[jeff-davis]

If the chemicals are bad, and everywhere, we need a reaction time faster than 50 years.

For new inventions (not well-known issues), it would be far better to be fast-reacting and no-fault rather than slow-reacting with vengeance.

Run studies as the use of the chemicals scales up and start raising warnings early so the company has time to collect more information and adapt formulas or applications. As the costs become apparent, start placing those costs on the companies ahead of time rather than 50 years later. That will sort out who really needs the new chemical, versus who just wants to spray it everywhere.

[eesmith]

> Run studies as the use of the chemicals scales up and start raising warnings early so the company has time to collect more information and adapt formulas or applications

Part of the issue, and why this is 'existential', is that 3M appears to have known about the issues and deliberately hid the studies from the government or downplayed them. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Per-_and_polyfluoroalkyl_subst... citing https://theintercept.com/2018/07/31/3m-pfas-minnesota-pfoa-p... where you can read:

] A lawsuit filed by Minnesota against 3M, the company that first developed and sold PFOS and PFOA, the two best-known PFAS compounds, has revealed that the company knew that these chemicals were accumulating in people’s blood for more than 40 years. 3M researchers documented the chemicals in fish, just as the Michigan scientist did, but they did so back in the 1970s. That same decade, 3M scientists realized that the compounds they produced were toxic. The company even had evidence back then of the compounds’ effects on the immune system, studies of which are just now driving the lower levels put forward by the ATSDR, as well as several states and the European Union.

For a large company like 3M, the goal isn't to figure out who really needs the new chemical, it's to figure out how to profit the most from that chemical. And who will fund all the testing required? I can just hear the cry of "too much government paperwork" and "bureaucratic obstacles in the way of the innovation and the free market."

[jeff-davis]

If you depend on the company making the chemical to do studies and be transparent about them, of course the reaction time will be bad. You need independent studies and environmental monitoring.

The blame game gives the politicians and bureaucrats a nice excuse for inaction, and not much else. And 50 years later it just looks ridiculous.

Sure, if someone does something bad, blame may be a part of the response. But you need good outcomes first and foremost, not bad outcomes and blaming.

[eesmith]

> You need independent studies and environmental monitoring.

Certainly. Clearly so.

As to my point, how do we change things? How do we put that into place?

> The blame game gives the politicians and bureaucrats a nice excuse for inaction, and not much else.

I didn't make my point clear enough.

The blame game results in "much else" - corporate profit. Enough profit they can fund efforts to tilt the system in their favor.

It's not just inaction. The Supreme Court is actively weakening, for example, EPA power to enforce Clean Water Act. Even something like Ryan Zinke's order to lift the ban on lead bullets in national wildlife refuges was an active action which increased lead pollution in the environment, to favor of cheaper bullets.

[jeff-davis]

"Enough profit they can fund efforts to tilt the system in their favor."

That might explain things in the US, but worldwide?

Why didn't some other country at some point run some studies, call some cabinet head in the US and say "Why are you spraying this chemical on everything? Don't you know it's kinda bad? We're restricting imports of stuff with that chemical unless it's really needed.".

"The Supreme Court..."

Congress needs to do its job and stop blaming SCOTUS for federal law interpretation and regulatory scoping issues. (Constitutional law is a different story because Congress can't do anything about that.)

Politicians optimize for shouting loudly about things, and then blaming others when they do nothing.

[eesmith]

> Why didn't some other country at some point run some studies

I know little about the topic, but I can suggest reasons why this isn't so simple.

Up until the 1960s or so, people didn't care much about pollution. They thought nature could absorb it. This include Europe. The Swiss chemical industry dumped their wastes into the Rhine, and they weren't the only one along the river.

The goal then, in Europe as in the US, was to make money.

It wasn't until REACH in 2007 - https://echa.europa.eu/regulations/reach/understanding-reach - that laws were changed to place the onus on companies. Quoting that link: "To comply with the regulation, companies must identify and manage the risks linked to the substances they manufacture and market in the EU. They have to demonstrate to ECHA how the substance can be safely used, and they must communicate the risk management measures to the users."

However, for reasons I do not know, PFAS were excluded from REACH.

My guess is it's for the same reason - PFAS are industrially very useful. Europe's chemical industry is about the same size as the US's, and I know it can influence legislation there too.

> Congress needs to do its job and stop blaming SCOTUS for federal law interpretation

My point was that "a nice excuse for inaction" is insufficient to explain what's going on in the US.

> Constitutional law is a different story because Congress can't do anything about that

My example about the EPA power to enforce Clean Water Act was a constitutional law issue.

[missedthecue]

Sometimes it's not possible to get fast reaction times. If I were the first person to invent asbestos, I could use it for the next 20 or 30 years and not get any symptoms. But of course we know in hindsight it is highly carcinogenic.