Banning substances one after another has proven to be quite useless or even damaging approach. Another, less studied and potentially worse chemical compound will always substitute the banned ones. It’s an endless game of whack a mole to keep banning a substance for next random one to spawn.
More correct approach might be that if you want to use a chemical in food packaging or children’s equipment, you must first do long-term studies that prove its relative safety to other studied compounds. In time the world would start accumulating safer products. I won’t hold my breath though.
There was a time--not too long ago actually--when the standards were waxed paper, parchment paper, and glass. Paper being biodegradable, glass being highly inert, and neither causing as much ecological devastation or endocrine disruption as plastic.
So technically speaking, it's a solved problem. But from a market perspective, for the people who eat the glyphosate-dusted insulin resistance that's wrapped inside the plastic, i'm willing to bet the pseudoestrogens are the least of their worries.
When those materials were the standard we also didn't have a lot of the medical and technological equipment today that arguably reduced both mortality and morbidity across large swaths of a much, much larger population. Plastics are used widely in electronics and all of the accompanying tech improvements too it isn't just simple as packaging, so it isn't a "solved problem" if you want to go back to those materials and replace everything plastic has become standard for in today's technologies.
Then what you end up with is Prop 65 - everything causes cancer.
The right response is a risk-based approach. Nothing is every 100% safe, so it's not a reasonable filter.
Basically each new product should be judged for the risk versus the benefit. If it can be easily substituted with a known safer product, then it's forced to go through testing.
If there is no known substitute and the benefit is high, then it can tentatively be approved with follow up tests later.
No, rather long term and large scale peer reviewed studies would have to show that lead in gasoline does not cause harm in humans.
Real world is not black and white and we definitely should ban clearly poisonous or otherwise harmful (e.g. hormone mimicking) chemicals from food products and children’s utilities.
Point is if we keep going like this we might not ever arrive in a situation where everyday life is mostly free from dangerous compounds
That's an element. These are compounds. There are a lot more compounds than elements, and it's a lot easier to find one you can sub in to do the same thing.
(yes, the lead in gasoline was part of a particular molecule, too—which just proves my point, if we'd outlawed the specific molecule/compound that would have opened the door to finding other technically-different ones that still included lead—but you can't exactly outlaw carbon, so that approach won't work this time)
Pretty damning that the FDA only issued a report on this after a court ordered them to. I can't really help but believe that this is willful negligence - if some of these have already been banned for use in children's toys, why would it be fine in a plastic bag the child holds food in? I ate a sandwich every day from a plastic bag for ~12 years...
Given the downward quality of life trajectory: including obesity, allergies, mental health issues like autism & depression – I'm highly concerned about the food, air and water supply. We should be more sensitive to possible chemical risks with the horrible health trajectory.
I would expect a specific task force to address chronic health issues , by the FDA & EPA
Over the past decade or two, the FDA has completely and comprehensively abrogated their regulatory duties.
They had an active role in marketing opiates as safe. They cannot keep factories safe enough to feed our nation's infants. They steadfastly refuse to remove harmful chemicals from our food and water supply.
It is utterly sickening, literally and metaphorically.
Since its beginnings the FDA has always genuflected to business. Many people in the department worked hard to document toxins that the American public were being exposed to (e.g. arsenic and coal tar used as food coloring, formaldehyde and borax used to preserve milk and meat). However the department's leadership, and in a few cases the U.S. President, intervened to protect business interests. If you're interested check out The Poison Squad[1].
They already have the evidence- at least on some of these. Three of the phtalates they've already banned previously in children's toys are part of the nine that they're continuing to allow for use in food packaging
Yeah, but, there's a certain class of injectable drugs we should always trust them on, no matter what. Always and forever, and never doubt them, because doubt alone is a conspiracy.
I'm not an expert, but it seems like the test only received "clearance", not "approval". Many people conflate these terms even though they represent very different regulatory standards. I'm not sure it even makes sense for a purely diagnostic thing like a blood test to get "approval".
Or we can be a little more nuanced and view CR as an organization that tries to do the right thing but also has some bad calls.
I support CR for their work on testing products, I also support GMO as I feel it is one of the best ways we can feed people in the future. I also hate the over use of pesticides and hate Monsanto for many reasons.
Anti-GMO is tantamount to being against the extreme overuse of pestisides and herbicides, being anti-GMO is actually rooted in evidence as well as common sense... I don't want my strawberries or my corn bathed in round-up ready. Even if the corn does grow larger... glyphosate is bad.
It really bothers me that anti pesticide & herbicide people choose to place their crosshairs on GMOs. The GMO isn't the problem! It's totally throwing the baby out with the bathwater and serves to muddle and confuse the conversation rather than advance their cause of reduced *icide use. There are real benefits to be had from GMO crops. If GMOs weren't demonized as a whole as a proxy for *icide usage maybe there'd have been more research or investment in more, and more useful GMO crops.
So if you're anti-roundup why not just be anti-roundup? A genetically modified organism is just that, it doesn't make any commentary on whether or not pesticide is used. We've been 'genetically modifying' organisms via selective breeding as long as we've had agriculture...
I have a feeling that payed bots/shills operate on this forum because each time a comment like this is made it gets downvoted asap.
As the poster above said: modern GMO doesn't mean "no need for pesticides": modern GMO is instead "we made plants resistant to PESTICIDES so they can withstand MORE toxins before they die so that we can kill more pests by increasing the pesticide dosage without killing the plants first".
The result is a huge increase in the amount of this toxic chemicals in the plants.
Readit News
More correct approach might be that if you want to use a chemical in food packaging or children’s equipment, you must first do long-term studies that prove its relative safety to other studied compounds. In time the world would start accumulating safer products. I won’t hold my breath though.
So technically speaking, it's a solved problem. But from a market perspective, for the people who eat the glyphosate-dusted insulin resistance that's wrapped inside the plastic, i'm willing to bet the pseudoestrogens are the least of their worries.
The EU has done tons of studies on pros and cons of different food packaging technology and their overall impact to these other factors.
My guess: it'll either have everything on it, or every N years we'll get a new brand of government mandated Asbestos Free Cereal. No thanks.
The right response is a risk-based approach. Nothing is every 100% safe, so it's not a reasonable filter.
Basically each new product should be judged for the risk versus the benefit. If it can be easily substituted with a known safer product, then it's forced to go through testing.
If there is no known substitute and the benefit is high, then it can tentatively be approved with follow up tests later.
Real world is not black and white and we definitely should ban clearly poisonous or otherwise harmful (e.g. hormone mimicking) chemicals from food products and children’s utilities.
Point is if we keep going like this we might not ever arrive in a situation where everyday life is mostly free from dangerous compounds
(yes, the lead in gasoline was part of a particular molecule, too—which just proves my point, if we'd outlawed the specific molecule/compound that would have opened the door to finding other technically-different ones that still included lead—but you can't exactly outlaw carbon, so that approach won't work this time)
I as a consumer need more actionable advice. Study after study focus on chemical substances I have no empirical understanding of.
- Give me a list of types of plastic that use these plasticizers.
- Give me a list of consumer brands that use those plastics.
- Give me a list of hygiene products that use phtalates under the "perfume" label in their composition.
Publish something like this and consumers will take their money elsewhere and the Unilever's, P&G, and J&J, of the world can take notes.
I would expect a specific task force to address chronic health issues , by the FDA & EPA
They had an active role in marketing opiates as safe. They cannot keep factories safe enough to feed our nation's infants. They steadfastly refuse to remove harmful chemicals from our food and water supply.
It is utterly sickening, literally and metaphorically.
[1] https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/312067/the-poison-s...
The FDA, FTC, FCC, EPA, and a whole bunch of other "TLA" alphabet soup agencies …
Deleted Comment
Deleted Comment
Deleted Comment
I support CR for their work on testing products, I also support GMO as I feel it is one of the best ways we can feed people in the future. I also hate the over use of pesticides and hate Monsanto for many reasons.
[1] Wikipedia has a reasonable listing to start with for what traits existing GMO crops have https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_genetically_modified_c...
As the poster above said: modern GMO doesn't mean "no need for pesticides": modern GMO is instead "we made plants resistant to PESTICIDES so they can withstand MORE toxins before they die so that we can kill more pests by increasing the pesticide dosage without killing the plants first".
The result is a huge increase in the amount of this toxic chemicals in the plants.