Washington Bans Chemicals; Industry Freaks 373
Frosty Piss writes "The governor of Washington is scheduled to sign legislation today to ban flame retardants called PBDEs in furniture, televisions, and computers in the state. This is despite the more than $220,000 the chemical industry has spent since 2005 to defeat the legislation. At a time when the federal government is largely ineffectual in regulating long-used but potentially dangerous industrial chemicals, the Washington ban could be the beginning of the end for PBDEs across the nation. 'The industry that makes deca and PBDEs is freaking out because they lost so severely in Washington state and other states will follow,' said a spokeswoman for the Washington Toxics Coalition. 'It really is a message from Washington state and policymakers that we won't accept chemicals that build up in our bodies and our children.'"
But if the children (Score:3, Funny)
Re:But if the children (Score:4, Funny)
It only takes a spark (Score:5, Insightful)
But yeah, if one child catches fire but it saves ten thousand from cancer, that's unfortunately a better decision over all. Note it's not like children are spontaneously combusting without PBDEs, it's just that the companies will happily use the cheapest fire-proofing despite the consequences.
More to the point, a parent can stop a child from playing with a fire a lot easier than they can stop a corporation from leaking toxins into the water supply. This is, oddly enough, how legislation is supposed to work.
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6 figures to *each* congressman might work.
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Wrong government body/Wrong Washington. This was a State action (not Washington DC), so State Legislators were the one's who needed to be bought off. If you insist on looking that cynically at it, remember its a body of people, 10-20 perhaps, so even if you focus on only 51% of them, its not THAT much.
In real life, most of the money went to adds and lobbyists, etc., maybe a few got campaign contributions but likely they already wer
Re:It only takes a spark (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody wants to be the politician whose color picture of their smiling face fades to grayscale and is then overlayed on an image of sick children in hospital beds, then with the image of the hospital crossfading to a picture of a waste-water dumping pipe discharging into a creek all the while ominous music plays in the background.
You could argue one doesn't want to be the politician with his black and white picture on top of pictures of people on fire, but burn victims don't get telethons and specials on 20/20.
Re:It only takes a spark (Score:5, Interesting)
My interpretation: Congressmen need more than 6 figures to be bought off.
My interpretation: The companies in question didn't think the issue was important enough to be worth more than a few hundred grand.Re:It only takes a spark (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The fear born of ignorance is at work (Score:5, Informative)
The problem with Asbestos is that it was used as an every day building material. This meant you had every day builders working with it. The sort of guys who wont even bother to wear proper boots or a hard hat because, well, whatever. There is no reason in the world to believe that they could ever work safely with asbestos.
Not to mention the poor bastard homeowners who just want to hang a picture or knock a wall down, and don't stop to think that perhaps putting a sledgehammer in their wall might one day cause them to develop a very nasty and painful form of cancer. Let alone their kids, who end up breathing in the dust. Yes, I know, they should stop to think, but people are dumb.
Expecting dumb people to safely handle something as nasty as asbestos was never going to work. It would be like selling regent grade sulfuric acid on the shelves of Wal*Mart as a drain cleaner and expecting people to handle it safely and not dispose of it down the nearest storm drain.
Re:The fear born of ignorance is at work (Score:5, Informative)
Any material that is not biodegradable, stays in the foodchain for thousands of years. We are slowly poisoning ourselves. You think too small-scale.
Re:The fear born of ignorance is at work (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm a huge fan of not slowly poisoning ourselves, but I think your criteria of using only biodegradable materials is unreasonable. There are ways of neutralizing chemicals outside of biology.
Then what about naturally occurring chemicals? PDBEs are found in nature (with carbon isotopes not found in synthetic chemicals).
While I agree that PDBEs should be replaced with currently available chemicals that are biodegradable, we don't know everything. We don't know where naturally occurring PDBEs come from or where they go. Technically, there may be some bacteria out there capable of degrading PDBEs, but we still shouldn't be using them.
It's enough to say that we shouldn't use dangerous chemicals unless we have to.
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What about purified silicon? Glass? Drywall? Aluminum, or any pure metal?
Those things occur naturally in great quantities.
There are ways of neutralizing chemicals outside of biology.
Man is too stupid and lazy to bring everything to the recycling center.
PDBEs are found in nature (with carbon isotopes not found in synthetic chemicals)
SCALE! : one aspect of poisoning is dosage; we humans succeed in using chemicals in high concentrations and in high quantities.
Re:The fear born of ignorance is at work (Score:4, Interesting)
Or maybe manufacturers should get off their asses, stop buying everything from Dow chemical, and switch to purchasing cost-competitive, biodegradable fire retardants that vastly exceed the performance of existing chemicals on the market.
Competing products are out there. We make one that blows the doors off any other fire retardant, performance-wise, and is eco-friendly to boot. So why are we having difficulty getting into the market? Because without legislation than bans nasty brominated materials major manufacturers see no reason to upset their supply chains.
You can bet your ass my company is drooling all over this, and we'll be pushing hard on distributors in Washington state.
Heck, if anyone out there is interested in using our products, leave a reply to this post with contact info and I'll get someone to get into contact with you.
Re:The fear born of ignorance is at work (Score:4, Funny)
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The WTC did have asbestos. It all blew off in the big explosion. Ignorance at work indeed.
http://www.asbestos.org/news/wtc_02_newfinding.ht
Re:But if the children (Score:4, Informative)
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http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/March07/petfo
As opposed to burning to death? (Score:5, Funny)
"If you get rid of the flame retardant, people will die in fires. Think of the children!"
"No, YOU think of the children, who are filling up with toxic chemicals!"
"YOU think of the children, who are currently on fire!"
(and so forth)
Meanwhile, the children grow up and move to Vancouver.
Re:As opposed to burning to death? (Score:5, Funny)
One would think that being on fire might retard the maturation process in children, never mind Canadian Immigration being ok with immigrants ablaze.
Re:As opposed to burning to death? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:As opposed to burning to death? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:As opposed to burning to death? (Score:4, Funny)
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How dare they discriminate against the Incendiary-American community!
There is actually a law to prevent this. (Score:4, Funny)
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So ... ? (Score:2)
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Nah, it goes down in flames at the drop of a hat.
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Washington Toxics Coalition (Score:3, Funny)
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Re:Washington Toxics Coalition (Score:5, Funny)
Money talks? (Score:5, Funny)
Wow a whole $200k over two years; they must really be serious!
Re:Money talks? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Money talks? (Score:5, Funny)
In other news the Washington state legislature passed a bill that outlawed the most common casue of fire: Oxygen. The bill mandates that industry provide an alternative to this dangerous gas within the next 4 years. In a move seen by many as a landmark case Washington may well become the first Oxygen free state in the nation.
Re:Money talks? (Score:5, Funny)
Washington State, Don't come crying back.... (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not sure but I guess we'll find out.
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Re:Washington State, Don't come crying back.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Washington State, Don't come crying back.... (Score:5, Informative)
Washington is banning all PBDEs, including deca-PBDEs, which were not shown by the Swedish investigation as being harmful. As such, the Washington legislation goes beyond California's or Europe's.
Re:Washington State, Don't come crying back.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Is Washington a big enough state to overcome the costs associated with a differentiated product line?
If you read the article- there are alternatives to the banned chemicals. In fact, the same companies that make the banned chemicals make the alternatives.
The wonderful thing about capitalism is that it is remarkably adaptive. Even if Washington State isn't very large, they still represent a lot of buying power. I once read that my local town's residents have the buying power in the hundreds of millions of dollars...
Let's also not forget that "making things easy for corporations" (which pay single-digit percentages of taxes, when in the 50's they paid about half) should be the absolute least of our priorities, especially when it comes to matters of public health.
Watch the Bill Moyer special sometime about pollution- give a sample of your blood to someone with an analytical lab, and they'll be able to find hundreds, if not thousands, of industrial chemicals. They've become completely pervasive.
Re:Washington State, Don't come crying back.... (Score:4, Informative)
Actually I have, and the result was not what you claim. They were specifically looking for chemicals so I'm pretty confident it wasn't just an oversight. Have you tried it yourself or is this just more "I read it on the Internet?".
While a lot of what are termed "natural" additives in foods are anything but natural, a lot of industrial chemicals do occur naturally on their own. Citric acid, for example, is used quite heavily in many industries, and is an "industrial chemical".
yes, I suggest readers do look up the details. your "hundreds perhaps thousands" is sheer unadulterated fear mongering. The studies show averages in the few dozen range, and none over 60.
For example:
-- http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/oct2004/2004-10-20 -10.asp [ens-newswire.com]
And:
-- http://www.panda.org/about_wwf/what_we_do/policy/t oxics/news/index.cfm?uNewsID=12622 [panda.org]
.html [pbs.org] for details. Urine tests reveal chemicals leaving the body and do not necessarily represent a sustained level of toxicity. There are substances the body passes through without using ... like corn kernels. ;) Thus, the presence of a substance in a urine sample does not mean the substance had any effect on the body.
Moyers' own "results" were the result of blood and urine tests. A combined total of 84 out of 150 they were looking for. And the details of what they are were not released, other than a few "eye popper" ones such as DDT. See http://www.pbs.org/tradesecrets/problem/bodyburden
Many of the "industrial chemicals" listed include things like the paint or wood finish you buy at your local hardware store, or the weed killer you buy from the store. News articles tend to downplay those. Note the distinct lack of details (in teh news articles) beyond the headline grabbers such as DDT. Why is that? DDT gets attention due to the great DDT scare/hoax. But as even the above referenced studies state regarding DDT:
This is like other chemicals/substances where you only read/hear about them saying things like "In high concentrations/doses...". Why? because small doses/exposure does not show the dramatic effects. News flash: Dihydrogen oxide in high doses/concentrations
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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There are other flame retardants that do not accumulate in biological tissue.
The issue here is that many human mothers have accumulated adequate levels of PBDEs in the
What the ... ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't that a HUGE issue? The chemical is CONCENTRATING itself in the food chain.
Either show that it decomposes into safe, naturally occurring chemicals or realize that it is time to look at banning it BEFORE it hits levels that are hazardous.
yes, it's in the food chain (Score:3, Interesting)
The word you skipped was "concentrating". (Score:3, Insightful)
The issue is whether it is concentrating itself in the food chain (and humans).
Since it seems that it is, it should be limited until it can be determined whether there is any damage associated with it or not.
if it occurs naturally (Score:4, Insightful)
yes, artificial sources can accelerate that concentrating above natural thresholds across which bad things start happening. so ban the chemicals, what do i care? i'm not contradicting the parent or the washington law. good law, i say
my point is simply that the issue is not so simpleminded: "industrial chemicals baaaaad"
no, plenty of natural chemicals rot your body, and plenty of artificial ones improve your health. i'm just sick of the simpleminded rhetoric that industrial chemical makers are out to give all of us cancer just to make a few bucks. that's hollywood, not reality. and reality is that, on the balance, industrial chemicals have improved our lives and our health. yes, that really is the truth
sorry if i'm not so simpleminded and propagandized as other people
you mean love canal? (Score:3, Insightful)
kindly entertain me with what you think i'm ignorant about that i'm not
meanwhile, i ask you to look at the contributions to modern healthy society the "evil chemicals" have made
such bullshit
it's NOT the chemical industry out to kill you, unless you're a paranoid schizophrenic. it's mistakes are made, and things are corrected, like rachel carson and silent spring/ ddt
oh wait, sorry, i forgot: i lack the historical knowledge to be aware of rachel carson. scratch that. thanks to you, i know yo
you're a paranoid schizophrenic (Score:3, Insightful)
people learned from these MISTAKES and put safeguards in place. it is just as wrong to assume
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Inflamatory rhetoric (Score:3, Insightful)
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Don't forget dihydrogen monoxide!
Another step towards a States Rights battle? (Score:2)
Re:Another step towards a States Rights battle? (Score:5, Funny)
I would not be surprised either — promises to "cut the red tape" and reduce the regulatory burden is part of the reason I vote Republican...
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Bush wouldn't be the first. For whatever reason, the Clean Air Act [cleancarscampaign.org] states that nobody can set stricter standards for vehicle emissions than the federal government unless California does, and then those states have to use standards identical to California for a given model year (or back down to the federal requirements).
They've already done that. (Score:2)
Yeah, it makes no sense. But they ruled on it.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/06/06/scotus.medical.
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Game over, man (Score:3, Insightful)
Someone used the rootkit.
New ceramic furniture coming soon (Score:2)
Look for that distinctive reddish color of new Washington state approved furniture.
Movers will not be pleased with this, but the home
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(sheesh, I'm getting old. That SNL episode was made about 20 years ago...)
Ceramic furniture (Score:2)
Of course, then someone will discover that ceramics have a higher radiation emissions than furniture made of wood and plastics. This will lead to legistlation to make sure manufacturers use materials that have any minute trace, naturally-occurring, radioactive matter removed.
Abuse of states' rights? (Score:3, Interesting)
But I have to wonder, at the same time, at what point legislation stops being about good-for-the-people, or even look-I'm-doing-something-vote-for me, and starts being about legislating morals, ethics, and such. One part of me wishes more states would make like California and start making effective carbon-emission-reduction laws, or Washington, making effective anti-dangerous-chemical laws, but how long before Tennessee bans birth control pills as suspect carcinogens, or any of a variety of other handwaving subterfuges that are intended not to make people safer but to force them towards different behavior? Maybe states' rights isn't such a hot idea after all.
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Aside from the fact that your example is purely speculative, you are also free to move to a state which lines up with your personal preferences.
If we truly had states' rights, the several states would each adopt a particular point on the economic and moral continuua, and people can choose where they like to live.
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On the other hand, Legislation sucks when you disagree with it--it is an overreaching abuse of the power of the government to impose the will of a neanderthal few upon otherwise freedom loving people.
Don't matter what the legislation is, nor how it is passed or if it is the Federal government telling the States to knock it off, or if it is the States banning tog
On the bright side (Score:2)
Oh, wait, that's not a bright side. Except literally.
Here we go... (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Have mature product with static revenues
2. Have legislature ban mature product
3. Feebly fight against ban so you can tell public you tried
4. Introduce new, more expensive product
5. Profit!!
Alternate plan (Score:3, Insightful)
2. Ignore discovery until enough people hear about it that politicians decide to "lead".
3. Spend hundreds of thousands of dollars lobbying against change.
4. When finally forced to change, find some way to write off cost of change (and lobbying) so as to not pay taxes this year either.
5. Profit!
6. Brag to stockholders.
7. Get stock bonuses.
8. Dump stock and leave company before it augers into ground.
9. Profit!
10. Use small percentage of huge personal wealth
One quiet phone call (Score:2)
government mandated "solutions" (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, folks, the same government nannies will have your neighbors throwing mercury into the trash. Never mind that it will get into the ground and your water supplies, costs more, is inferior light and sends money to the Chinese communists.
Never mind that the same thinking banned DDT which meant millions of Africans have died from malaria or that liberated prisoners from the Nazi death camps were bathed in DDT to kill the bugs living on them or that "Silent Spring" has been shown to be a work of fiction.
Never mind that banning asbestos created more danger because removing asbestos is more dangerous than using it properly, automobile brakes are nowhere near as capable, costs increased and, oh, yeah, the WTC would have stood longer because it was designed to survive airplane hits provided the guts were protected by asbestos so it would have stood a few more hours.
Nope, those who know what's best for us must rise and save us from ourselves.
mercury in CF bulbs (Score:5, Informative)
Given that coal is roughly 50% of all the power generation in the US, and that lighting is less than 50% of all power usage-- switching all standard bulbs to CF will result in a net reduction in environmental mercury *in addition* to reducing numerous other pollutants produced by generation.
And as a final note: which do you think is easier to collect and recycle? Mercury in bulbs, or mercury nicely mixed into our atmosphere?
Re:mercury in CF bulbs (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, coal plants present a smaller number of points of emission, at any rate, so rather than having to encourage/mandate behavior of 300 million, you only have to control the behavior of a few thousand coal plants.
(Though the challenge of reckoning with the political influence of coal plant owners might be an issue.)
Lucky for you... (Score:4, Insightful)
You would be hard-pressed to find *any* location in the United States where it doesn't make sense to switch to CF bulbs, even assuming nobody is recycling them, and every single bulb ends up in the landfill. It's a net power reduction, and a net pollutant reduction across the board.
Even with 90% zero-emission renewable power (something that is vanishingly rare in the US)-- the switch to CF bulbs is a gain without even recycling them.
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And, am I reading you correctly about brakes? You like having asbestos dust in the air produced from brake pads?
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Got any stats to back that up? (i.e. your tacit assertion that traffic fatalities have gone up...)
So you make your argument, then say, "My argument is based on pulling a fact out of my ass."
Nice.
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I call shenanigans.
Full-metallic pads resist heat better than asbestos. And Kevlar-Carbon pads resist heat almost as well, and stop you FAR better.
Ceramic pads don't stop you as well, but they last approximately forever and they don't have a heat fade problem either.
Also, the problem with DDT is that when it is overused, it DOES accumulate. Dangerously. And you can't stop people from overusing it. We need a superior replacement.
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There's coal in mercury, burning coal puts mercury in the air. Mercury comes down in rain fall, gets converted to highly toxic methyl mercury and is adsorbed by fish. There's so much mercury in fish that you can't eat them any more. [nrdc.org] Solution:
Wait...they're banning industry freaks? (Score:3, Funny)
Chemicals are the new Evil Spirits (Score:3, Interesting)
Some modern folks don't believe in magic, but bad things still happen that they don't understand. People still get sick unpredictably. Now it gets blamed on "chemicals". People are afraid. Sometimes someone will be accused and harmed financially (but not killed) for using these "chemicals" -- often a political enemy or rival or someone envied.
Rather than asking for their god (or God) to protect them from evil, they ask their government. Rather than asking for a blessing before they eat their meals, they buy government-blessed "organic" foods. Like their ancestors, they fear becoming "polluted" by something bad.
.
Fear, ignorance, and a lack of understanding shouldn't be the basis for decisions. The government makes a poor god and is unworthy or your faith.
Try being responsible for yourself. Instead of reacting, think. Instead of fearing, learn. Instead or harming or forcing (or killing), choose.
Here comes the science (Score:3, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PBDE [wikipedia.org]
Simpler idea (Score:3, Funny)
Like RoHS in Europe (Score:3, Insightful)
lawsuit (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously people. The environmentalists are constantly shooting themselves in the foot. They banned a similar substance used in transformers. Then the largest (at that time) solar generating plant in the US had a transformer failure and the entire plant burned down. Of course the owners of the solar plant closed up shop and didn't rebuild. Why put billions into something to protect the environment when the environmentalists make it impossible to protect that investment by using the latest technologies.
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Re:And in other news... (Score:5, Interesting)
And now we're replacing it with ethanol, which doesn't.
MTBE is still better than lead, because lead never breaks down, being elemental. But don't let the facts get in your way.
Requiring a given level of flame resistance is not unreasonable, nor is refusing to use chemicals which are somehow ending up in the food chain. That may mean they end up sitting on a bunch of unpadded metal furniture or something. I don't particularly care.
Seldom are there ever only two choices.
You're acting like this is the only fire retardant available, or that there aren't ways to reduce flammability that don't involve spraying toxics on your products or otherwise making them unsafe.
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Ethanol is made from
Never mind that it takes almost as much energy to make ethanol as you'd get from burning it, you have to burn more of it than gasoline to get the same energy return and it destroys your designed-for-gasoline engine all of which means more pollution an
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I've thought about it a lot more than you have, which is why I realize that ethanol can be made from stocks other than corn. For instance, algaes store both carbohydrates and fats. When you make biodiesel, you can also make ethanol
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I should hope so, thermodynamics tends to ensure things like that. Ethanol, petrol, coal, etc are all just ways of transporting energy in usable form. You're not magically creating any new energy. The idea behind using ethanol instead of petrol is that currently there's a lot of CO2 stored in petrol, but by growing plants then burning them, we're not adding any CO2 to the atmosphere.
Unless you were referring to en
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I bow before your superior eloquence.
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Demonstrate (if you can't prove) that there is _good_ reason to believe that this stuff is harmless?
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Of course, previous posters upthread have mentioned substances already found to be safer being used in the EU. So, it's not like there isn't something else already available...
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Has it ever occurred to you that there may be a third option? To wit: maybe the good people of Washington state like being on fire. It's good for you! Builds character in kids!
I tell ya, people these days don't know how good they have it.
Almost recursive (Score:2, Funny)
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There is more than one way to start a fire: Dell Laptop Burns House Down [slashdot.org]
Congress finds the following:
(1) More than two billion pounds of polyurethane foam are sold in the United States every year.
(2) Polyurethane foam is found in mattresses, bedding, upholstered furniture, carpet padding, sound
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