes sense, it's a common phenomenon. Hopefully it catches on even more, especially with digital laws like GDPR, and the upcoming Digital Markets and Services Acts.
In romance languages (and possibly others) the order of adjectives/nouns is reversed compared to english, in those languages European Union gets abbreviated to UE (instead of EU), the comment is probably by someone who uses one such language natively
It's kinda hard to notice because it's so short and similar, I hadn't noticed myself until I read your comment.
ROHS is the acronym for a 2002 EU law called "Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive"
UE = Union Europea, or Unione Europea, or Union Européenne, or União Europeia i.e. European Union using the Romance language acronym
RoHS = Restriction of Hazardous Substances, a directive that restricts the materials that can be used in electronic devices, forbidding manufacturers from using many known toxic materials. Initially adopted in the EU but then globally due to the necessity of exporting to the EU.
Organic/medicinal chemist here. Some toxin, endocrine disruptors and many other things have widely variable toxicity curves. Something we often see is U curves. With high toxicity in both small and high doses. The small doses can induce cascade effects (like hormones).
Dose where? In potato or surrounding soil or nearby fields or rivers which have runoffs from the farms? In farm animals that will eat it for 10 months and then be butchered? In fish living in those rivers or migrating to oceans to be eaten by other animals up in the food chain?
Farmers, just like any other industry, is very good at reading rules and finding very creative ways in between them how to maximize profits regardless of human costs. I don't blame them per se, but let's not be naive about farmers being some sort of saints doing whatever possible to feed the needy with as-healthy-as-possible healthy food.
Banning makes things much easier to actually govern and enforce, and doesn't leave endless amounts of backdoors for serious catastrophes 20-50 years down the road. We already had plenty of them to take lesson or two, most started with good intentions but lack of deep scientific understanding which we still don't have in such scale to clear any of these substances to be actually safe.
Also, some of us have kids and actually want to leave an OK world for them, if not better, not a scorched wasteland just to have marginally better retirement financial situation.
Sure, but you can’t control the dose on an entire population. Let’s say only 1% of people get brain cancer because of their habits/lifestyle. That’s still unacceptable, despite 99% not getting a dose that’s lethal.
An example of this type of selective poisoning is cashiers handling receipts laced with BPA all day.
This sort of over-zealous thinking is why I bought a loaf of bread last week that came with a warning stating it "contains chemicals known to the state of California to cause cancer". BREAD.
In case anyone is wondering it's because of acrylamide.
I'm not sure if I understand what the problem is here. Would you rather not have this information available? It allows you to look up the info about the chemical and decide for yourself if you're ok with it.
I’d be concerned if the bread actually contained any acrylamide.
"""It is highly toxic, likely to be carcinogenic,[6] but its main derivative polyacrylamide is nontoxic. The possibility that this innocuous bulk chemical contains traces of its hazardous precursor has long attracted attention.""" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acrylamide
I note another comment saying this has indeed been found in various foods, typically when heated for long periods over 120 C. I don’t think bread gets that hot (when it does it’s called toast).
I imagine some people believe that right when you cross the invisible California border, your face starts melting as all the CA-only cancers start initiating.
Noble move but I hope this doesn't cause unintended consequences. If costs go up because alternative methods are more expensive, people will end up importing from countries that don't have these bans. Are these economic side-effects ever considered in these decisions?
Is there any place left on Earth completely untouched by industrial chemicals? Even in remotest countries you have fertilizers, pesticides, mining activity related chemicals, road building chemicals etc.
99% of Americans have PFAS in their blood made by Dupont and other companies. This is because the US allows corporations to invent new chemicals and sell them to the public without any regulation.
People all over the world now have PFAS in their bodies as a result of the capitalist rot in the US. We didn't ask for this, and yet we're all subjected to it. PFAS are forever chemicals that will last centuries.
I recommend everyone, downvoters especially, see the movie Dark Waters, then return wiser and upvote. It will make you angry, and depressed, that such practises are allowed to happen, and are so hard to stop after being exposed. TLDW: DuPont made a secret toxic waste dump that poisoned farms, created birth defects etc. The movie's about a lawyer fighting DuPont in court for 20 years over that.
Readit News
> To make it harder for chemical firms to avoid having individual chemicals banned, the European Chemicals Agency prefers dealing with chemicals in groups.
> Otherwise, firms can use a tactic called "regrettable substitution -- altering the composition of chemicals to create sister chemicals that could be just as dangerous, The Guardian reported.
> The toxins will be part of a regularly reviewed rolling list, according to the European Commission.
In the EU new products need to follow the precautionary principle [0] and proof that their product is safe for consumers, before being allowed to be sold on the market.
While in the US the product is assumed to be benign until evidence to the contrary surfaces, which is then usually solved trough civil law suits suing the company using something that is discovered to be nasty.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle
Deleted Comment
Dead Comment
[1] https://youtu.be/IV3dnLzthDA
I started to till the soil and noticed there was a lot of plastics. I dug deeper and soon realized that our yard was once an area where the previous owners incinerated their rubbish as I started to dig up very old and rusted steel drums which was the incinerator. I spoke to neighbours and they told me everyone used to do this in the area. We excavated the top soil and disposed a lot of it, I still didn't trust it. but it looked nicer.
I decided to pave the area and make raised garden beds and fill them with new soil. It's basically impossible to build them out of wood without lining them with something which may have negative health effects to humans or plants.
In the end I found an old stone / concrete planter, there's probably something in there bad for me too, but I just couldn't believe that even glazed pots contain lead?
In the US, even pottery intended for use with food may contain lead, to this day apparently:
"..there are no U.S. regulations (to my knowledge/correct me if I am wrong!) that specifically regulate the overall content of lead in pottery—even for pottery pieces intended for use with food and beverages."
https://tamararubin.com/topics/does-vintage-and-new-function...
The article contains some lists of know hyperaccumulators.
For example, sunflowers are known excellent heavy metals sponges.
There are plenty of known-safe materials to line garden beds with. Even unlined treated timber has been shown to be safe with only tiny trace amount of treatment making it into the plant. You might be being too paranoid for your own good.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_tile
Not so! Many types of wood (cedar is a big one) can withstand direct weather/soil exposure for extended periods of time (multiple years at minimum). Yes you'll need to maintain them every so often, but surely you aren't going into gardening not expecting to maintain equipment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brussels_effect
The EU is doing the right thing though. Lead is bad for us and cumulative. And RoHS was about a lot more than just solder.
It's kinda hard to notice because it's so short and similar, I hadn't noticed myself until I read your comment.
ROHS is the acronym for a 2002 EU law called "Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restriction_of_Hazardous_Subst...
RoHS = Restriction of Hazardous Substances, a directive that restricts the materials that can be used in electronic devices, forbidding manufacturers from using many known toxic materials. Initially adopted in the EU but then globally due to the necessity of exporting to the EU.
Dealing with lead safely is much harder, and in a hobby setup can be assumed to be infeasible to be done correctly for nearly all people
Ubiquity increases the changes of high dose. There are now plastics in human blood for example:
* https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/microplastics-dete...
Farmers, just like any other industry, is very good at reading rules and finding very creative ways in between them how to maximize profits regardless of human costs. I don't blame them per se, but let's not be naive about farmers being some sort of saints doing whatever possible to feed the needy with as-healthy-as-possible healthy food.
Banning makes things much easier to actually govern and enforce, and doesn't leave endless amounts of backdoors for serious catastrophes 20-50 years down the road. We already had plenty of them to take lesson or two, most started with good intentions but lack of deep scientific understanding which we still don't have in such scale to clear any of these substances to be actually safe.
Also, some of us have kids and actually want to leave an OK world for them, if not better, not a scorched wasteland just to have marginally better retirement financial situation.
An example of this type of selective poisoning is cashiers handling receipts laced with BPA all day.
(By ban I mean consumer exposure, not ban for use without exposure.)
In case anyone is wondering it's because of acrylamide.
Good job California!
"""It is highly toxic, likely to be carcinogenic,[6] but its main derivative polyacrylamide is nontoxic. The possibility that this innocuous bulk chemical contains traces of its hazardous precursor has long attracted attention.""" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acrylamide
I note another comment saying this has indeed been found in various foods, typically when heated for long periods over 120 C. I don’t think bread gets that hot (when it does it’s called toast).
Deleted Comment
People all over the world now have PFAS in their bodies as a result of the capitalist rot in the US. We didn't ask for this, and yet we're all subjected to it. PFAS are forever chemicals that will last centuries.
https://massivesci.com/articles/dark-waters-pfas-focus-featu...