[giantg2]

"Are you suggesting we ban research into _any_ new materials whatsoever?"

Quite the opposite. I'm saying the items should be tested/researched. Hence my use of untested, as you also point out.

Essentially, stop trusting the company because they are acting like a child. You ban that class of chemicals until they can prove they are responsible and the chemical can realilistically be handled safely (unlikely for consumer products since the waste at product life end would be unmanageable). You can do this through a strict certification and surveillance program as well as limiting the use of the product to industrial applications where no alternatives exist.

But the only real point I was trying to make is that people are more likely to support bans on a rational basis that the companies have fucked up before and lied/manipulated and are likely to cause more harm like that in the future. The stuff we are discussing at this point is a little outside of that as we are getting into what people would debate considering what is reasonable.

[MonkeyMalarky]

It's like no one remembers the "BPA-Free" crap where manufacturers replaced it with other, untested, possibly-just-as-bad analogues. Those manufacturers have already acted in bad faith, why would anyone trust them to do better next time? They weren't punished and they have all the wrong incentives.

[cwkoss]

Yeah, the current system requires demonstrable harm.

We should have a system that requires demonstrable safety.