Oh, maybe this article won't be another questionable attempt at reporting something related to science...
> The EPA noted that the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, which the agency paid to review its report, agreed with its decision not to include myeloid leukemia in its cancer risk. But four former government scientists with experience doing statistical analyses of health harms told ProPublica that the myeloid leukemia risk calculation was sound.
Sigh.
> A 2003 study showed that factory workers exposed to high levels of formaldehyde were 3 1/2 times more likely to develop myeloid leukemia than workers exposed to low levels of the chemical.
Well maybe this study they linked to will be a slam dun...
| Conclusions: Exposure to formaldehyde may cause leukemia, particularly myeloid leukemia, in humans. However, results from other investigations are mixed, suggesting caution in drawing definitive conclusions.
Scanning a recent review article seems to say the same thing - epidemiology studies appear mixed.
Maybe formaldehyde causes cancer at rates the EPA had previously estimated, maybe it doesn't. I don't know. What I do know is this article is a disappointment.
I think that's the wrong line of reasoning. Even if the science isn't 100% settled, you're in a scenario where it's possible if not probably that formaldehyde is major carcinogen. Maybe futures studies say it's not quite as bad as they think, maybe it's worse. The question is how much certainty does the EPA need before it takes action? Should they let people continue to breath in toxic chemicals because it's possible they're not as toxic as we think? Surely they have to be prepared to act on incomplete information sometimes.
Is the objective to ensure people are safe from potential dangers? Sure.
Is the objective to maximize profits for capitalist society and minimize costs? Then banning every useful but potentially harmful substance that isn't proven to kill people is a drag on society.
I'm not even joking. It sounds horrible but policy makers are always making such trade offs. The "scientific", "evidence based" language is just used to placate the masses from realizing this fact.
With particulate counts from heating and car exhaust falling from better filters and increasing electrification, tyre dust is bound to get more spotlight in the coming decade. Especially in Europe and Asia where the inner city isn't just a place for poor people and offices with air filtration.
Vehicle tires are a deep, integral part of daily economic and socio-economic activity.
Deeper than even cigarettes used to be (in North America). There was a time when people couldn't imagine a day without a cigarette. Now think about a future state where living without a personal motor vehicle is both a sane and practical choice.
It will similarly take a long time to combat vested interests and change consumers' habits.
> Vehicle tires are a deep, integral part of daily economic and socio-economic activity.
We should be careful not to let perfect be the enemy of good, such as mandates to reduce tire wear[1] and elimination / substitution of the most harmful tire additives.[2][3]
> Now think about a future state where living without a personal motor vehicle is both a sane and practical choice.
I interpret this to mean "a future state in the US", since there are many places all over the world, where it is already sane and practical to live without a car or motorbike or similar vehicle.
American roads and streets are crazy wide, due to standards set in the 1950s. This created more sprawl. OTOH it also provides a lot of room for adding bike lanes. E-bikes can then replace most local driving.
Or it could be that people spend more time in their luxury vinyl planked house, vaping and having ingress air filled with formaldehyde from traffic
It'd make more sense and be less ethical to expose people to either formaldehyde or tire dust in a confined area, but that study is definitely not getting funded
Modern construction is insanely "tight" in the sense that most of the inside air stays in and most of the outside air stays out. Some of the most energy-efficient buildings need convoluted ventilation systems to prevent the humidity from getting out of whack and causing mold.
My older house might leak conditioned air like a sieve, but it's also venting away the various VOCs from whatever cheap crap I have recently brought inside.
Is not just traffic, Biologists are exposed to formaldehyde vapors each day for example, and gloves don't remove it entirely so you end having skin problems.
I licked PF (phenol formaldehyde) buttons when I was a toddler. I can't forget the fascination with the bitter, tongue-numbing, medicine-like taste that they released when wet.
That shows you geniuses are not born: it's environment, man. Where can I get these buttons today for my children?
IDK, but I knew a guy who claimed he solved his own learning and developmental problems as a teenager when he accidentally put his head against live mains wires meant for a light fixture.
(Details in case someone wants to reproduce: it was in Poland and before 2004, so the voltage between the wires was 220V AC.)
Electro shock therapy is used for some psychological conditions today. Those who perform it are good at telling everyone else that "one flew over the cuckoo's nest" (book 1962, movie 1975) is nothing like what really happens.
I casted a inch-length semi cylindrical pendant out of old school solder and wore it around my neck on the bare skin for few days. I eventually stopped because I wasn't feeling to great after sleeping with it for some nights. I'm curious how it affected me. I noticed that my character changed to more anxious around that time and it stayed like that ... but it might have just been an effect of going through puberty.
Interesting related fact. Some plants like Spathiphyllum are known to remove formaldehyde from the air. This does not eliminate the need of a proper strong ventilation system, but indoor plants helping to protect people from cancer should be in each lab, for good measure.
>In research designed to create a breathable environment for a NASA lunar habitat, noted scientist Dr. B.C. Wolverton discovered that houseplants are the best filters of common pollutants such as ammonia, formaldehyde, and benzene.
Not particle board (as mentioned in the article) but sheets of inexpensive Chinese plywood I picked up had a very strong formaldehyde smell. I had never smelled that in plywood before (or at least so strongly).
I've sworn off particle board in my shop decades ago (for reasons having nothing to do with formaldehyde) but quickly added cheap Chinese plywood to the exclusion list.
I have resigned myself to opening my wallet for the expensive stuff (that costs over $100 for a 4' x 8' sheet, Europly, etc.). Europly at least seems to be formaldehyde free.
There's laws at least in Sweden(and new EU directives incoming that might tighten them up even more) that forbids selling plywood with offgassing higher than a certain level, so it's probably not totally free of it but should be within safe levels.
The problem with the current EU-wide rating system is that it assumes the interior is ventilated as required by other regulations. Furniture materials are assigned an emission class (E0, E1, E2) based on the steady-state VOC concentration in the test chamber (EN 717-1 and others).
Virtually no home manages to hit the minimums for ventilation (25 m³/h per person, IIRC), especially during winter. So even though an E1-class particle board is labeled as safe with regards to VOC emissions, in practice the room will reach far higher pollution levels than that category allows.
It also doesn't control for the amount of material present, so you can have a small properly ventilated room covered floor to ceiling with E1 particle board furniture, but achieve E2 or worse VOC levels in the air.
Backstory: former employer spent $$ to integrate a VOC sensor into their residential HVAC/HRV solution. The idea was to increase ventilation when odors are present and reduce ventilation when the air was clean again. The engineer prototyped and tested the device in their pre-war home (brick, stone, old wood). All good. They had the first batch manufactured and sent out to customers in brand new homes full of modern materials (engineered wood, vinyl flooring etc). The sensors were permanently saturated (reading maximum VOC value) and the project ended up being canceled, because newly built homes were their entire customer base.
When we ripped out the carpet to install luxury vinyl flooring it was off-gassing for weeks. Had to go over the vinyl with dozens of microfiber clothes before the outside coating stopped wiping off.
Imagine all of the people cutting into that inexpensive wood without air filtration is terrifying
What is luxury vinyl like? I can’t imagine vinyl being luxurious, but my personal taste is fairly hippy slanted so I tend to just ignore synthetic materials for anything pricey.
You sparked my interest so I looked it up. Plywood in the US comes predominantly from China and Vietnam. I'm surprised I figured due to it's size and density it'd be mostly a local product
A hair dresser I went to years ago switched to working out of her home instead of a salon because she said she was concerned about formaldehyde exposure. She told me Brazilian blowouts and other treatments and dyes have heaps of formaldehyde.
One reason for the prevalence of all kinds of eco/hippie/etc hair salons is that many hairdressers develop allergies against all the chemicals they're working with.
TVOC reacting to ethanol is a feature, not a bug. Ethanol vapors if up close, such as releasing slowly from a foam surface, can cause sinus irritation and a headache. It tells me that I need better ventilation, if only temporarily.
The device is a singular combination meter of both TVOC and HCHO. It is widely sold on Amazon.
Readit News
> The EPA noted that the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, which the agency paid to review its report, agreed with its decision not to include myeloid leukemia in its cancer risk. But four former government scientists with experience doing statistical analyses of health harms told ProPublica that the myeloid leukemia risk calculation was sound.
Sigh.
> A 2003 study showed that factory workers exposed to high levels of formaldehyde were 3 1/2 times more likely to develop myeloid leukemia than workers exposed to low levels of the chemical.
Well maybe this study they linked to will be a slam dun...
| Conclusions: Exposure to formaldehyde may cause leukemia, particularly myeloid leukemia, in humans. However, results from other investigations are mixed, suggesting caution in drawing definitive conclusions.
Scanning a recent review article seems to say the same thing - epidemiology studies appear mixed.
Maybe formaldehyde causes cancer at rates the EPA had previously estimated, maybe it doesn't. I don't know. What I do know is this article is a disappointment.
Is the objective to ensure people are safe from potential dangers? Sure.
Is the objective to maximize profits for capitalist society and minimize costs? Then banning every useful but potentially harmful substance that isn't proven to kill people is a drag on society.
I'm not even joking. It sounds horrible but policy makers are always making such trade offs. The "scientific", "evidence based" language is just used to placate the masses from realizing this fact.
3.5x the risk of what?? 3.5x of 1 in a billion is quite different than 3.5x of 1 in 5.
I'm pretty sure the baseline is included in the relevant research.
And people should be scared of formaldehyde.
https://earth.org/tyre-pollution/
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.estlett.4c00792
Here's a call for more studies:
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/243333/prioritise-tackling-t...
Deeper than even cigarettes used to be (in North America). There was a time when people couldn't imagine a day without a cigarette. Now think about a future state where living without a personal motor vehicle is both a sane and practical choice.
It will similarly take a long time to combat vested interests and change consumers' habits.
We should be careful not to let perfect be the enemy of good, such as mandates to reduce tire wear[1] and elimination / substitution of the most harmful tire additives.[2][3]
[1] https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/about/news-room/press-releases-...
[2] https://e360.yale.edu/features/tire-pollution-toxic-chemical...
[3] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016041202...
I interpret this to mean "a future state in the US", since there are many places all over the world, where it is already sane and practical to live without a car or motorbike or similar vehicle.
It'd make more sense and be less ethical to expose people to either formaldehyde or tire dust in a confined area, but that study is definitely not getting funded
My older house might leak conditioned air like a sieve, but it's also venting away the various VOCs from whatever cheap crap I have recently brought inside.
Deleted Comment
That shows you geniuses are not born: it's environment, man. Where can I get these buttons today for my children?
(Details in case someone wants to reproduce: it was in Poland and before 2004, so the voltage between the wires was 220V AC.)
You could give the Nintendo Switch games to lick instead.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/308235.How_to_Grow_Fresh...
>In research designed to create a breathable environment for a NASA lunar habitat, noted scientist Dr. B.C. Wolverton discovered that houseplants are the best filters of common pollutants such as ammonia, formaldehyde, and benzene.
I've sworn off particle board in my shop decades ago (for reasons having nothing to do with formaldehyde) but quickly added cheap Chinese plywood to the exclusion list.
I have resigned myself to opening my wallet for the expensive stuff (that costs over $100 for a 4' x 8' sheet, Europly, etc.). Europly at least seems to be formaldehyde free.
Virtually no home manages to hit the minimums for ventilation (25 m³/h per person, IIRC), especially during winter. So even though an E1-class particle board is labeled as safe with regards to VOC emissions, in practice the room will reach far higher pollution levels than that category allows.
It also doesn't control for the amount of material present, so you can have a small properly ventilated room covered floor to ceiling with E1 particle board furniture, but achieve E2 or worse VOC levels in the air.
Backstory: former employer spent $$ to integrate a VOC sensor into their residential HVAC/HRV solution. The idea was to increase ventilation when odors are present and reduce ventilation when the air was clean again. The engineer prototyped and tested the device in their pre-war home (brick, stone, old wood). All good. They had the first batch manufactured and sent out to customers in brand new homes full of modern materials (engineered wood, vinyl flooring etc). The sensors were permanently saturated (reading maximum VOC value) and the project ended up being canceled, because newly built homes were their entire customer base.
Imagine all of the people cutting into that inexpensive wood without air filtration is terrifying
> Formaldehyde Causes More Cancer Than Any Other Toxic Air Pollutant. Little Is Being Done to Curb the Risk.
HCHO = formaldehyde
I didn't know HCHO sensors existed, I'll get one thanks
The device is a singular combination meter of both TVOC and HCHO. It is widely sold on Amazon.
So yeah it's starting to be phased-out little by little but there is definitely the same exposure in here.